Ilan Zvi Baron’s research while affiliated with Durham University and other places

This article explores how fake news, variously described as misinformation, disinformation, malinformation, and post-truth threatens our pluralistic democratic life. We ask, how does fake news function in constructing a world of meaning that destabilises the conditions under which we are able to render valid political judgements in democratic life? Using the 1992 R v Zundel Supreme Court Case from Canada to explore the free speech question, and Hannah Arendt’s distinction between fact and opinion, we argue that fake news uses the malleability of language to displace fact with opinion. This displacement threatens democracy in two ways. First, fake news functions by deploying language in such a way that it is built on refuting its own ability to produce factual knowledge, and in the process the world becomes one of opinion treated axiomatically. Second, as a consequence, it renders judgement impossible because the only information that counts is opinion, whereas judgement corresponds to the public character of factual knowledge. This displacement produces a pseudo-reality where we can imagine that only people like us live here, that is, people who share our own opinions. This is a world that Hannah Arendt and Hans Jonas might characterise as thoughtless.

Regulatory agencies care about their reputation, which helps sustain their authority. As innovation can introduce uncertainty in governance, delaying action or overlooking danger can negatively affect agencies' standing. Aware of these reputation risks, agencies rely on a set of methods to govern the unknown. These methods, we argue, are: (1) categorization, if the innovation is considered identical to known regulatory categories; (2) analogy, if the innovation is considered similar to known categories, and; (3) new categorization, when new classifications are deemed necessary to address the innovation. Each method shapes governance by triggering the application of existing regulations (categorization and analogy), calls for either technical and regulatory fixes (analogy), or calls for broader regulatory undertakings (new categorization). Agencies' choice of methods, we argue, is shaped by concerns over performative reputation (i.e., showing the ability to fulfill core tasks), which in turn is affected by agencies' ability to demonstrate technical rigor (i.e., technical reputation).

The paper explores the political narratives produced in English-language Israeli cookbooks. We examine an understudied, yet central component of everyday international relations, everyday nationalism, and identity contestations as practiced through gastronomy, and highlight the dilemma between the different political uses of popular culture in the context of conflict resolution and resistance. Our argument identifies different narratives represented in what we term Culinary Zionism. One narrative is explicitly political, discusses Israeli cuisine as a foodway, and contributes to creating a space of, and a path for, coexistence and recognition of the Other. A second narrative is found in tourist-orientated cookbooks that offer a supposedly apolitical story of culinary tours in Israel. We problematize the political and normative implications of these narratives by exploring the potential role of these books to open space for dialogue and to increase the familiarity and interest of foreign audiences of Israel and the conflict. We contrast this possibility with their potential to what we term foodwashing, namely the process of using food to symbolically wash over violence and injustices (the violence of the Israeli–Palestinian conflict in this case).

Is it possible to write a publishable, peer-reviewed academic paper in a day? We attempted this task in 2016, motivated by a desire to find new ways of doing academic work in the face of our growing sense of alienation within the neoliberal academy. This paper provides our analysis of academic alienation and an auto-ethnography of our experiment. We discuss four lessons learned: (1) knowledge as a social relation, (2) time and the academy, (3) gender and collaborative writing, and (4) the contradictions and possibilities of anarchy and authorship. We also offer practical advice for scholars looking to engage in similar collaborations.

Israel has unified American Jewish communal life for much of the 20th century. However, early in the 21st century, Israel may no longer serve as a source for Jewish unity but of division, and American Jews are increasingly having a difficult time talking about Israel inside of their institutions. This phenomenon has become something of a truism, yet there has been no in-depth case study that explores why this is the case. This article seeks to fill this gap. Over the course of 46 interviews with 55 members of a non-Orthodox congregation in the San Francisco Bay Area, we explored why this community found it so difficult to talk about Israel. Contrary to popular perception that would have predicted that Israel would play a central role in this community, it played hardly any role at all. Using Erving Goffman’s theory of frame analysis, we identified three frames that explain the relative absence of Israel talk. Congregants have absorbed the “problem frame,” which holds that talking about Israel would be potentially divisive and toxic, despite the fact that none of the congregants experienced conflict. They mobilized two other frames – the “resource frame” and the “local frame” – which are in conflict with one another. The “resource frame” holds that Israel is an important and beloved resource for identity, community, and practice. Yet, the “local frame” prioritizes more immediate issues or concerns above the more abstract commitment to Israel. The resultant tension between Israel as an abstract resource for Jewish identity and the more immediate ways in which people operationalized their commitments, suggests that beneath the problem frame lies a tension that is less communal than personal.

While international relations scholars make many claims about violence, they rarely define the concept. This article develops a typology of three distinct kinds of violence: direct, indirect, and pacification. Direct violence occurs when a person or agent inflicts harm on another. Indirect violence manifests through the structures of society. We propose a third understanding of violence: pacification. Using a phenomenological methodology, and drawing on anarchist and postcolonial thought, we show that the violence of pacification is diffuse, inconspicuous, intersubjective, and structured into the fabric of society. This understanding of violence matters for the study of international relations in general and research on the liberal peace in particular. We argue that the spread of liberal institutions does not necessarily decrease violence but instead transforms it. Our phenomenological analysis captures empirical trends in human domination and suffering that liberal peace theories cannot account for. It reveals how a decline in direct violence may coincide with the transformation of violence in ways that are concealed, monopolized, and structured into the liberal order. We call this process liberal pacification.

While International Relations scholars make many claims about violence, they rarely define the concept. To address this gap, this article develops a typology of three distinct kinds of violence: direct, indirect, and pacification. Direct violence is when a person or agent inflicts harm on another. Indirect violence is manifested through the structures of society. We propose a third understanding of violence: pacification. Using a phenomenological methodology, and drawing on anarchist and post-colonial thought, we show that the violence of pacification is diffuse, inconspicuous, intersubjective, and structured into the fabric of society. This understanding of violence has significant implications for the study of international relations, notably research on the liberal peace. We show that liberal peace scholars measure direct violence and equate the decline in that kind of violence with peace. We counter that the spread of liberal institutions does not necessarily decrease violence but transforms it. Our phenomenological analysis captures empirical trends in human domination and suffering that liberal peace theories cannot account for. It reveals how a decline in direct violence may coincide with the transformation of violence in ways that are concealed, monopolized and structured into the liberal order. We call this process liberal pacification. (forthcoming in International Studies Quarterly)