the way politics is understood in citizendium

[Mark J Smith]

hi, i've just joined as an editor and thought i should comment on something that is relevant to editors concerned with the social sciences and politics as subject field

the definition of politics in citizendium has been narrowed substantially from wikipedia, so much so that it reads as a definition of the field from when i was an undergraduate (a couple of decades ago) rather than now where government has been largely replaced with governance (with the state as much less central) and politics is seen as applying to both private and public spheres as well as in a transnational context. The wikipedia is entry is actually much more representative of what researchers in political studies, political science and politics and international studies. compare the two pages below

http://pilot.citizendium.org/wiki/Politics
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Politics

i can intervene by broadening the definition on citzendium and bringing it closer to the what is already available in wikipedia but would prefer to start first by consulting with other citizendium contributors (authors and editors) interested in this field.

It also raises a more important issue for citizendium in general, that with reletively few people in engaged in the pilot certainly compared to wikipedia, the views of a few people may dominate so that the resulting webpages may be unrepresentative with what is happening in a particular field. This could lead to a focus on disciplinary projects rather than recognizing the increasingly transdisciplinary nature of work in the field.

any views would be appreciated

i'll also post this query to politics areas of the forum

best wishes, Mark J Smith

[Nonja Hayden]

Please excuse my ignorance in this area, as I have never ventured into the land of Wikipedia. I, as a student of political science clearly understand the sated definition. My general question is one of categorization. Are we to use the politics area to define theory and practice, and if so, where are the obvious entries such as world leaders, poling, NGO’s and other things related to politics going to fall under? Again please excuse my naïveté as I am very much a newbie.

[Mark J Smith]

hi nonjay, it's really a matter of the way that politics is studied globally. All disciplines have established their status and legitimacy through ringfencing a particular object of analysis (society for sociology, the mind for psychology, the state for politics etc) and asserting the entitlement to make a judgement as to what constitutes authoritative knowledge on that object. This was quite a recent development following the institutional professionalization of the social sciences since the late 19th century. The 'foundational' figures such as Durkheim, Weber, Marx etc were pre-disciplinary but have been rewritten/reinterpreted as canons in specific disciplines. The difficulty is twofold 1. this led to the dominance of specific approaches such as behaviorism in political science and while some departments may still have a particular focus most of political science is very diverse in terms of its epistemology and methodology. A definition of politics as a subject field should acknowledge this diversity and methodological pluralism. The wiki webpage does this more effectively than citizendium. 2. there is move away from disciplinary knowledges across the social sciences and in other fields towards transdisciplinary knowledge production (i.e. research that is object oriented rather than procedure bound and conducted in the context of application). This shift has been captured in the debate on 'the new production of knowledge'. Sometimes this is labelled post-disciplinary (a phrase i published on in the 90s). In political science/studies, this has been hastened by the diminishing importance of government and the state in responding to changes in, for example, the global economy, on the environment or on knowledge transfers. Weber referred to academic work as a vocation that should be value relevant (i.e. relevant to the problems and issues of the day) so that might be a good starting point for developing the subject page on politics. Some are describing the state as hollowed out, others point to (multilevel) governance networks, while social movement studies have not only highlighted the transnational dimension but also that culture, media and private lives are political spaces (wiki includes Foucault on the politics page to emphasise this). A focus on the formal mechanisms of the state does not capture politics as a field of study. This post is i guess an intervention on filling in the gaps and highlighting how the field has changed to be value relevant. Best wishes, m

[Zachary Pruckowski]

I think we're going to try to hammer out exactly where the boundaries for each workgroup lie in the next few weeks.  Obviously one of the major questions for the politics workgroup is the one you raised.

Insofar as that article goes - it looks like the current WP version is not changed all that much from the one we copied from them.  The current WP version dropped segments on two segments unrelated to what you're talking about, and added one on "Left-Right Politics".  Our version was radically edited by W. Guy Finley.  If you want to try to get in touch with him (forum profile, CZ Talk page) about it, that might not be a bad idea.  However, it doesn't look like he's done anything on the project in the last 5-6 weeks, so if you can't get in touch with him, then talk with your fellow editors and authors in the politics workgroup.  And you're right in the right place on this forum for that.

[W Guy Finley]

Hey all, sorry, real life has made it so I've had little time to edit since the pilot.

When I undertook revising the WP article it was based on the premise that this was going to be an encyclopedia again and avoid the incredibly lengthy articles that populate WP now.  I know there are a lot of concepts that are involved in politics but I felt the article on politics ITSELF should focus on the origins of the concept.  So yes, it's pretty academic and straightforward.  My thought was the broader concepts of politics would be addressed in their own articles linked to the article itself.

One of the things that always infuriated me was the way that WP articles got out of control with the need to include everything (i.e.the article on George W. Bush is about 10 times as long as the article on Dwight D. Eisenhower) and I was seeking a way to avoid that.  Hence, my j-school editors pen hacked and slashed quite a bit.  I figured when more people came on board my bold changes could be better addressed.

Look forward to spending more time on the project, I think I will focus on the politics workgroup.

--Guy