[EN transcript] S01E01 Why International Relations Fail to knock People's Doors down?
RSS link: https://anchor.fm/s/f5c3e844/podcast/rss (Spotify - original language: mandarin Chinese).
[Transcript - Full version]
Jasmine 00:44
Hello everyone, and happy May Fourth Youth Day to everyone yesterday. Welcome to the first season and first episode of Overreactology, I'm the co-host of this podcast, Jasmine.
Alina 00:55
I'm podcast co-host Alina.
Jasmine 00:57
As you may already know if you've seen our messages on various social media platforms, Overreactology is a youth-oriented podcast on international relations. We were inspired by the concept of everyday international relations, which has been a trendy topic recently, and we hope to bridge the distance between the 'everyday' of individuals and the seemingly distant world of international relations.
Jasmine 01:24
Today is the first episode of the first season of Overreactology. In the first episode, we wanted to start by icebreaking and let's talk about the subject matter of international relations per se. Since we are in the first episode, I would like to start by talking about a very popular influencer Zhang Xuefeng. Zhang Xuefeng is a tutor in career coaching. In his lessons, he has two classic arguments (about international relations), one is that 'Diplomacy' is a major that generally admits students who have satisfied the admission criteria but whose grades are not high enough to go to their first-choice major (usually with higher career expectancy). The second argument is that majors related to international relations and international affairs can't usually make students employed in the foreign companies (multinational corporations) in China. So to sum up, international relations is not a satisfactory major. Alina, what do you think?
Alina 02:04
Speaking of this, it occurred to me that I posted a post on Xiaohongshu, wanting to touch upon the heated topic about the choice of profession and university major. I adopted a very popular and trendy way of posting at that time, that is, phrasing the title into "Baby I remember that at first you were in love with XXX discipline/major". So I wrote, "Baby I remember that at first you were in love with international relations". This post suddenly attracted loads of attention and has attracted the highest number of readers and the highest number of likes and comments on my account.
(Note: Xiaohongshu 小红书 is a Chinese social media platform known for being the Chinese version of Instagram.)
Alina 02:42
In the comments section, many people commented that this thread reflects their feelings when they were making decisions for their future path with those fantasies about international relations at that time. But then, gradually, in reality, the fantasy about 'studying or doing international relations' fell from the ideals into the abyss of reality.
While many people said that international relations (IR) is not a satisfactory major for university students, there are also many students from other majors who left their comments under that post, saying that despite IR has its problems, they always have positive expectations for the future international relations, and so they really want to transfer to IR.
So the comments section of that thread has now become a discussion forum for topics like 'What is IR doing', 'What are the career choices and future expectations for IR students', and 'Should I transfer from other majors to IR" or "should I leave IR".
So in today's episode, we also want to discuss the nature of the discipline of international relations, as well as the future of IR students. It can be regarded as a guideline for choosing a future pathway with 'low future expectancy'.
Alina 04:00
To discuss these issues, we invited two guests. One is Xiaolei, who chose to study in Moscow after the outbreak of the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022, and the other is Magna Toasta, who is doing War and Conflict Studies in a permanently neutral country - Ireland. Both of the guests have some interesting life stories related to IR. We also hope that in speaking to both guests, we can provide some food for thought, including inspiration for the future, or discuss some confusion at this stage. Now let's invite the guests to introduce themselves.
Xiaolei 04:43
Hello everyone, I'm Xiaolei, I studied Russian in my undergrad and now I'm a second-year master's student studying IR in Russia.
Magna Toasta 04:53
Hi everyone, I'm Magna Toasta, I'm in Dublin, and I'm currently a second-year PhD student studying war and international conflict.
Jasmine 05:01
Welcome! At the very beginning of this episode, I would like to ask, since the discipline of IR is not that popular, and has even been labelled as a "low-career-expectancy" major, why did you choose IR as your major in the first place?
A couple of months ago, I noticed that a friend, (actually she is a classmate of my classmate) who is now studying in London, was conducting a survey: "Do you think participating in activities related to international relations, such as Model United Nations, in high school influenced your choice?"
I would like to know if you have any of these experiences.
Xiaolei 05:44
My interest in IR comes from an interest in military, politics, and the 'grand narratives' at first. And I feel like, it seems that boys are naturally interested in grand narratives. Whether they're studying this as their university major or not, we all like to talk about these things when we're together, and I don't know if that's the case for you either.
Magna Toasta 06:05
My experience is very similar to Xiaolei's because I feel like most of the time boys usually receive one or two military-related toys when they are young, and then that's usually a start for us to get interested in military-related affairs. I didn't actually participate in Model United Nations in person in my high school or junior high school, but we had these student associations at that time, so I was interested in Model United Nations as well. I joined Model United Nations only after I chose IR as my major at my undergraduate university. Before that, I was similar to Xiaolei, that is, I was simply interested in politics, history and these topics, and then I heard that there was a major called IR that I could choose in university, so I chose it later.
Alina 06:47
This is a topic I've heard about frequently before, and in the post I just mentioned ("Baby, I remember at first you were in love with IR"), I used a similar narrative in my writing. It's also from my personal experience, which is that I participated in the Model United Nations conferences in my high school, and then I became very interested in international affairs, and then I managed to choose IR as my major when I was applying for university, but tracing back to the very beginning, I think....
Alina 07:16
Although you guys said that "boys seem to be naturally interested in grand narratives", I would like to refute that a little bit, because in my own experience, my family, especially my mom and I are very interested in these things, and topics about the so-called 'grand narratives' were present in my family's daily conversations from an early age, as well as in the "dinner table talk" topics. That's why I joined Model United Nations in high school. Another interesting point is that my passion for Model United Nations, including a future career in international affairs, was partly inspired by romance novels. This is probably the opposite of what you discussed earlier, that boys buy military toys and chat with each other on political topics. And I think 'reading romance novels inspired me to have a future career in IR' is probably the opposite of socially constructed gender expectations.
Alina 08:06
I think when I was in high school I read a lot of good romance novels in high school, and the female protagonists have careers ranging from Doctors Without Borders to being a peacekeeper in South Sudan. And so at that time I was inspired by these stories and became very passionate about becoming a very independent heroine who could help people in international affairs. So I think my personal experience is very interesting at this point.
Alina 08:39
But I have to talk about some gender stereotypes about the discipline of IR. When I was in high school, and even before the first day of university, I never thought that IR would be such a 'male-friendly' major. I think it was because, in high school, there was a tendency to encourage girls to study liberal arts subjects: politics, history, and geography. I took politics, history, and geography in high school, and then I majored in international relations as a liberal arts major at university. This sounds very reasonable under this logic.
Alina 09:16
But on the first day of university, as we all know, on the first day of freshmen welcome week, there will be some senior students to talk to you and then help you with your luggage. When I was picking up my package, a stranger senior student asked me: "Hey, what do you study?" I told him that my major is International Studies, and he was surprised and said: "Wow, why did you choose this major?" I replied by saying that I am very interested in IR. But he said:
"But you're a girl, why are you studying IR, why are you interested in these things?"
Alina 09:54
And in that moment, I suddenly realised that wow, people might think like that. And then it does turn out that people tend to think that boys are just naturally very interested in military-related affairs, international conflicts and the "grand narrative" topics.
Xiaolei 10:13
I think it's interesting that a lot of guys like to talk about these topics, whether it's over dinner or in the dormitory. But as far as I know, there are still more girls in this major. Boys seem to just talk about it and pay attention to it as a hobby. However, there are fewer boys than girls who actually enter this discipline to study. I think this phenomenon is very interesting.
Magna Toasta 10:41
This discipline is actually a rather "gendered" one. When we learn about the middle-range theories in IR, we often talk about something like rational actors, rational choice theories, etc. In fact, there are many theories, especially e.g. Realism, which personify the state, and this personification is often an image of what we think of as the ideal male: a man who seeks power and is also very rational, not very emotional.
Magna Toasta 11:16
But to be honest, both in reality and in the world of knowledge, the image of the state as a rational decision-maker is often challenged. So here comes a problem, that is, the knowledge basis is very androcentric, but it is extremely detached from reality. I have talked to many female colleagues. They also think that some of the knowledge basis of this discipline is very androcentric, which is detached from reality.
Jasmine 11:56
I think this phenomenon is quite common in every discipline. Although, as Xiaolei said just now, when you enter this discipline, you may find that there are a lot of female classmates when you enter university as a freshman, but when you grow older, you will find that there are always more male PhDs than female PhDs, which is why our knowledge basis is mainly constructed by male PhDs and male scholars.
Alina 12:24
Yes, when I was studying gender and political theory, I found it very interesting that some scholars researched Hobbes and his Leviathan, and also, for example, Machiavelli's works, which laid the foundation for modern political concepts and revealed the gendered origins in these 'classics'. One of the arguments that really intrigued me is that, for example in Hobbes's Leviathan, which was created during the English Civil War, his vision of state is highly androcentric. Why? Because under that historical condition, in the state of nature, the "all against all wars" requires men to fight for their own interests, to be cold-blooded enough to scramble for scarce resources, and then people gather together to have a social contract to avoid chaos. All of these envisions are based on the assumption that males are fighters in wars. One criticism is that the Hobbesian state of war failed to take the people "out of war" into serious consideration. People such as women, children and disadvantaged groups might have difficulties participating in the nasty scramble and competitions. They might be dependent and were more reliant on community-based care under that historical context. So when I learnt about this criticism, I was amazed and very intrigued.
Jasmine 13:45
We've talked a lot about how the discipline is gendered, and then we've also talked a lot about some of the challenges that women may face in the discipline. So I'd like to ask you two, do you, as men in this discipline, ever feel that it was easy or very relaxed when entering this discipline? Was there anyone who was particularly supportive of you studying this? Or was there anyone who was against your choice?
Xiaolei 14:08
I don't feel that I have received any clear support or opposition, but I can feel that there are some fantasies and halos in the public imagination of this discipline. For example, when I went home for New Year's Eve, I talked to my relatives about the fact that I am an IR student, and their first impression was "Will you go to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs after graduation?" I thought people overrated the future of IR graduates...
Magna Toasta 14:44
My stories are similar to Xiaolei's. For people who know about IR, the first impression usually is: "Is this the major for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs?" Then other people who may not know it might think: "Oh, are you doing international trade?" They might misunderstand. So maybe people still don't know much about this major, but when they know that if you are going to study the relations between states, usually people will think that this major is more suitable for boys.
Jasmine 15:21
Just now, Magna Toasta talked about the 'imagined' international relations and the 'real' international relations. There is actually a question that I have been thinking about, that is, what kind of problems does the discipline of IR actually study and solve? In my first class of History of International Relations after entering university, the first question our tutor asked was:
What exactly do you think is the difference between us (students and professionals of international relations) and those Beijing taxi drivers? (Note: Beijing taxi drivers are known for being talkative, and keeping up with international news.)
The answer given by our tutor at that time was that, our way of thinking is much more theoretical and conceptual than the taxi drivers. He said that if you study the discipline of IR, your way of thinking will be fully developed. But is it really useful or not? What are the core competencies that the discipline is offering?
Magna Toasta 16:15
One of the things that I think is very important is that the way we think is theoretical and conceptual, which means that it is a discipline and it needs to have a scientific method to be studied. In fact, the question is twofold. First, what puzzles are we solving? And the second is what tools we should use. That is, what methods we use and what kind of academic training we receive, and this determines the core competence of this discipline.
Magna Toasta 16:37
First, the problem we are trying to solve: In 1919, the first place to establish a programme about IR was at the University of Aberystwyth in the United Kingdom. It was right after the First World War, so the initial intention was to solve the problem of war and peace that everyone was concerned about, and how can we avoid the Second World War. Of course, it failed, as we all know. But as we deepen the study of IR, we find that if we want to solve the problem of war and peace, or to achieve the ultimate well-being of humankind in the end, then we should expand the boundary of inquiry. For example, to take economic cooperation, sustainable development, regional development and other issues into account, because they are also often linked to "conflicts", just as development studies and conflict studies are usually interrelated in terms of research.
Magna Toasta 17:31
From a more ontological level, we are actually studying the question of "whose" international relations, and the answer(s) to the "who" question can bring us many different perspectives. For example, if we look at the traditional statecentric international relations, the inter-national relations, the answer is the "state". And there is "humankind's" international relations, we're looking at things like global warming and global pandemic, because we are taking about the "humankind" as a whole to be the subject of analysis. There is also Marxist international relations of the "class", and the international relations of "gender". With the change of our research subjects, we will find that apart from the grand narratives, a lot of the everyday, emotional and experience-based things can become concerns in international relations.
Magna Toasta 18:19
So in order to study these problems, we need methods. We need to be academically trained. So not only are we doing something "scientific" - the social "sciences" - using scientific methods to find objective laws, but we also need critical methods to constantly question the intellectual foundations and assumptions on which "science" is based, for example, the assumption of "rational actors" that I have just mentioned. The dilemma of this discipline lies in the fact that the basis of our knowledge is the "interaction between human beings", but this basis is constantly changing.
But because of this, the competitiveness and vitality of our IR discipline lies in the fact that it is constantly absorbing cutting-edge scientific research methods, such as quantitative research, and even machine learning, which we are now using. At the same time, we are also developing students' ability to think outside the box, for example, by critically reflecting on the foundations of our knowledge and the foundations of society. I think this is one of the things that makes International Relations very different from other disciplines, and it is also our core competence.
Alina 19:26
Well, at this point, I wanna talk about the fact that international relations always seems to be solving the 'inter'-national issues, and the very idea of this podcast is to call back to the nearby and the everyday in the discipline of IR, both for ourselves (for those of us who are still studying), and for academia. Paying attention to the nearby and the everyday can be a better way of helping us to understand and address things that may often be overlooked in the grand narratives when we're studying international affairs.
Alina 19:56
Speaking of this, I would like to talk about the question of self-care as a researcher when facing wars and conflicts. Every time there is an international conflict or significant political events, people frequently get stuck in the phenomenon of "political depression" on my social media (probably because there are many people who study international relations in my social networks). However as we might know, many people argue that doing international relations requires the mindset of a "cold-blooded commander" who's in a cruel game of great powers.
Alina 20:38
For example, when I was applying for my master's degree, I added a lot of master's degree application discussion groups, whose members usually include people who study war, international relations, public policy and other related majors. That application year was the same year as the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine. So when the war broke out, there were a lot of people chatting in that groupchat. When I saw the news, some of my peers said, "OK, this war has provided me with a lot of new ideas for my proposal, it sent me a case study (as a gift) and some future research potentials". I was in such an emotional pull that I felt extremely sad all of a sudden.
So I want to talk to you about the painful phenomenon of IR people's "political depression", as well as the image of a "cold-blooded commander" in the great powers game. Whether we need to abandon some of such depressed feelings or emotions to think more calmly and rationally or not?
Magna Toasta 21:46
I think this "cold-blooded commander" image is a very unrealistic one. In fact, war is a process of mobilising the whole of society if you look at it at the macro level. But it cannot be separated from the micro level - the individual participation and the experience of violence. In the media age, it is also a process in which people who are outside the battlefield participate in the war by spectating it distantly. The Vietnam War, for example, is a classic example of how live broadcasting of war spectacles in front of televisions can seriously affect the level of support for the war from people on the home front. So emotional interactions have always been a very important part of war. If we ignore the experiences and feelings of the soldier - the most basic component of the war machine, and if we ignore the emotions of the people or the audience in other countries in the back, then we can't really study the phenomenon of war - the behaviour of human organised violence - in depth. So I don't think there's any contradiction between empathising at the loss of life and seeing a new case. Scholars who don't feel empathy for the loss of life can't really be real scholars of international relations.
Magna Toasta 22:57
But what I also see at the same time is that a lot of good war researchers are actually very keen in their ability to empathise, and this keenness helps them to do their research. But at the same time, this keenness of empathy for other people's sufferings is also a source of political depression. So I think, it's quite like a paradox.
Xiaolei 23:19
I think this kind of political depression is essentially a contradiction between the "sense of meaning brought by the grand narratives" and the "sense of meaninglessness as a tiny individual" of us being ordinary people. On the one hand, the grand narratives try to attach meaning to things, but on the other hand, we as tiny, insignificant individuals might be meaningless when we are situated in the grand narratives, so it makes us stuck in this obvious sense of powerlessness.
Xiaolei 23:47
Personally, the last time I felt it was on 22 March 2024, when the terrorist attacks in Moscow happened. And because it was so close to my life, I could strongly feel that so many people's lives had been lost overnight. This sudden incident makes me very sad. At the same time, I'm now studying in Russia, majoring in International Relations, and I seem to have all the labels.
Xiaolei 24:24
In my life, a lot of people ask me questions about, for example, the future of the Russian-Ukrainian war, like who will win, when will the war end, etc., I sometimes try to give some answers with my "academic rationality". But in fact I have the very basic emotions, to say, that there is no winner in the war. I just hope that the war can be ended as soon as possible. So what I want to say is that, in the process of learning IR, e.g. in the process of conceptualising and theorising political phenomena, it is very easy for people to overlook the fact that the things that we are studying are actually happening in the real world, and the lives of ordinary people have been affected on the ground. When we are in the process of study, those who sacrificed their lives may become casualty figures, and those who are poverty-stricken may just become the reason to explain why "the GDP or the GDP per capita is not high enough". People become these figures, or rather, concepts. My personal conclusion is that we need to be able to listen to both the "distant calls" of research and the "sounds of crying nearby" in real life. If we only listen to the former, it is easy to be hypocritical or hollow; but if we only have the latter, we may be narrow.
Jasmine 25:43
Now we've talked so much about the academic side of life, and then now let's go back to reality: what do you think is 'the future pathway' for us IR students in this recruitment season?
Xiaolei 25:54
I think it's too hard (to find a job). I've talked about this with my classmates back in China about our graduation next year. I'll go back to China after this year. What I learnt about job hunting is that, maybe because IR is a bit far away from the market, or let's say, in other words, it can't "serve the market" directly, so maybe most students will choose to take the civil servant examinations or take the examinations to enter those state-owned industries with permanent positions. This is cruel, but it is also the reality. For me, if it is really not possible to get a job, let's become taxi drivers! Let's compete with the taxi drivers who haven't systematically learnt IR...just kidding.
Jasmine 26:41
I have a feeling that the dilemma you're talking about actually has its roots in the environment and vibes of China's IR-related industries, so it's hard for people to get a decent job.
Xiaolei 26:49
Well, it could be, yeah.
Jasmine 26:51
We're actually going to have an episode about exploring different career possibilities with people who have graduated in this season of our podcast. And we will invite some people who are not in the IR-related professions to talk about their career choices. Let's look forward to that! Also, I would like to respond to what Xiaolei just said, you just said that there are many students around you who may have chosen to enter the civil servant system in the end. Like I just said, I think in China, the industry chain of international relations has not been mature. However, in foreign countries, the IR-related industries are more mature. I think that the IR-related jobs, or to say, when we provide the narratives or products of international relations, it's kind of like consultancy. But the client of consulting...nowadays in China, in general impression, we only provide services to the government, but in fact, there are still a lot of enterprises that are concerned about and are affected by international relations. So how to link up this industry chain in China? I think this is a question that needs to be answered by society and the discipline of international relations.
Alina 28:09
I would like to add some perspectives from the corporations. I have just experienced some recruiting activities in the 2024 recruitment season, mainly graduate schemes of some well-known companies that you may be familiar with. During my undergraduate years, the school focused on the development of our transferable skills very much. Meanwhile, I think my previous research projects were "down-to-earth" compared to projects on IR theories or philosophy. Using Xiaolei's words above, they seem "closer to the market", e.g. my undergraduate thesis was on TikTok, and then my master's thesis was on Zoom - the videoconferencing software. Then I thought I'd try to work for a tech company. But in this recruitment season, I've experienced a lot of miserable failures, and in the end, I couldn't find a job with a 200,000 RMB annual salary, but I received a scholarship for my doctoral studies. That is to say, I really can't find a job...but I can have the opportunity to study for a doctorate degree....
Jasmine 29:23
It sounds like an IR degree itself is not that practical. What we've learnt is just an "accessory" on your CV to get a job, rather than you're actually using that knowledge to get a job, so that leads us to another topic:
Jasmine 29:38
In fact, when I am abroad, I feel like... because I met some of my classmates and they are the children of diplomats, or their family is a prestigious family or owns a big business, and then those children of prestigious families, they will choose international relations as their "gold-plated" major. Their undergraduate degree may not be IR. But with this "IR accessory" (as their master's degree), it seems they might become more popular in the job market.
But compared to my own experience, I have always been very fond of this major from high school to undergraduate and master's degree, and I don't come from a prestigious family. Does that mean that I am not the most suitable candidate for this discipline, or to say, are those who are looking for "gold-plating" opportunities the most suitable candidates for IR studies?
Xiaolei 30:31
I would like to share my experience in Russia, that is, I have talked with the students at the Moscow State Institute of International Relations, and many Russian students are very similar to what Jasmine has just shared, that is, many of the students there are indeed the children of prominent government officials. The young people you meet on that campus may very possibly be the sons of ministers, daughters of generals... something like that.
Alina 31:00
I think it's a very interesting phenomenon, especially the "gold-plated" label and the question of whether IR is a very classy discipline. I did my master's at the University of Cambridge in the UK, and some of my peers will go back to their home countries, planning to become politicians or to work for the elections. Another direction is to go back and work for think tanks and institutes, the industry that we traditionally think IR graduates will go to. This is because their countries have a very relevant industry to receive graduates of this discipline. In China, I feel that we still rely mainly on taking the civil servant examinations (考公) or the examination for state-owned industries (考编), or passing the special "selection process" for becoming a government official (选调). This is a difference between China and many Western countries.
Alina 31:48
And some of my peers also use IR as a "springboard major". They may have come from majors with worse prospects, such as history majors. It's interesting to note that I know two people from the US, both of whom majored in history, and they said they couldn't find a good job at the time, or they thought they needed to find a better job, maybe due to the Silicon Valley vibes. Also maybe using international relations as a springboard could be better. And (some) might go on to do a PhD in JD later, or something about law, and become a lawyer in the future.
The last thing I want to say is that whether it is an upper-class profession or not, I personally hope that we can break down the elitist bias and mitigate the problems that are caused by viewing the world from the perspective of a superior person. I think it's interesting to note that during the summer school at SciencesPo, I experienced some elitist perspectives of the students there. I think it's elitist but left-leaning in the European sense. But at that time, some chats were mainly on whether or not to accept refugees unconditionally. I felt that some of the students I met at that time had an innocent leftist mindset. Some were very hospitable and had an idealist resettlement mentality towards the refugee crisis (a heated topic at that time).
Alina 33:33
Some think that, as long as we give them (refugees) enough resources, for example, education, social resources and so on, they will become ideal and good French residents. But they seemed to overlook the fact that, for example, the refugees have their own religious beliefs and cultures, and some of them have different struggles, e.g. how to integrate into the society, and they might encounter some difficulties that are out of their imaginations. Also, they (the students) may regard the people who live with immigrants in the same community but dislike the "outsiders" are irrational or morally flawed. They may not realise that the people who live there may come across some cultural conflicts or other conflicts on a daily basis, and that's why those people cannot bear with that. So I felt...it's hard to say... when these topics came up in the chats...
Magna Toasta 34:41
This is so true. I have a friend (a friend in the same major) who went on an internship. It was about helping politicians to get involved in some of the campaigns. And he said: "I have a hard time knocking people's doors down - I've prepared a lot of things to say, but they don't even give me a chance." This is one of the problems of our major - IR. It feels like there's a big gap between what people learn in the classroom and what you actually need when to go into real-world practices. Often, this gap will make some students who have spent a lot of time in "the classroom", including myself, stuck in a sense of frustration: my knowledge seems to be... not even "useless"... but not even given the opportunity to be used. This feels very bad.
Magna Toasta 35:41
I think there is a large gap between our classroom and the real world, between our knowledge and everyday problems. Things in the classroom are always the (as we all keep mentioning) "grand narratives". It seems to have been talking about something very abstract and structural, but how to knock on the door of the general public? (In the classrooms) we have not been taught things about this, or very little. This is what I find regrettable.
Alina 36:13
I am curious if you have ever had any regrets after so many years in the field of IR, that is, if there was ever a moment when you wanted to say, "I shouldn't have come to study IR," or "It would have been better if I had chosen another major at first." If there was ever such a moment? Have you ever had such a moment?
Xiaolei 36:31
My personal feeling is that I don't regret too much, that is, because I am a person who doesn't regret too much and doesn't regret too easily. I personally always believe that no effort goes in vain. If you are really devoted to something, this will never be a mistake, and there is always nothing wrong (with your choice).
Jasmine 36:51
My feelings are similar to Xiaolei's. I am a person who doesn't regret much. There is nothing that I think I would have done better if I had done it in the first place, and I think any choice I made in the past was the best choice I could make at that time. What keeps me going in IR is not my love for it, but my lack of love for other things. I have tried to do some administrative work before, and I have tried to do some internships in village committees. But I feel that once I cross the line between what I "can do" and what I "like to do", it seems that all that is left is the "path dependency" of IR that I have been following for so many years.
(Note: Village committee [村民委员会] is a grassroots mass autonomous organization for self-management, self-education and self-service for villagers in China. Based on the Organic Law of Village Committees of China, it adopts democratic elections, decision-making, management and supervision.)
Alina 37:47
Unlike you guys, I am a very curious person who always regrets. I think there is a story that suits me very well: Ancient Greek poet Archilochus's fox and hedgehog. The fox is clever, cunning and flexible - the fox knows many things, but a hedgehog knows one big thing and responds to all changes with knowledge of that one big thing. I consider myself to be a fox person, so I always observe different opportunities in different fields.
Alina 38:20
I thought back to my previous life, even my academic research was always inter- and multi-disciplinary. I also went to other disciplines and did academic conferences there, and even tried to apply for a PhD in anthropology, geography, communication, etc. But in the end, when I submitted a manuscript to a journal - because I submitted it to a cross-disciplinary field, the feedback I received told me, "Your way of thinking is still too 'international relations', and those of us who are in the field of communication studies do not think in this way". At that time, I realised that my way of "looking at the world's affairs" is ultimately rooted in IR, and I hoped that the knowledge I developed could contribute to the field of IR or its related careers.
Xiaolei 39:17
Now out of my own curiosity, as I have not been studying IR for a very long time, I would like to learn from you guys, what kind of people are suitable for the study of IR, and what kind of abilities we need to succeed in this pathway. In addition to what I know, which is the accumulation of IR knowledge, what other skills do we need?
Jasmine 39:42
I'm actually a girl who grew up on a very small island, then came to Beijing, and now I'm studying in Rome, and I feel like I have an "ineradicable inferiority complex". I think the most important thing that I can do to make up for the information gap is to build up my social skills. Firstly, in the process of knowledge exchange with other people, you are able to spark more inspiration (about) what you want to study. The second is that in the process of communication, you can make up for your information gap. And then the third may be that only when you have enough social ability can you monetise the knowledge and skills you learned.
Alina 40:28
Jasmine and I are actually from the same city. My own feeling is that this "sense of inferiority" can actually make up for the things that some of my peers from the "upper class" can't see. In my life and my way to pursue better education, I have discovered that it is actually one of my shining points because I can see things in "the nearby" and the "bottom-up" things that other people may have overlooked.
Alina 41:01
International relations and how it goes from the macro to the "nearby" and the everyday, are some of the issues we want to address with this podcast. Approaching the end of this episode, we want to advertise to you that our podcast will be published on many mainstream social media platforms. We've chosen to use the podcast as our main medium of communication, and we'll be publishing transcripts and the notes and highlights of each episode on our WeChat public account. In addition, we will publish our episode highlights on Xiaohongshu and Douyin, so that more people can listen, read and participate in our podcast. And we will also produce in the English-speaking world at the same time, trying to dismantle the communication barriers created by language and other factors. We hope to have your support, and stay tuned!
Jasmine 41:53
Thank you Alina, and to finish off this episode, I'd like to go back to the subject of Overreactology, what do you think of our podcast and how do you feel about recording this episode today?
Xiaolei 42:06
When I first heard the name Xiaoti Dazuo (Overreactology), I thought, "Wow, what a wonderful name!" I think although our major is often about grand narratives, there are in fact many "tiny issues" that are worthwhile for us to research and study. I also believe that these "tiny issues" will make a big difference. Just like what is said in the ancient Chinese article - The Peach Blossom Spring [Taohuayuan Ji 桃花源记]: "It was almost too cramped at first to afford him passage; but when he had taken a few dozen steps he emerged into the open light of day" [Translated by Cyril Birch, in 'Peach Blossom Spring' by Tao Qian, Asia For Educators - Primary Sources with DBQs—CHINA, Columbia University). I hope that we can all enter with a tiny issue and then open up together here.
Magna Toasta 42:35
I agree with what Xiaolei said about this feeling of enlightenment - emerging into the open light of day (cited back to the sentence in The Peach Blossom Spring). We explore the world in the process of seeing big things through small ones.
We might start from a professional direction to explore, but as we explore deeper, we will find that the boundaries of disciplines are becoming blurred, and the boundaries of our knowledge are becoming expanded. Meanwhile, we might have more puzzles because we will eventually find that there are too many problems in the world that we want to figure out. Yet our life is too short. It's a pity.
That's what I believe, as Confucius said: "If a man in the morning hear the right way, he may die in the evening without regret [zhao wen dao, xi si ke yi 朝闻道，夕死可矣; originally from the Analects, Book 4《论语·里仁》]. Personally, from undergraduate to PhD, my research direction is getting smaller and smaller, and it is getting more and more specific. But the world in my eyes is getting wider and wider, and it's getting more and more difficult to cover everything. My understanding of Overreactology can be concluded by two sentences: "There is a limit to our life, but to knowledge there is no limit [wu sheng you ya er zhi wu ya 吾生有涯而知无崖; originally from Zhuangzi - Nourishing the Lord of Life 《庄子·养生主》]" and "We are like mayflies wandering in this terrestrial world or a grain of millet drifting on a deep ocean [ji fu you yu tian di, miao cang hai zhi yi su 寄蜉蝣于天地，渺沧海之一粟； originally from Su Shi (蘇軾), “Ode to the Red Cliff 《赤壁賦》,” Chinese Calligraphy, accessed April 28, 2024, https://learning.hku.hk/ccch9051/group-24/items/show/38], thank you.