Beyond the Veil of Knowledge: Triangulating Security, Democracy, and Academic Scholarship

Description

Is there a need to remodel constructivism to be more politically attuned? Author Piki Ish-Shalom calls for an activist academy that engages society and the polity to prevent the watering down of democracy, while helping to create a space for criticism. In this book, he suggests several concrete measures for this engagement within three spheres:  individual theoretical work, the academic community as a whole, and within society and the polity. Beyond the Veil of Knowledge suggests that essentially contested concepts are a key medium that politicians use to try to minimize public resistance to their political goals. For constructivists, this means that the social construction of both social knowledge and the social world can be understood as the sociopolitical construction of knowledge and the sociopolitical world. Contents Acknowledgments Introduction Part I: Concepts and Politics 1. Theoretical Framework 2. Essentially Contested Concepts: Democracy and Security 3. The Essential Contestedness of Concepts and Politics Part II: Engaged Academia 4. The Responsibility to Engage 5. The Individual Level: Zooming In, Zooming Out 6. The Second Level: The Community of Communities 7. The Third Level: Structural Problems 8. Traveling Forward in Time: Forecasting and Realizing the Spread of Democracy 9. Moving Away from the Heart of Darkness: Advising the Security Sectors Conclusions: Having an Engaged Academia in a Conceptually Contested Environment Appendix: "Megalim Olam" Notes References Index