PhD in Politics - Which subfield?

[Sendo]

I'll open with an excerpt from Macbeth:

> I am in blood stepped in so far, that should I wade no more, returning were as tedious as go o'er.

In my case, it is more like "I am in books stepped in so far, that should I wade no more, returning were as tedious as go o'er."

I have done other jobs but my resume isn't strong career/work history-wise. If I had stayed in one place for longer or started working out of high school, it'd be different. (I think I could have been just as happy if I had worked my way up in construction and took community colleges at night for intellectual development, but I've been bouncing all over.) But with a master's I feel like I should go "all the way", especially since I would like to teach/lecture.

I am looking to do a PhD in the USA or in Canada. On scholarship/fellowship/assistantship... whatevership because I have no money. I will study Political Science, but I am not sure what subfield to go into.

Most programs require a focus in either:

1 domestic politics and the politics of the country of the university (US or Canada) 2 international relations 3 political theory 4 comparative politics

My background: BA History (U of Rochester in New York) MA Politics (Chonnam National University in Gwangju, ROK)*

I am a bit tired of international relations. That could be a subfield and I can't ignore it in my applications. I have to talk about what I learned and studied in NE Asia. This isn't what I want my focus to be. I feel state-to-state relations were a more perfect field when every state existed more in the classical realist way (not that that was ever fully the case) and each state was centralized. The old Westphalian model. Now regional wars and civil war and international conflict and globalized cities (e.g. Gwangju signing a deal with the PRC or Texas and Catalonia) make it feel very limited. I have to draw an arbitrary line and say now this or that can be considered international relations because a UN boundary was crossed. But if not, then not my department.

Comparative politics really interests me, but it's a subject I have been studying on my own for over 10 years. (I'm pushing 30.) I don't think I'm terribly strong in the math. I know some math for social sciences and stats, but interpreting or computing regression analyses is something I can't do fast.

I was thinking about political theory. As a Marxist this seems like a no-brainer, but I think many schools will just have me learning the history of political philosophers (like memorizing the Wikipedia entry for John Locke) in a cursory way and then just memorize the particulars of one specific bourgeois theory (something about liberalism or something anti-social or libertarian like rational choice or other forms of autistic economic theory wishing to explain every phenomenon with number crunching in the name of "science").

I am still really passionate about history. It was actually history and modern documentaries that radicalized me. I realized my deeper inclinations toward environmentalism, social justice, rebellious nature were stifled by wrong information (capitalism rewards hard work and gumption, not that many people died in Iraq, etc). I can proudly say that even in middle school I began to see through the baloney on Yugoslavia and relished the bit of independent media I got. I thought "what business have we (the USA) in that civil war". I was a history nut so I always wondered why adults said ignorant things like Middle Easterners or Africans have always been poor and fighting amongst themselves (oh, and France and Germany didn't fight for centuries??)

I really like books on the media and catch manipulation of facts and history in real time. I saw how our good friends in Syria changed into ISIS. I appreciate seeing Youtube videos like the Italian guy (name escapes me) who recorded screencaps of how BBC doctored news after the fact. harder to prove than printed articles of yesteryear which are generally archived.

I liked Naomi Klein's Shock Doctrine and how the ideas in vogue in academia get adopted. I liked Bad Samaritans and how champions of neoliberalism rewrote their own nations' histories to match it. I like how history and the study of history and general knowledge (or mis-knowledge) of history shapes people's opinions.

I am still fairly new to politics as an academic discipline. What can I expect from a typical major North American University in these 4 main fields and which would best suit me?

I am not considering history since I have already changed course officially and I feel good about my historical skills and ability to self-educate. It's going to be political science. I know how to be a skeptical reader of history and use multiple sources, look for national and class biases, etc. I am interested in history insofar that it helps me understand a current conflict or in how general ignorance of history or a lack of information in English shapes people's minds and how they vote.

A lot of what I'm talking about seems to have been incorporated into sociology, but changing my major at this point seems unwise. Besides, many sociology departments are not politically oriented and are more social psychology-oriented.

* First time posting here in a long while. I have no qualms about personal info being up here. I was attacked by man-in-the-middle from the government years ago, before I started practicing good cyber security, randomized unique long passwords, using Tor. The NSA already knows this account anyway. I don't use it for anything I wouldn't openly put my real name to. I taught myself into becoming a real expert after Snowden. I now know that our activities in 2007-8 got my roommate and I on a list with our internet tapped. By the way, this site's lack of a secure connection (TLS) and unhashed plain-text storage of passwords and its sending of new passwords in unencrypted form is god-awful (and password resets should require immediate creation of new passwords). I don't think there's any point in doing the song-and-dance about hiding all real information. An anonymous reddit account is 100x safer. We have all been logged years ago. Our accounts are tied to real IP addresses unless we used Tor exclusively. All the passwords have been intercepted in transmission and the NSA could just look up any account and start impersonating someone if they cared to since we don't use digital signatures. Not that it matters. Unhashed, unsalted, not reiterated passwords shorter than 12 characters are cracked in hours on a standard PC. Do not use this board for secret communications. Use PGP. Use the PM service to exchange email addresses. Then make a new email address over Tor connections and send each other encrypted emails with the names of the emails that you will use. Encrypt everything. Sign any messages you must make sure weren't forged. Use Tor alway to make sure no account is tied to your real IP address or the physical location of a public cafe you're at. I haven't been on RevLeft in a while, but I remember people talking about PMs as if they were secret. Hidden from searches on Google? Yes. Private? No.

[Atsumari]

Hmmm...I know this is somewhat off topic, but I would be really interested in what left-wing politics in South Korea is like. Stuff like the differences between each party, what social republicanism is, what the discussions among leftists are like regarding capitalism, America, Russia vs Ukraine, gay rights, nationalism (I know a lot of leftists are also nationalists) and feminism. I have never met a Korean leftist and very curious to see how it compares to left-wing discourse found in the West.
And I know many people do really know about this, but insurrection among the working class and students in Korea has a very strong history, pretty similar to Greece.

[Sendo]

You're asking for a bunch of essays there, comrade. I can explain quite a lot, but point questions to PM or open a thread in Learning so I can answer questions.

I felt alienated from many fora (plural of forum) by the disproportionate attention to US (not even much on Canada) and Western Europe. It's demographics (lots of Americans, Western Europeans speak English and have more internet than any other group with high rates of English competnece). Still, it reeked of Eurocentrism. There really is a lot of misinformation and myths, even among the left. Basically since Japan set Korea back with its invasions Korea (neither side) never fully recovered in prestige. It's really better understood now by Asians, but beyond? Not so much. I live in Gwangju. Look it up on wikipedia and also May 18th, then think about questions you'd like to ask. I'd say any leftist who gives a damn about modern Korea should start there. It's as significant as the Easter Uprising is to Ireland (though the causes and aftermath vary, there are parallels, especially in remembrance) Then move onto stuff like the 1948 Jeju massacre. There's a decent amount of information on these in English, finally. If you want more intimate knowledge of inter-Korean stuff, South Korea/ROK politics or Gwangju at that point, ask away.

I did weekly guest appearances on local English language news program on foreign-language public radio. I was doing thesis for much of my time some broadcasts are not stellar. I've also written a bit for local monthly international magazine. Calling it altnews is a bit too generous, but it's something. gfn.or.kr and www.gwangjunewsgic.com. a decent news aggregator is koreabang! which collects a smattering of stories. the significant thing is that it translates well and has samplings of locals' comments translated, too. Too much content is repeating sexist or racist or classist trash and giving a platform. If you can't read Korean I'll tell you they give an amazing translation. It's like an Asian version of racist youtube comments. It's interesting for observation. I don't use it for news. It's a window into the country, though. The big progressive newspaper is Hankyoreh. Their domestic articles are translated at english.hani.co.kr The quality is higher than most of what I've seen in US or Europe and it's significantly left of something like the Guardian. It would qualify as left of center even in Scandinavia.