A week in the life of WCIA work experience…

Rhys Muzzupappa

Day 1

I arrived for my first day at the WCIA in the temple of Peace and Health in Cardiff, and after a brief Health and Safety introduction I was educated in what The WCIA does and the various projects under its control. As a keen debater and having attended numerous Model UNs, I already knew about the debating side of the WCIA through CEWC. I was particularly interested in Hub Cymru Africa – a new project that was launched in the Millennium Stadium on Tuesday (23/06). This organisation is funded by the Welsh Government and gives out grants to support organisations in Wales with partnership projects with Africa. I helped prepare welcome packs for the event which was interesting as I discovered more about the large Sub Saharan diaspora that is in Wales.

While not helping out I started researching and writing a blog. I will be doing mine on why I believe 16/17 year old should have the right to vote in the European elections. During this research I found out how leaving the EU would affect the youngest generation the most, and because of this we should have a say in what happens. I also found out that countries like Brazil and Austria allow 16 year olds to vote. The most interesting thing I found out about is that by giving the Vote to 16/17 year olds in the Scottish referendum 75% of them voted compared to only 54% of 18-24 year olds.

It was an interesting first day!

Day 2  

On day two I helped finalize organisation for the CEWC evening of debating that will happen on the 16^th of July £5 for adults and £4 for concessions. To help organise this I was charged with phoning up a list of Welsh schools to try and confirm if they were planning on attending. This session was interesting and useful especially as it gave me proof of communication skills.  I also helped translate posters for the event. This was useful as it gave me a chance to use my welsh language skills

In the afternoon I carried on writing my blog about votes for 16/17 year olds during this time I started to work at the main substance of my blog. I found it interesting that most of the arguments for allowing 16/17 year olds where clichés “if you can join the army you should be able to vote” although I found some of these arguments valid  I wanted to look more specifically towards why we should be able to have a choice if our country leaves the EU.

Day 3

Day three was the least eventful so far at the WCIA. Today I had time to finish my blog, which I finally did and redrafted it.

I also did a lot of research into the MP’s in Wales and identified what areas would be relevant to WCIA advocacy. To do this I made a poster of all 40 of the Welsh MP’s and then listed their interests and if they were on any committees. This was interesting especially as I discovered some information about my local MP and her speaking and voting average in parliament, all of which were above average.

Day 4

On Day 4 I had an interesting day researching news stories to post on the WCIA Twitter and Facebook. To do this I looked through a lot of news websites like the BBC and  the Guardian. While doing this I found a lot of interesting news stories and in the end I chose 4 that I thought would be interesting to post.

The first news story was about David Milliband, Head of the International Rescue Committee who said that the world’s aid programmes are heroic but inadequate where they are most needed. This I thought was an interesting story especially due to the current problems in the Mediterranean. The only problem was that for twitter this needed to be 140 characters long and with an incredibly long link to the full story this was a challenge.

I also looked into the high number of journalists being put in prison in Egypt, a bomb threat by some democracy campaigners in Hong Kong, and Burma still allowing a military veto.  After this I learnt how to tweet these on a delayed link so that all the stories don’t come out at the same time.

Again this has been another interesting day, it will be my last day tomorrow and I am already sad that I have to leave, it is surprising how fast a week goes!

Day 5

Today was my final day at the WCIA and I was sad to be leaving. Over the past week I had gained a lot of experiences and learned a lot of new skills.

On my last day I finished re drafting my Blog. I also did research into different select committees to help with the WCIA advocacy side. By doing this I found a much better understanding of how the assembly works.

To sum up I had a great week doing work experience at the WCIA. I would recommend going to anybody with an interest in international relations. I also got to improve a number of skills that employees look for including communication. I also got to help on the social media side.

I would like to thank everybody at WCIA for putting up with me for a week.

International Relations as a Means of Orientation

In periods of crisis, such as the one presently affecting the planet and the human species, one finds frequent appeals for a better understanding and legitimation of the role of science in dealing with crisis phenomena. The social sciences, in particular, frequently struggle with demonstrating their degree of relevance in providing the theoretical and practical tools to address crisis processes.

And yet, the very character of these crisis conditions is, in itself, social. The problems affecting the current stage of human history, from environmental degradation, over-population and asymmetries of development, to resource conflicts and ethnic tensions can, in most of cases, be traced to the uncontrolled, un-regulated and not properly understood character of the advancing global networks of interconnection and interdependence that are being established between people, across different societies and regions of the planet, at the most varied levels, be it technological, social, economic, political or environmental.

As humanity becomes increasingly more interconnected, so too the potential for the emergence of unplanned social processes and tensions between people, and between them and their environment, increases, as different societies compete with each other for resources, power and social opportunities. These unplanned social processes are not controlled or wished for by any particular human group, and yet they drag people and their societies into frequently violent and damaging patterns of interaction with each other, as if they possess a force and agency of their own.

Under these conditions of highly uncontrolled interconnection the role of the social sciences becomes all the more important. They can be the providers of means of orientation, i.e. of theoretical frameworks capable of capturing the predominant patterns of these unplanned social processes in ways that make them more intelligible to people, and so enable human beings to better orientate in the midst of these processes, and understand how they can potentially come to acquire greater conscious and collective control over them, without reproducing, or producing new, forms of oppression and domination. International Relations (IR), as a scientific discipline, appears as particularly important in this context.

Given its disciplinary vocation and object of study, IR is particularly apt for the analysis of the current high stage of human global interconnection. Namely, it is inherently directed towards understanding and explaining global processes of interconnection in international society, to develop multi-level analyses synthesizing insights from multiple dimensions and disciplines, and to develop research which covers, and is aware of, ‘humanity’ as a level of analysis in itself.

The role of IR as a provider of means of orientation has become all the more evident with the ‘critical turn’, which moved the discipline away from the a-historical approaches of neorealism and neoliberalism and, through the appropriation of political and social theory, reinforced its awareness of the importance of studying the development of human interconnection in the long-term perspective, as well as the need for concerns with normative foundations, with the elimination of forms of oppression and domination and with disciplinary ‘reflexivity’.

However, in order to further confirm its role as a means of orientation, IR needs to further consolidate its disciplinary vocation as a synthesis-driven discipline. It needs to constitute itself as the field where a high-level synthesis can occur, of the insights into these social processes, arising from several different scientific disciplines, perspectives, and cultural and theoretical traditions. Various disciplines including not only social sciences such as world history, politics, economics, psychology or anthropology but also natural sciences, such as ecology, biology or neurology.

Under present historical conditions of high global interconnectivity, IR thus appears as the scientific field where a dialogue across different disciplines and cultural contexts becomes possible; one that enables the development of a common, pluralist framework, directed towards the understanding of the human condition, its long-term historical development, and the immanent paths that lay before humanity. Only by constituting itself as the discipline enabling such higher synthesis of human knowledge, can IR fulfil its disciplinary vocation of providing orientation for humanity as to how to acquire a more conscious and controlled navigation of its potential futures.

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André Saramago is a PhD candidate at Aberystwyth University with a particular interest in Critical Theory.