In spite of it all, I find myself persistently listening to the course Politics and Warfare by professor Victor Magagna (feed). This is a political science course which discusses various political theories of war and evaluates their strength in explaning how war starts, how it develops and what decides its outcome. Magagna distinguishes institutional theories on the one hand and structural, realist and neo-realist of the other. To put it very simply, institutional theories carry among their assumptions that war is basically never the best option whereas the other theories claim that there can be situations where war is the rational way to go.I was drawn in, by the lengthy analysis of these theories adapted onto historic examples, most notably World War I (with the ever returning question who started it), but also the American War of Independence and the wars between the France of Louis XIV and the Dutch. This links in with the knowledge I acquired from history podcasts such as Berkeley's History 5, Stanford's The History of the International System, American History before 1870 and Historyzine. Because I felt familiar with the historic facts, I could get deeply engaged in the evaluation of political theory.
Relevant other posts:
History 5 on World War I,
The History of the International System,
A century of geopolitics - podcast review,
American History before 1870,
Historyzine.
6 comments:
This is a terrific podcast! Thanks for bringing my attention to it. Looking forward to finishing it. :)
So am I.
I wish UCSD would put in some basic editing. These lectures are cast in mp3's that last nearly three hours. But my estimate is that the effective lecture takes less than 90 minutes.
The dead air (sometimes for two hours) is rather annoying, but I find the chalkboard noises kind of hypnotic. :D
Now do you? Old-school nostalgia?
I had the privilege to be in two of Prof. Magagna's courses and it was my best undergraduate experience. I wish more UCSD lecturers would have the same, or near, passion and knowledge that Prof. Magagna posses. I hope UCSD podcast his other courses.
UCSD posted Magagna's course about East Asia philosophy, but as things go with UCSD, the course has been taken off-line, the day the season ended. Which was a matter of days after Magagna's last lecture.
Anne
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