From the Suez Canal Company to SpaceX: Experts, Expertise & Science in the Political
A Conversation with Dr Jan Eijking
What’s that? The Anti-Dystopians are back!
I know it’s been a while since the Anti-Dystopians posted our last episode (sorry! finishing a PhD will do that . . . ). I’m now recording episodes from what people in Cambridge usually call “That Other Place” . . . otherwise known as Oxford University. All rivalries aside, I hope our future episodes will help get to know the academic community here at Oxford and what they have to say about technology and politics.
In that vein, I am very excited to say that our first guest of the season is Jan Eijking, is a William Golding Junior Research Fellow and Martin Fellow here at Oxford. I’ve been a big fan of Jan’s work, so it was wonderful to finally get to talk in person (and not just on the website formerly known as Twitter). We discussed everything from the Suez Canal Company to SpaceX — and how thinking about “experts,” expertise and science in politics can have a lot to say about the recent elections, Silicon Valley engineers’ plans, and the wider history of infrastructural projects in empire.
As always, you can listen to it here or subscribe here (Spotify) or here (Apple Podcasts). If you like us, please rate, review and share the Anti-Dystopians to help us get new listeners.
Leaving Twitter? Follow me on Bluesky at @alinau27.bsky.social and Jan at @janeijking.bsky.social.
Reading From the Episode:
By Jan:
Donald Trump’s Attack on Online Censorship Is a Distraction. Jacobin. 2024.
The Technocratic Legacies of International Organisations. E-IR. 2023
Brain worlds: information order and interwar intellectual cooperation. European Journal of International Relations (2024)
Machine conquest: Jules Verne’s technocratic worldmaking. Review of International Studies (2024)
Historical claims to the international: the case of the Suez canal experts. International Studies Quarterly 67(3) (2023).
A “priesthood of knowledge”: the international thought of Henri de Saint-Simon. International Studies Quarterly 66(1) (2022)
Other Reading:
Quinn Slobodian, Crack Up Capitalism.
Mariana Mazzucato & Rosie Collington, The Big Con.
Craig N. Murphy 1994, International Organization and Industrial Change. Oxford University Press.
Juanita Uribe 2024, Excluding through inclusion: managerial practices in the era of multistakeholder governance. Review of International Political Economy, https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/09692290.2024.2362666
Post of the Week
https://www.teenvogue.com/story/what-to-do-before-the-trump-administration-takes-office-in-january
