J. Marshall Beier

Undergraduate

• 4GG3 - Conceptual Issues in Global Politics
  
• 4KK3 - Advanced Issues in Global Security

Graduate

• 771 - Advanced Concepts in International Relations Theory
  
• 772 - Theories of International Politics

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Childhood, Militarism, and Pedagogies of the Everyday
McMaster University Arts Research Board Grant, $6,275 (2011)

Thinking beyond the global South and recognizing that militarism circulates and interpenetrates childhood experience in ways that are much less conspicuous than child soldiering raises questions of critical relevance to but not yet taken up in the disciplinary study of international relations. What is the relationship between militarism and childhood in advanced (post)industrial societies and what can be learned about its sources and implications? To what extent is childhood important as a site for the translation, maintenance, and (re)production of militarized knowledges and practices? How do prevailing conceptualizations of victimization limit our understanding of children's capacity for autonomous action, creativity, and resistance? In what ways are less visible circulations of militarism similar to and different from more explicit and purposefully-conceived forms? What can an approach that takes children seriously as bona fide politico-ethical actors reveal to us about the ways in which the disciplinary study of international relations frames political possibilities? In addressing these questions, this research project brings together a focus on everyday sites of both structured and unstructured learning with a commitment derived from postcolonial theory to recovering agency from overly simplistic ascriptions of victimhood. The project explores more explicitly militarized knowledges and practices in global politics while looking also to some of the less obvious continuities with these same knowledges and practices in various contexts of children's active learning and leisure activities. This approach, together with themes of everyday pedagogy and childhood agency, proposes a corrective to too narrow a focus on zones of conflict that might make it seem as though militarism affects the lives of children only in distant and politically fraught places.

Innovation in Arms Control
Experiential Education Grant, $10,000 (2006)
Petro-Canada Young Innovator Award, $25,000 (2009)

Inspired by current research on new arms technologies and rapidly changing determinants of war, the Innovation in Arms Control project aims to encourage identification and creative engagement with emerging challenges and opportunities in multilateral arms control. Inquiring into the future of arms control in the post-9/11 world, this project proceeds from the view that traditional approaches to non-proliferation, arms control, and disarmament were already unsetted by the advent of the 'Revolution in Military Affairs' and, in particular, by new weapons technologies underwriting the notion of 'costless war.' Broadly, the implications of precision-guided munitions, which have dramatically altered the global balance of military power as well as the political aspects of its application, are weighed in connection with what it is argued is a relative impasse in contemporary arms control.  With the aim of encouraging new thinking and a new community of expertise around these issues, this project is explicitly connected to both graduate and undergraduate teaching and to the development of two new undergraduate courses.

Postcolonial Diplomacies: Indigenous Peoples and the International Negotiation of Sovereignties and Selves
SSHRC Standard Research Grant, $71,733 (2005-08)
McMaster University Arts Research Board Grant, $4,550 (2004)

Since the early-1990s, Indigenous voices in international politics have been growing in strength, in numbers, and in their demonstrated ability to affect outcomes on a range of important issues.  At the same time, international bodies like the Organization of American States have begun to take seriously the participation of Indigenous peoples and, equally noteworthy, the United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues has enjoyed a steadily increasing profile since its formal adoption by the UN General Assembly in October 2000.  With these and other developments, global politics is witnessing qualitatively new forms of diplomacy.

In investigating these developments, this research project works through three interrelated themes.  The first of these turns on questions of change, inquiring into how existing institutions, arrangements, norms, and practices of global governance are transformed by Indigenous diplomacies and, no less, how the latter have been affected by the need to work through the former.  The second theme involves highlighting and clarifying continuities on both sides of the encounter, seeking to better appreciate and understand commonalities, compatibilities, and areas of convergence.  Finally, points of divergence are examined with a view to revealing compromises around notions of sovereignties and selves that have enabled these diplomatic encounters and engagements.

Answering the Cull to Arms: US Foreign Military Sales and the Commercialization of the Global Arms Market
McMaster University Arts Research Board Grant, $6,955 (2005)

This research project inquires into the unforeseen circumstance that US foreign military sales (FMS) increased dramatically following the end of the Cold War.  Accompanying anticipation of a domestic peace dividend, it had been expected that the shrinking global arms market would enhance and accelerate the trend of the late-1980s toward lower levels of FMS.  Instead, US arms sales abroad swelled in both quantitative and qualitative terms.  This project seeks to elaborate and understand the political bases of important changes in US FMS patterns over the last two decades.

In an effort to make sense of these developments, several aspects of recent and current US arms sales activities are considered.  First, the extent of increase in terms of both the quantitative and qualitative characteristics of articles proposed and authorized for transfer is evaluated.  Related to this are increases in the number of those states to which US-produced arms are available for transfer, and/or increases in the level of access to more advanced weapons systems by one or more clients.  Second, efforts to control FMS are assessed, as are initiatives undertaken in order to enhance or facilitate arms transfers abroad.  Finally, the justificatory rhetorics of advocates and apologists are evaluated.