After a long hiatus from the Journal section of my site, I have at last given some love to this area. I use my main page now for day to day little updates, saving this area for more reflective pieces. If you came here through email, be sure to have a look at my main page if you haven’t already.

With that said, read on for a bit of looking back, a taste of my research, and how I am coping with the nomad inside.

I’m in the process of reflection and introspection this morning. I decided to go back and look at the first post I wrote (back in the days when my website was called Quantum Philosopher) when I arrived in Oxford. Here are some excerpts and my comments:

Meeting the other WISC people [other visiting students from America], I was a little surprise to find them only human. I’m not sure what I was expecting, but they seemed somehow out of place in respects to the world around them. Perhaps that will change with time, but I didn’t let it bother me. I still know the level of excellence I expect from myself here, and that stands regardless of what others are looking to get out of there time.

This comment still remains entirely true. Most of the visiting students I meet are more tourists than people who are seeking to integrate with the culture. This seems particularly true with students from the Washington International Studies Council. I lived with about 10 WISC students at some point my first year, and only two or three of them were actually concerned with how they could provide something to Oxford, as well as take something from it.

So we got directions to a [superb] Indian restaurant which happens to be at the end of St. Michael’s Street (aka where I live).

I find this very funny. Oxford was big to me at this point. We were at a pub that was maybe a one minute walk from my house. We had to get directions from there to Chutney’s (the restaurant), which was only another minute’s walk from where we were, and actually only five or six doors down from my house.

A year later, I ‘arrived’ once again, this time not as a visiting student, but as a student actually seeking a degree:

I’m starting a new segment of my life: I should be excited, anxious, sad . . . a whole range of emotions. Yet, I sit here in my little one-seat aisle and simply think about how fun it would be to navigate a plane through these cumulus clouds. What am I feeling? I don’t know, but a grin slowly creeps onto my face as I think of what I’ve gotten myself into now.

‘What I’ve gotten myself into’ indeed. Matriculating, that is, actually becoming a member of the University, took forever.

Last year, I ‘arrived’ for what may be the last time. From now on, my status is more or less set. I am a DPhil candidate.

A doctorate from Oxford includes the pleasure of complete freedom to research. My only commitment to the University is to hand in my thesis in three year’s time. The ordering of my day is therefore up to me. This, I think, is fantastic. Each year, I am learning something about structuring the hours that I am given in a day. Last year, the epiphany came when I understood how to put my studies first. This year, I hope to sort out the rest of the lot. This weekend has taught me something very valuable in that regard. Exercise and spiritually, as I have often heard my mother say, are crucial parts of a balanced life.

While I may only have one commitment to the University, I have others to my faculty. One of them is that I must pass a Transfer of Status exam to move from being a Probationary Research Student to a full DPhil Candidate. What’s involved in the process? In true Oxford fashion, no one really knows. After a series of emails with the course director, I think I have a handle on most of the requirements, but I’m sure there are still a few lurking in the shadows. Two of the main ones are a Research Proposal and a Literature Review. To have these two documents ready by the end of 8th Week (it’s now the beginning of 2nd Week), I need to produce between 2000 and 4000 words a week. Standard undergraduate workload (similar to my first year), but of a much higher quality. Here’s hoping…

I’m not sure how it happened, but I am now entering on year four of my time in Oxford. I’m not complaining, mind you; quite the contrary. I still believe that Oxford is the city of dreaming spires where I am living my dreams. I’m just used to moving around every few years. Oxford is quickly becoming the longest I have ever lived anywhere, and I wondering if I will once again get the nomadic feeling that I’ve been here to long and need to press on. Two things have helped to quell that urge so far, and they are my summer in Austria and the new students, or Freshers, that arrive each year.

So what happened this summer? I certainly took a few pictures. I was hoping to write much more while in Austria, but something kept me from it. I think it may have been that I was still searching for my DPhil topic, and to tell you the truth, the process was getting a bit old. [Editor’s Note: what follows is an aside about my current research. If you’re just interested in the quelling of nomadic urges, I suggest you jump to the rest of the story]

Ever since I came to Oxford, I have been looking for what it is that I want to study (it actually started during my time at St. Olaf). I have written about this a number of times. Well, I’m happy to say that I actually have a topic now and am plugging away at writing it up! Legendary, I know, but it’s finally happened. That is, as long as the Assessors of my Transfer Report think it’s a good idea and I can prove I’m capable of doing the research. So what is it?

My field, if one can call a multidisciplinary hodgepodge of interests a field, is Technology & Security. The plain text version of my research goes something like this. During the Cold War, the US and other Western powers decided it was a good idea to put checks on the flow of technologies into the Soviet Union. These checks are called export controls. Of particular interest were technologies that were weapons and technologies that could either a) be used as both weapons and in some non-hostile capacity or b) could be used to make both weapons and non-weapons. Technologies that fall into categories a and b are called ‘dual-use‘ technologies.

Most of the exporting countries in the West banded together during this time to form international regimes whose main function was to orchestra the export control policies for all of the member states. It’s no use preventing a technology in your country from going to the USSR if another country will happily sell them a comparable technology. After the Cold War ended, there were attempts at reforming these export controls. Some of the reforms were instituted, but others have remained simply proposals or even just critiques. Of the reforms that were instituted, there is much discussion as to their success, or lack thereof. My research plans to analyse why it has been so difficult to create an effective multilateral export control regime.

I’ll do this by engaging with researchers, policy analysts, and those who actually manage the regimes (or rather, just one of the four regimes). I’ll work through their proposals and pull out the underlying assumptions each makes about technology, security, and the policy process. ‘Underlying assumptions about technology’? What I mean is that there are a number of ways of understanding each of these concepts. Is a technology something that is the result of a deterministic line of human progress, and therefore our role should be to figure out how to live with the things we created? Or is a technology something that is the result of a series of social interactions, and if we (whoever that is) don’t want a technology (such as a nuclear weapon) then it is simply a matter of deconstructing the relations that hold that technology together?

The same goes for security. Do we see ourselves as living in a world that is ‘out there’ and from which we must protect ourselves, or are we all in the same boat together, and ‘to be secure’ means that we need to look at the security of the environment or the individual human instead of the nation-state? Again, for the policy process. Is policy-making about wining or about compromise? About stopping acts before they occur or reacting and adapting to acts after they happen?

Different answers to these questions lead to different understandings of what the role of a multilateral export regime should be. I intend to find these different understandings by interviewing the people that hold them. Then, I’ll use a version of cultural theory (which pulls on the work of a number of researchers in the field, including my own supervisor) to see what room there might be for combining these understandings such that a workable solution might be found. I quickly point out that I am not seeking to find the solution myself - that’s contrary to my whole project. The solution, I argue, can only come about by having those that carry weight in making reforms happen actually listen and argue with each other and with a diverse set of views (i.e. understandings).

The rest of the story

My, my, I seem to have gotten a bit off-track. You can see where my mind is these days. I believe I was talking about quelling my nomadic urges. The first of these was Austria. It wasn’t until I arrived in Vienna and set up shop in the [former] bedroom of Empress Sisi that I realised how much I needed a break from Oxford. I had become so enmeshed in the society that I lost a bit of direction and perspective. Where better to get perspective than in the Alps (see these too)? The stories run fast and long about my adventures from June-August, but they must alas be relegated to the 2D-Manifestations I created along the way. I haven’t the time now to post them here.

As for the second queller, every year we get a whole bunch of new graduate students. Their excitement of being here and perplexion of having no idea what’s going on help me to see Oxford in a new light every twelve months. Each year has been very different here, and it’s due in large part to my social network shifting a lot as old friends leave and new friends emerge. A lot of the graduates are only here for one year. Some do a two year course. Many are here for the DPhil, normally three years. I’m starting my fourth, with at least another beyond that. The Freshers, then, are very needed source of mental realignment for me that keeps things new and, well, fresh.

I must mention as well that I have left beautiful Staverton Road for the more social setting of the New College Weston Buildings on the edge of our Sports Grounds. The Sports Grounds, while maybe not as nice as my old place, are nothing to shabby either, if a little cozy. Here, for example, is my room.

I should stop here, as I have already spent more than my alloted hour to produce this. With thoughts flowing now, I expect that I may be able to update the Journal more often than, say every few months. Stay tuned.

~Sam