お知らせ：Switching Fields, Switching Schools

Dear My Friends;

大事なお知らせです。George Washington大学政治学部の博士課程に入ってはや２年。もうすぐコースワークも終わり．．．なのですが、転校／転向することになりました。ハーバード（EALC)とコロンビア(History)の歴史学の博士課程に受かり、秋よりどちらかの大学に移ることになりそうです。専攻は台湾と韓国の現代史で、私自身のプロジェクト自体（国民国家システムと軍隊の関わり）に変化はありませんが、環境とアプローチが大きく変わります。以下英語でなぜ政治学から歴史学へ移るのか、私の中での思考の変化を説明します。

I would like to make an out-of-the-blue announcement. I have not yet made any mention of this on this site, or told many of my friends or professors in my department: I am going to switch my academic field from political science to modern history, and accordingly I am going to switch schools. I recently learned that I have so far been admitted to the PhD programs of Harvard’s East Asian Languages and Civilizations department and Columbia’s History department, which were my two top choices. I have not decided which school I am going to, and after speaking to my adviser in my current department, I still have a bit of fear about diving into a new field. However, I am going to take this wonderful opportunity, and start over my long PhD studies in a new field. Since I already heard the application results, I will reveal my honest feelings about this whole start-over experience here.

Why Am I Switching Fields?
This is the most important question that you probably want to know. I don’t dislike political science or the department in GW at all. In fact, I enjoy studying here very much; I met extremely bright people who opened my eyes at numerous different levels; I think I have performed well in political science and gained trust in the department, too.

The trigger was probably the American Political Science Association’s conference at the very beginning of the program. The APSA and APSR (APSA’s peer review journal) have been clearly inclined to favor “rational choice” “formal modeling” “quantitative” approaches in recent years. I respect the research of those scholars who study with these methods, and admit that there are various benefits to these approaches. However, it did not spark any interest in me. Although I knew there are many different approaches and topics in political science other than rational choice, it definitely gave me an opportunity to critically examine assumptions and goals that political scientists usually have.

My thoughts evolved in two ways: One is methodological, the other is topical. Methodologically, I was losing interest in finding “universal principles” although finding large sociological patterns through comparisons is something I am still interested in. It is a matter of degree, of course, and there is no clear line between historians and social scientists regarding how much generalization you want to make in your research. In my case, I would like to study specific social contexts, much more than normal political scientists do, to explain causal relations and mechanisms, which might or might not be applicable to other regions. Another methodological problem is that I have grown to be a Gramscian/Foucauldian; in other words, I would like to study dynamics of social discourses, norms and ideas that dictate us as well as agency under hegemony. Simultaneously, I quit claiming society and politics can be studied in an absolutely objective way.

For the second part (the topical problem), my research interest has been on civil-military relations, and it actually developed into a study of more sociological impacts of the military, rather than the government-military relations. This first led me to exploring sociology, and I enjoyed learning new approaches and theories. The wall between ‘comparative politics,’ which I major in, and sociology is very thin, but the academic industry of sociology has developed to allow a little more flexible methodology in general. I really wanted to do historical sociology or sociological history, and applied to a few sociology departments as well this time. However, as I might feel more familiar and comfortable in sociology, it often suffers a similar problem that political science people do: the question of generalization and universal applicability.

I started to look at history departments only because some historians are working on exactly what I wanted to study. During the course of re-examining what I want to write my dissertation on, my topic became more concrete and clear: the impact and legacy of Japanese colonialism and militarism in Taiwan and Korea, and I ultimately want to reveal the military’s ideational role in legitimizing the nation-state system. Anyone who knows my academic work so far knows that I have a strong passion in disconnecting the state from the nation. This project is, in political science, too large a scale. I found that historians are doing much more interesting and relevant work related to my project.

It is true that I need to find out more about the industry of modern history before making a final decision, but I am excited about the options I now have. It is also true that I can still do my project in political science. Thus, ultimately, just like many other life decisions, it’s my gut feelings that will make me move on, I think.