Proposal for UN Textbook (series)

Initiator: Julia Harfensteller, Dipl. Pol.

Main idea, motivation and purpose

The project aims to produce a series of textbooks, which will provide a broad and coherent basis for research and teaching on the UN.

Learning and Teaching

Single disciplinary approaches, accompanied by disciplinary-specific language, knowledge and methodological toolkits about the UN continue to dominate current UN-related pedagogy (economics, international law, international relations and global governance studies). Learning about the UN in political science is for example mostly about investigating and assessing the efficacy of certain policy-fields like peacekeeping, crisis prevention or sanction-regimes; a heavy focus is therefore devoted to the Security Council's activities. International law students approach the UN focusing on the UN Charter and other international law regimes, accompanied by the study of according state or institutional practice. Favored objects of investigations are the Security Council and international jurisdiction bodies.

These teaching contents and practices have one commonality: they do not facilitate a holistic picture of the organization as a multidimensional institution. Seeding particular and partial theoretical models and methodological practices at university level generates scattered islands of knowledge and provokes a highly inconsistent notion on what the UN is or does. In addition, current teaching frames specific and often biased views of the organization such as: the UN as an instrument of member states; the UN as tiger without teeth. All these evaluations originate from and foment a neo-realist narrative on the UN as an ineffective and inefficient organization.

The need to reform traditional teaching contents about international relations issues seems to be evident in light of recent efforts to foster interdisciplinary research cooperation and teaching; one such example is the multidisciplinary new global governance study programs sprawling throughout international academia. However, most teaching and learning on the UN still occurs within traditional disciplinary framework and thus faces the above-mentioned shortcomings.

Research

In addition to the highlighted problems in teaching, a look at scholarly literature reveals deficiencies of a different nature in the field of UN related research: Since 1990 more and more research is conducted on the UN across disciplinary fields whilst opening up for new research questions and approaches on the UN the most prominent one might be the UNIHP, a pioneer in addressing history and ideas, but little effort is done to analyze and systematically arrange recent publications.

This might not be possible for the simple reason that new approaches on the UN transcend disciplinary frameworks and do not fit within traditional disciplinary epistemological categories. To give an example: how would one classify publications on the Secretary-General, written by UN practitioners and scholars of different academic fields such as international law and politics? Political Science or International Law? Upon which metatheoretical ground do these investigations grow? Institutionalism, Constructivism?

(Text-)Book series on UN Studies

The envisioned publications on UN Studies shall tackle the above mentioned shortcomings by:

1. Providing a solid, coherent epistemological and methodological basis for UN-focused teaching within traditional disciplinary tracks as well as for upcoming interdisciplinary study programs such as UN Studies.
2. Providing an overview on and synthesis of current UN-related research of different disciplines and with this building a theoretical and methodological framework for future not disciplinary-specific literature.
3. Outlining new (interdisciplinary) perspectives and theoretical approaches on the UN (actors, structure, policies).
4. Proposing adequate methods of teaching and learning about UN.

Next steps

Questions

• Who would be interested in participating in this project?
• How could we integrate results of our working group?
• Which would be the best topic to start with?

• Could a series of books also include one on "how to teach the UN"? There are a couple of exiting pedagogies out there, e.g. small negotiation simulations, Model UN of course, teaching with biographies etc. A lot has already been written about these but as sometimes becomes obvious, method comes before function. I think it would be a great idea to have a book along the lines of "How to teach... about power / leadership / negotiations & bargaining / UN law-making / rules and procedures / the UN Charter / area studies" etc. - I think this could also function as a way to try out new ideas, for example the re-writing of the UN Charter that the Legal Research Group pioneered -- KirstenHaack - 05 Sep 2008

• About the textbook series, I think it'd be great if it includes an "intro" book providing systematic, comprehensive introduction (like "UN 101") to undergraduate university students interested in the subject. A brainstorming meeting is a great idea. -- JustineChen - 29 Jan 2008

• I think this is a great idea and that it would be an excellent output of work done within the framework of the working group. This could be a project in a few years time to summarise and communicate research in this 'new' field of study. A good starting point would be to think about the UN Studies curriculum and pedagogy which is already part of the group's work. From there we could have a roundtable, symposium or other form of workshop to determine the need for development, both in terms of research and teaching. This would fit with the planned workshop at the ACUNS 2008 conference - but why not have a similar brainstorming meeting on research aspects? -- KirstenHaack - 28 Dec 2007

-- Main.Portal.Portal.HenrikePaepcke - 13 Aug 2007