Liberalism simulation

As appears to be the case with most of the class, I found it hard to distinguish between the concepts of embedded vs. disembedded liberalism. The Ruggie article was extremely detailed and the language was just not easy to understand. Tuesday’s “fishbowl” type discussion did help me to understand a bit, although being outside the “bowl” made it easy to drift away and lose focus when talking about such an in-depth topic. It felt like everyone was still tyring to make sense of the issue, and the fact that you were only contributing half the time did not help the cause. With that said, I hope Friday’s simulation did help people to make sense of the two economic theories. As a member of group 2, we tried to come up with something that would be both fun (candy) and easy to understand. Our goal was to come up with ways to facilitate trade among mock nations while providing an accurate arena to explore the two theories. Unfortunately, several groups were more interested with keeping their candy than engaging themselves in the simulation. This was very frustrating, as the purpose of the exercise was rooted deeper than getting candy. If you want candy, just go to CVS and buy some of your own. The introduction of the ICF and unpredictable changes in reserve requirements seemed to cause more trouble than good. I guess recreating a world market is more complicated than meets the eye. Of course, you always have the black market and other powerful states that prefer to break the rules or not trade at all rather than cooperate with the greater community.
The other event that took place this week was the UC common event. I was placed in the “Politics in the US” section with professor Steven Taylor (not Steven Tyler…) We had a good discussion about the book and the movie “gangs of New York.” We also talked about the validity of movies vs. journalistic accounts when doing research. It was an interesting conversation, touching upon the roles that motives (specifically money), bias, and prejudice play in writing and research. I did enjoy the discussion and it seems like the common event was a good idea in that I got to experience a new subject and different teaching styles. After taking this seminar I am strongly leaning towards taking more government and polisci classes in the future. Professor Taylor really stressed the importance of scholarship and learning in the world.