Matt Davies is a Reader in International Political Economy at Newcastle University, UK, and one of the ten Academic Editors looking after Third World Quarterly. Matt also started the first MA in World Politics and Popular Culture, and has written on a wide range of subjects from theoretical critique of contemporary International Political Economy to punk rock’s influence on international relations (IR). He is currently examining the role cities play in the political economy.
- Tell us about yourself, for example a bit about your academic and professional background?
I’m originally from Albuquerque in the United States but we travelled around a lot. For my undergraduate, I went to Colorado College to study Spanish and Latin American literature, and I then did a MA in International Studies at the University of Denver and ended up doing an exchange at the University of Chile. That was a really intense year with a lot of protesting, but I really fell in love with Chile, and ended up doing my PhD critiquing the notion of cultural imperialism by looking at the intellectual history of communications research in Chile.
At the time, I realised it was not just a matter of the Global North imposing itself culturally on Global South countries, but how the people working in those countries had their own relationships with culture from abroad, — sometimes in resistance, sometimes reproducing, and sometimes just surviving, but often in almost universally very creative ways. In Chile, I became interested in hegemony and cultural imperialism in Latin America, and I have fortunately had a fairly prolific career since teaching in many different places.
- Can you tell us about your current role at Newcastle University as a Reader in International Political Economy?
I teach both postgraduate and undergraduate. I spend a lot of time teaching Masters courses and supervising PhD theses. I currently teach a third-year undergraduate module called urban international politics, which is from the perspective of how international politics is played out in cities rather than at the level of the state. I am also the convener of the International Relations (IR) research cluster at Newcastle University, where we coordinate activities to help make research in IR visible both internally in the department and externally. In 2015, I also joined the PUC-Rio, the Catholic University in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, where I now teach postgraduate students and supervise MA and PhD theses in August and September each year.
- Tell us about your previous role as Director for the MA in World Politics and Popular Culture? What is the focus of the MA?
My background is actually in both Latin American and in Cultural Studies and literature. When I started teaching first year undergraduate students about international politics and IR theory around 25 years ago, it always felt weird to ask 18-year olds to jump into the theory first. I was interested in how they could better understand IR, and wanted to use teaching methods that would reflect IR as they might already understand it, for example in spy novels or war movies.
However, there were limitations with this approach as it treated the cultural side of our lives as just a mere reflection of whatever the ‘reality’ was in politics. There was also some prejudice in the field, because what we do in IR is seen as seriously important, but all that cultural stuff can be perceived by the field as just ‘fluff’. I realised that this is not how people live their lives. Culture is how we make sense of the world.
So, when I started working at Newcastle with my colleagues, Simon Philpot and Kyle Grayson, we decided to put together a MA programme on how popular culture relates to politics bringing in methods used for understanding images, texts, songs, film, or even advertising.
For example, one of our seminars is on buildings and architecture. We discuss the removal of the Edward Colston statue in Bristol, UK and the burning of the Borba Gato statue in São Paulo, Brazil. We look at these interventions and how space is organised and the meanings behind a space in a city and how they can actually bring to light the problems in IR. In this case, for example, the destruction of the statues was relevant to understanding the slave trade and colonialism.
I think we have come a long way now from this idea of whether a film is ‘reflecting’ world events. We can instead think about whether war films such as ‘The Deer Hunter’ for example, provide an opportunity for thinking about how IR actually works and what people do in response to that, or how practices of popular culture, such as forming a band or joining a fan community, give a different understanding of what ‘international politics’ might mean.
- Can you tell us about your role as Academic Editor of TWQ? What is your specific area? Is it Latin America?
My role involves looking at articles that are in my general realm of expertise. I give them an initial assessment to decide whether they are for the journal. I then organise two or three peer reviewers per article. I am definitely not an expert on every country in Latin America, but I do have a general sense of what is happening and enough connections in the region. For example, if somebody wrote about Colombia or Chile, I’d have networks to reach out to for finding reviewers or taking other advice. I also have an interest in critical political economy, and a lot of what we do falls into that remit. If an article crops up that focuses on critical theory approaches to thinking about politics and development, or if it’s about culture I can take a look.
- Can you tell me more about your critique of contemporary International Political Economy and the problems you address (e.g. the focus on commodities in circulation)?
Most of what political economy is interested in its contemporary form is circulation. For example, how does money move from the bank to a place where people can buy the things they need? How do you also regulate the flow of money, and the global speed of international transactions, and how is it all managed? I believe we should see the political economy, not only through the lens of circulation, but also through the lens of production, social relations of production, and labour.
When most people think about international political economy, governance structures or trade agreements may come to mind. However, I am primarily interested in how these work to regulate the social relationships of production and channel people into particular forms of work. I want to know what decisions are made politically to form our economy and how does that affect society? For example, what are the political possibilities for people when they can’t unionise?
- So how does Buffy the Vampire Slayer fit into your critique of the International Political Economy?
I wrote an article in 2010 where I show that Buffy the Vampire Slayer is in itself an argument about what it means to work and why we work and what work does to us. The characters in the show are extremely conscious and aware of why they have to work. Buffy has a calling (in slaying vampires). It is not something she necessarily wants to be doing, but it is thrust upon her. There is one episode where she is working at a fast-food place after her mom has died and she has to take care of her sister to try to keep their house. Buffy is entering the grown up working world and this is both part of her character’s development and a constraint on her vocation.
This paper fundamentally looked at why we need to look at the dramas in peoples’ daily lives to understand the political economy. For instance, the global financial crisis in 2008 was not just something which was an inconvenience for banks. People lost their homes. This emphasises that we cannot get into the political questions if we only focus on circulation. We must think about production too.
- Can you tell me more about your research on punk rock as international relations?
In 2005, Marianne Franklin published a book, Resounding International Relations On Music, Culture, and Politics, and I contributed a chapter on Punk and IR. I was really interested in the way that punks had embraced an ethos of ‘Do it yourself’, they made their own music, and it looked to me like a really novel way to critique the political economy. I discovered punks in the some unexpected places (for example in Brazil). It was also interesting to think about the aesthetics — the music and dress, the practice of ‘Do it yourself’ and the political commitments that helped form these communities that were international, and didn’t necessarily conform to the boundaries of the territorial national state. In 2016, one of the other contributors of Marianne’s book, my friend Kevin Dunn, wrote another book called Global Punk, which explores these themes much more thoroughly. Kevin looked at places where there has been conflict, such as in Myanmar, and how Punks have played an important role in real world political consequences and forms of resistance.
- Could you tell me about some of the obstacles and rewards you have encountered when writing about popular culture in International Relations in academia?
The obvious obstacle is that people did not want to take popular culture and IR seriously at all at first. We got citations, but there was a bit of resistance, that it is not ‘really’ politics. However, things have changed and more recently in 2022, Daniel Drezner, wrote a book about how IR theory can be applied to a zombie invasion. Drezner shows how popular culture can be really useful as a pedagogical tool. So, I think we have made a lot of progress, even though much of the field still treats culture pretty instrumentally. Still, there have long been major figures in the field of IR writing quite critically about culture and popular culture, for example Mike Shapiro.
- What books and other media published in the last 5 to 10 years have made an impact on your discipline?
That is a really good question. My problem is that I find myself unhappy with much scholarship right now. People are working hard but for me, most of what is published feels like it is responding to things or ideas, rather than taking a more creative role, which is really different to the kind of intellectual atmosphere I was brought up in. In the 1970-80s, there was huge amounts of incredibly creative work being done. It’s telling how so much contemporary critical scholarship has been turning back to these works. That’s not a bad thing, it’s great to see figures like Walter Rodney coming back into our conversations, but I’m less clear about who the Walter Rodneys of today are, or if it’s even possible for such a figure to emerge now.
However, there are some interesting themes such as efforts to come up with a better concept of neoliberalism in the “authoritarian neoliberalism” literature. I’ve also been working hard to come up to speed with the field of international political sociology recently. The border studies literature is also incredibly interesting as they start from the premise that borders are not just lines on maps. Borders are present within your everyday life. They are the security checks at an airport and in a more extended sense, borders are in peoples’ workplaces. For example, the Mexico border could be found in a workplace in Detroit when ICE officers raid it and check people’s IDs.
- Could you tell us about your work looking at cities?
One of my other research interests is looking at cities, and the flows of capital or labour. I am interested in looking at it not at a national level, or as a subsidiary part of an international system but from the more practical everyday experiences that people have living in cities (e.g. gentrification consequences or rent increases). João Nogueira and I recently looked at the regeneration of Rio as an Olympic city from this perspective, exploring the tensions between the plans to replicate an international model of the ‘global city’ through urban regeneration modeled on the experiences of other Olympic cities, such as Barcelona or London, and the practical failures in implementing these changes and the consequences for these of the various ways that people living in the city could respond to the planning and policy.
I am also co-authoring another piece on Rio with Renata Summa, on favela museums as mobilising a technology of memory and thinking. This paper looks at how and why buildings are built as a way of understanding why people have attachments to these spaces. We look at how people are using these practices of memorialisation, for example the graffiti on walls and the tours that they lead as a way of making a claim to that space. This piece is due to come out in a collection of studies drawing on the work of a Brazilian architect, Sérgio Ferro, that re-thinks the theory and history of architecture from the perspective of production, for example, considering how the work of designing a building or space is separated from and then dominates the work of constructing a building.
- What top tip would you give to someone starting a PhD (specifically in Global South studies) at the moment?
My top tip is to keep your friends close, as you may feel isolated when writing your PhD. I think it is important, not just for social reasons, but also for your future profession, to really take time building your networks, as lots of long lasting and fruitful friendships can be made. It’s really beneficial to have people around you who are going to be able to give you courage or to reflect on and respond to things you have written later, but of course you should also be prepared to give something in return just as you would in any other relationship!
Image (top):Burning of the Borba Gato statue in São Paulo, Brazil (Source: BrazilWire)
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