Petraeus, David H. (2010) COMISAF’s Counterinsurgency Guidance, Headquarters: ISAF and USForces Afghanistan, August, Kabul http://www.isaf.nato.int/images/stories/File/COMISAF/COMISAF_COIN_Guidance_01Aug10_.doc.

Rose, Nikolas S. (1999) Governing the Soul: The Shaping of the Private Self, 2nd ed. London, New York:Free Association Books.

Sasson-Levy, Orna. (2007) Individual Bodies, Collective State Interests: The Case of Israeli CombatSoldiers. Men and Masculinities 10 (3): 296–321.

Torchia, Christopher. (2010) Wild West Motif Lightens Mood at Afghan Base. Army Times, TheAssociated Press, February 8. FOB Tombstone, Afghanistan http://www.armytimes.com/news/2010/02/ap_wild_west_afghanistan_020810/.

United States. (2006) Field Manual 3-24 Counterinsurgency. Washington, DC: Department of theArmy, http://usacac.army.mil/cac2/coin/repository/FM_3-24.pdf.

Wong, Leonard, Col. Thomas A. Kolditz, Lt. Col. Raymond A. Millen, and Col. Terrence M.Potter. (2003) Why They Fight: Combat Motivation in War. U.S. Army, July. http://www.strategic-studiesinstitute.army.mil/pdffiles/PUB179.pdf.

Gaming World Politics: Meaning of Play andWorld Structure

Mark B. Salter

University of Ottawa

Critical IR theory engages with popular representations of global politics,particularly films, photography, and literature (Amoore 2007; Bleiker 2001;Danchev and Lisle 2009; Shapiro 2009). Gaming plays an increasingly largerole in popular culture: the launch of video games, such as Halo, Call ofDuty, or Gears of War, garner as much money and attention as blockbusterfilms. The Entertainment Software Rating Board presents the following picture ofthe industry: 67% of US households play video games—40% of whom arewomen, with sales in $10.5B in 2009 (ESRB 2011). Global sales of $40B makeit equal to other entertainment industries, such as music ($30-40B) or movies($27B). Consequently, we must take gaming to be as much a part of theimbrication of global politics into the everyday as movies, music, or literature.The taken-for-grantedness, the unremarkability of games that use tropes andfigures of global politics functions to render unproblematic the commonsense of international relations. Just because these games take place in thebasement, the living room, or in the rec halls of Forward Operating Bases,and not the UN Security Council chambers, does not make them any less avital part of the construction of IR. When IR theorists invoke the ‘‘rules ofthe game’’ or game theory as a frame for systematically separating agentsfrom structures, and the conditions of possibility for politics, they are limitingthe bounds of play—ascribing a set of primarily social conventions (rules) toan abstract structure of world politics (the game). Play and these ludologicaltropes are as vital to our political imagination as a self-styled ‘‘serious’’ read-ing of politics. We must look at gamic representations of the world and inter-national relations—not as decision-making tools but as artifacts of popularculture (Grayson, Davies, and Philpott 2009; Hoglund 2008).

The language of games and gaming is rife within IR as a discipline, butbecause the conceit of politics is that it is serious there is a systematic focus on

453Mark B. Salter

fear, tragedy and solemnity rather than fun, comedy, and exuberant excess. Inthe popular—and by this I mean non-academic—imaginary, there are a lot ofgames that make and unmake the world. I am advancing a slightly differentmethod than Der Derian (2003) or Klein (1989), who argue for an analysis ofpolitical discourse through intertextuality, and in particular the persistence ofcertain tropes or metaphors. Shapiro’s focus on the use of sports as an interpretiveframework for understanding international discourse on conflict management is use-ful (1989); as is Der Derian’s articulation of military-industrial-media-entertainmentcomplex that relies on Baudriallard’s notion of simulation and simulacra (2009).There is also work in ludology about the construction of war games themselves,which is very interesting but often lacks a sense of the political or engagementwith IR as a field (Jahn-Sudmann and Stockmann 2008; Power 2007; Wark2007). Between these two streams, there is a space to engage critically with gamesas instances of the everyday practice of world politics. I argue that pop culturalartifacts are part of those everyday practices that constitute the remaking of theworld as a particular game, which in turn sets out clear, if always transgressablelimits of action.

What are the ‘‘rules of the game’’: ideas about contemporary politics areshaped within the playful representations of the world, and even academic gen-res are indebted to ludological narrative devices. Morgenthau describes Bismark:‘‘however ruthless and immoral his particular moves on the chessboard of inter-national politics may have been, [he] rarely deviated from the basic rules of thegame which had prevailed in the society of Christian princes of the eighteenthcentury’’ (1948:176). Wendt echoes this trope: ‘‘the analysis of action invokes anat least implicit understanding of particular social relationships (or ‘rules of thegame’) in which the action is set’’ (1987:338). In addition to the ludologicaltrope, there is an awful lot of game-playing in international relations. Simula-tions are heralded as important pedagogical tools, and prisoner’s dilemma andother kinds of game theory are taken to be reasonable stand-ins for rational pro-cesses of decision making.

Of course, there are explicit re-representations of the world and world poli-tics in gamic universes: La conquete du monde was created by French film direc-tor Lamorisse in 1957, and translated and popularized as Risk. The originalEnglish rules of the game for Risk offer some clues about how games mightoffer an insight into the popular imaginary of how the world works. Politics isreduced to war, and there is a separation between rules of the game andplayer strategies. Each territory must be occupied by an army; total defeat isthe goal of each player; chance plays a key role in battles but the larger thearmy the better the chance; possession of entire continents yields morearmies. The foreword to the rules insists that ‘‘no attempt has been made toteach strategy, as each player will develop his own as he becomes familiarwith the game’’ (Parker Brothers 1959:1); however, by the end of the shortinstruction booklet, the authors suggest: ‘‘players should not spread them-selves too thinly by exhausting all of their extra armies by making too manyattacks…. Remember that this is a game of defense as well as offense and beprepared to protect the areas which you occupy’’ (1959:11). By 1963, a newsuggestion is made:

As the game progresses players will gradually build up power and strength, butone player will inevitably reach a point where he is slightly stronger than theother players. When this point is reached, the stronger player should attempt tooccupy every space on the board on one turn and win the game. There is, ofcourse, a certain chance involved, for if the player should fail by even a few terri-tories he would be eliminated by one of his opponents very quickly. Such a playshould be made with this in mind. (Parker Brothers 1963:11)

454 Meaning of Play and World Structure

Between 1963 and 1975, the game stops being described as ‘‘unusual’’ in itsinstructions and simply becomes described as fascinating and strategic questionsare directly addressed, because the idea of playing world domination has becomefamiliar to the gaming audience (Parker Brothers 1975). By the 1993 rules, strat-egy hints have been reduced to three precepts: ‘‘(1) Conquer whole continents(2) Watch your enemies (3) Fortify borders adjacent to enemy territories for bet-ter defense if a neighbor decides to attack you’’ (Parker Brothers 1993:3). Thefundamental rules of the game do not change, but the need for strategy does,and in particular, the strategic assumptions change. The core assumptions aboutthe game that persist through over 50 years and five official issues of game rules:conflict, occupation, victory and indeed the game itself are all zero-sum. Whatthis demonstrates is the degree to which ‘‘rules’’ about world politics, about howthe game of Risk is to be played, have come to be part of the everyday. In termsof research design, examining the everyday, the dog that does not bark, is alwaysa challenge; the changing rules of Risk over 40 years gives us a window into whatneeds to be explained and what is assumed as commonsense knowledge aboutthe everyday international by the game designers. Risk is a game that explicitlyrelies on preexisting, everyday knowledge about world politics, and one couldmake similar analyses of Diplomacy, Civilization, and so on. Excellent work onvideo games is under-unexploited in IR theory (Dyer-Witheford and de Peuter2010; Huntemann and Payne 2010; Power 2007). The rules of these games thataim toward verisimilitude about the realm of the international can tell us what isassumed to be common-knowledge.

Generating a persistent discursive field of some object called ‘‘internationalrelations’’ requires constant work in the everyday: ‘‘there is too much, more thanone can say’’ (Derrida 1978:289). Between the discourse of international rela-tions, and the knot of ideas that separate the domestic from the international,the inside from the outside, there is not just the play of meaning (Walker 1993,2010), but meaning of play. The everyday is a crucial part of the constructionand reification of an ‘‘international,’’ and play is a crucial part of the everyday.Focusing on games allows us to trouble the common-sense division between seri-ous politics and the trivial pursuits of the everyday. That is why the epistemologi-cal uncertainty that Derrida invokes is so important: ‘‘no longer from thestandpoint of a concept of finitude as relegation to the empirical, but from thestandpoint of play’’ (1978:289). We must understand the signification of interna-tional relations to be a play of meanings between the structure and the sign, butalso the meaning of play as a way of instantiating the international structure andthe sign of sovereignty.

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International Organization 41 (3): 335–370.

Everyday Politics and Generational Conflictsin the World Economy

Leonard Seabrooke

Copenhagen Business School and University of Warwick

The world is getting old and so are we. Our societies are aging rapidly, present-ing some new challenges to human interdependencies in both advanced anddeveloping economies (Elias 1991). The challenges are mostly of the ‘‘everyday’’variety, as I will clarify below, and can be seen as socio-economic, emotional-psy-chological, political, and conceptual. My aim here is to demonstrate why theemergence of intergenerational conflicts in the world economy is a topic worthyof attention to readers of International Political Sociology. The pitch is straightfor-ward: scholars interested in international political sociology are concerned withchanges in figurations of human interdependence. Intergenerational conflictsare fundamentally about changes to these figurations, with consequences forhow we understand our societies, international relations, and ourselves.

456 Everyday Politics and Generational Conflicts in the World Economy