Intellectual Engagement Abroad

Abstract

Andrew GibsonIntellectual engagement abroadWhat is a critic to do?At their best, intellectuals can deliver vigorous critiques of enduring problems. At other times, their work may fall well short of serving public good. This may not be for lack of good intentions, however. For when it comes to knowledge, it is not always clear what serving public good requires. This is especially case when it comes to research and intellectual engagement intended to effect change abroad, in other countries and cultures. In such cases not only are we dealing with complex governance issues, but we are also confronted with radically different moralities and frameworks of meaning. Given this, what, we might ask, are intellectuals and social critics to make of moral outtage they feel in face of global suffering, poverty, and environmental degradation? What are they to do, concretely, in terms of research and other activities that are likely to effect change?The International Journal's summer 2010 issue on democracy assistance offered fruitful reflections on this topic. The issue focused more on experiences and insights intellectuals engaged around world than it did on one form or another of, say, international relations theory. As Christopher Sands puts it in introduction, the authors are practitioners who view question [of democracy assistance] through lens of praxis rather than theory.1 It becomes clear in reading through different articles that, when it comes to thinking aboutmethods and approaches on how Canadians might engage in intellectual and activist labour abroad, this practical perspective is invaluable.Linnea M. Beatty, for example, offers a probing view of different types of democracy promotion, depending on whether one is inside a foreign country, on margins of its political borders (for reasons of security), or acting at a distance on behalf of international community. Jeffrey Poushter, for his part, emphasizes importance of interpreting and reformulating policy proposals from perspective of local, atechnical, or nontechnical knowledge. These and other articles help to clarify some of distinctions between contributions and critiques intellectuals may provide in taken-for-granted context of their home countries, and those they may offer in context of a foreign culture and society.A shortcoming of democracy assistance issue, perhaps due precisely to its applied nature, is that it lacks an overall vision of challenges and possibilities of intellectual engagement and critique in international society. What follows is a set of preliminary reflections such a vision. I want to start by mentioning that there already exists a good model of how social criticism works in domestic arena.2 What makes critics such as George Grant or Andre Laurendeau stand out from rest is not only their ability to shine a new light on enduring problems, but also their connectedness to local political community. They may have specialist insight into why a particular societal project has been systematically thwarted, thus allowing them to rise above journalistic fray of fashionable opinion. But if their insights are to have critical leverage, they must be able to articulate them in language of local values and ideals.The problem, for our purposes, is that as convincing as this model of internal or connected social criticism may be, it tells us little about parameters of intellectual engagement abroad. So while many Canadian intellectuals today may feel compelled to address hardships and injustices of international society, they may well find themselves in dark when considering how to do so effectively. Even if they have an intuitive nose for what needs to be researched, formal structuring of their work will likely follow in methodological grooves of domestic critiques. Books like Michael Byers' Intent for a Nation or Andrew Cohen's While Canada Slept, for instance, while clearly international in outlook, remain works of Canadian social criticism intended for local authences. …