Mark Rupert
Professor of Political Science
Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs
123 Eggers Hall (map here)
Syracuse University
Syracuse, New York 13244-1090
315-443-1748
Professional Stuff
I teach International Relations and Political Economy, as
well as some aspects of Marxian theory and especially the thought of
Antonio Gramsci. I have been
teaching at Syracuse since 1987.
I am the author of three books. The first, entitled Producing Hegemony,
was published by Cambridge University Press in 1995 and focused on the politics
of mass production and American global power in the 20th century.
My second book, Ideologies of Globalization, dealt with the contested political meanings of globalization in the US during the 1990s. It was published by Routledge in 2000.
With co-author Scott Solomon, I have written a newer book called Globalization and International Political Economy, published by Rowman and Littlefield (2006).
I am currently developing a new project which will explore the
social and ideological bases of
popular consent to
America's imperial globalism.
Refighting Americas Vietnam War and confronting the Paradox of Imperial Consent
Here's a blurb:
A project of global military supremacy rests on popular
consent – both tacit and active. This consent is not a discrete event (in the
manner of signing a contract) but an ongoing political process in which familiar
cultural resources and conceptual vocabularies are ‘re-articulated’ to
particular political projects in new historical circumstances. This
re-articulation takes the form of re-narrating historical experiences in ways
that situate subscribers in relation to particular political projects, assign
them particular social identities in the context of these project-narratives,
and orient them toward forms of political action that are supported by
the narrative to which they subscribe. The thesis of this paper is that
supporters of American global military supremacy have invested substantial
cultural energy in the re-narration of America’s Vietnam War as a noble cause,
nearly won, except for consistent betrayal by disloyal, un-American elements
within US society. Articulating US militarism with the presumptive values and
historic identity of the American people, betrayed by implicitly un-American
elites and others parasitic upon ‘the people’, this populist-militarist
narrative and its imperative to 'Support the Troops' stigmatizes dissenters and
authorizes their marginalization or repression as ‘enemies of the people’.
In this way populist-militarism serves as
a powerful -- but contestable and contested – ideological support for a coercive
project of national renewal and US military supremacy.
Personal Stuff
In my spare time, I love to mess around with digital photography. Some of my better photos are posted here, under the nom de 'toon Ralfraz Ruck. I also have an episodic and deeply nerdy photography blog called Mark's Flashcube (remember those space-age gizmos?).
Click here for some photos of the SU campus.
I've also been involved with the Westcott Neighborhood Bulb Project, a small-scale volunteer operation which has raised money to buy and distribute over 40,000 spring-flowering bulbs in the Westcott neighborhood on Syracuse's east side. Check out the view from space. We also have a video slide show on You Tube.