scholarly journals The Currency of Fantasy: Discourses of Popular Culture in International Relations

2013 ◽  
Vol 15 (1) ◽  
pp. 21-33
Author(s):  
Ningchuan Wang
Keyword(s):  
Popular Culture ◽  
International Relations ◽  
Soft Power ◽  
International Politics ◽  
Pop Culture ◽  
Political Life ◽  
Popular Entertainment ◽  
Ir Studies ◽  
International Issues ◽  
Fictional Representations

The “facts” of international politics constitute the first-order representations of political life and can be reflected in popular entertainment as second-order or fictional representations. This article demonstrates that discourses of popular culture are powerful and implicated in International Relations (IR) studies. The article makes two correlated claims: the first is that the humanist and anthropological methodology often used to analyse pop culture could also be used to analyse international issues, if appropriately contextualized; the second claim is that a nation can manifest its ‘discourse’ in international politics via its popular culture, as soft power.

From the Colonial to Feminist IR: Feminist IR Studies, the Wider FSS/GPE Research Agenda, and the Questions of Value, Valuation, Security, and Violence

2017 ◽  
Vol 13 (04) ◽  
pp. 739-746 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anna M. Agathangelou
Keyword(s):  
Political Economy ◽  
International Relations ◽  
Research Agenda ◽  
International Politics ◽  
Security Studies ◽  
Global Political Economy ◽  
Personal Lives ◽  
Ir Studies ◽  
The World ◽  
Forms Of Violence

International relations (IR) feminists have significantly impacted the way we analyze the world and power. However, as Cynthia Enloe points out, “there are now signs—worrisome signs—that feminist analysts of international politics might be forgetting what they have shared” and are “making bricks to construct new intellectual barriers. That is not progress” (2015, 436). I agree. The project/process that has led to the separation/specialization of feminist security studies (FSS) and feminist global political economy (FGPE) does not constitute progress but instead ends up embodying forms of violence that erase the materialist bases of our intellectual labor's divisions (Agathangelou 1997), the historical and social constitution of our formations as intellectuals and subjects. This amnesiac approach evades our personal lives and colludes with those forces that allow for the violence that comes with abstraction. These “worrisome signs” should be explained if we are to move FSS and FGPE beyond a “merger” (Allison 2015) that speaks only to some issues and some humans in the global theater.

scholarly journals POSTSTRUCTURALISM AND ITS PRACTICAL RELEVANCE IN INTERNATIONAL POLITICS

2020 ◽  
Vol 3 (2) ◽  
pp. 121-129
Author(s):  
Rifki Dermawan
Keyword(s):  
International Relations ◽  
International Politics ◽  
Theoretical Framework ◽  
World Politics ◽  
Modern World ◽  
Practical Relevance ◽  
International Issues

There are many different theories and approaches in international relations studies. They emerge as tools to understand world politics as well as to prevent the occurrence of wars and conflicts. Poststructuralism is one of them. This article addresses the practical relevance of poststructuralism in international politics. It looks at the role of poststructuralism, which provides a novel view on international issues in the globalized era. There are three major focuses of this paper. First, the discussion on the concept of sovereignty and state in a modern world. Second, the role of discourse in the poststructuralism theoretical framework. Third, the function of poststructuralism as a meta-theoretical critique in international relations. This article concludes that poststructuralism is practically useful in the study of international politics.   Keywords: poststructuralism, theory, international politics, international relations.     Abstrak   Ada beragam teori dan pendekatan yang digunakan di dalam studi ilmu hubungan internasional. Teori dan pendekatan tersebut muncul sebagai alat untuk memahami kondisi peepolitikan dunia dan juga untuk mencegah terjadinya peperangan dan konflik. Poststrukturalisme adalah salah satunya. Tulisan ini membahas relevansi secara praktikal dari poststrukturalisme dalam politik internasional. Tulisan ini melihat peranan poststrukturalisme yang memberikan pandangan baru terhadap isu-isu internasional di zaman globalisasi. Ada tiga fokus utama dari tulisan ini. Pertama, pembahasan mengenai konsep kedaulatan dan negara di zaman modern. Kedua, peranan wacana dalam kerangka teori poststrukturalisme. Ketiga, fungsi poststrukturalisme sebagai kritik metateori di ilmu hubungan internasional. Kesimpulan yang dapat diambil dari tulisan ini adalah poststrukturalisme memiliki manfaat secara praktikal dalam studi politik internasional.   Kata kunci: poststrukturalisme, teori, politik internasional, ilmu hubungan internasional.

scholarly journals International Politics of the Persian Gulf

2013 ◽  
Vol 30 (4) ◽  
pp. 115-118
Author(s):  
Turan Kayaoglu
Keyword(s):  
Saudi Arabia ◽  
International Relations ◽  
Persian Gulf ◽  
Soft Power ◽  
International Politics ◽  
Resource Competition ◽  
Gas Production ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
Gulf Region ◽  
The Persian Gulf

The Persian Gulf region is home to the six members of the Gulf Cooperation Council (viz., Oman, the UAE, Qatar, Bahrain, Kuwait, and Saudi Arabia), Iran, and Iraq. Holding over 60 percent of the world’s oil and over 40 percent of its natural gas reserves, the Persian Gulf is central to the global economy. Yet a dominant regional power is lacking; beginning with the British in the late nineteenth century, foreign powers have consistently been meddling in the region. Significant economic, social, cultural, and political changes have transformed the region’s international relations since Britain’s withdrawal in the 1960s. The contributors to this volume, which provides a rich account of this transformation, focus on natural resources, the Iranian-Saudi competition, the interest of major external actors, and political reform. The volume’s main thrust is the centrality of both state and regime security in order to understand the region. The volume’s editor, Mehran Kamrava, notes that the international politics there is essentially that of security politics. He offers four reasons for this: (1) its central role in oil and natural gas production and, increasingly, global finance, (2) the competition between Iran and Saudi Arabia over regional leadership, (3) the long-standing American-Iranian conflict, and (4) the instability brought about by intermixing politics and religion. He identifies three poles of power that shape the region’s security dynamics: the American pole; the GCC pole, which is centered on Saudi military and Qatari-UAE financial power; and the Iranian pole, which relies both on military might and soft power. Since the Iranian revolution, the American and the GCC poles have built a resilient alliance that has been driven by both the United States’ growing direct involvement and the GCC’s failure to provide security to its members. The chapters, written by leading regional specialists, further elaborate on the region’s security dynamics. In Chapter 2, J. E. Petersen offers a useful typology of boundary formation. He discusses how the state-building process, historical claims, colonial imposition, and resource competition have shaped state boundaries. As these boundaries remain contested, Petersen details various ongoing problems. In Chapter 3, Fred H. Lawson refines the concepts “security dilemma” and “alliances dilemma” and uses them to explain the arms race in the Gulf since the first Gulf War. Middle East specialists and international relations scholars will find these chapters useful in conceptual refinement ...

scholarly journals Time in International Relations Theory

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrew R. Hom
Keyword(s):  
Critical Theory ◽  
International Relations ◽  
International Politics ◽  
International Relations Theory ◽  
Political Life ◽  
Theoretical Development ◽  
English School ◽  
Power Shifts ◽  
It Impacts ◽  
Open Time

Temporal phenomena like power shifts, wars, and confounding events characterize international politics. Yet for decades academic international relations (IR) did not consider time worthy of research or reflection. Recently things have changed, especially in critical IR, where scholars developed numerous arguments about time’s political importance. However, none of that work pursued a synoptic account of time in IR theory. This chapter does so, using an ideal typology of closed and open time to understand realism, liberalism, constructivism, English School, feminism, Marxism, and critical theory. In each, tensions between open and closed time distinguish the theory from its competitors but also animate explanatory and normative debates among its proponents. The historically overlooked issue of time—our assumptions about it, visions of it, and claims about how it impacts politics—drives theoretical development across and within IR theories, which we can understand as attempts to time international political life.

Utilitarian International Order

2019 ◽  
pp. 247-266
Author(s):  
Gerald J. Postema
Keyword(s):  
Public Opinion ◽  
International Relations ◽  
International Law ◽  
Soft Power ◽  
International Politics ◽  
International Order ◽  
Mutual Benefit ◽  
Global Order ◽  
Legislative Authority ◽  
The Law

International politics was integral to Bentham’s comprehensive jurisprudential project. His perspective on international law was that of a legislator, an engineer of global order, not that of expositor or theorist of the existing law. He articulated a (quasi-) cosmopolitan principle for the governance of a state-pluralist global order: the ultimate aim of international law, he argued, is the greatest common and equal utility of all nations. This principle articulates a standard of equal, mutual benefit and builds in a proviso that permits derogation from arrangements or laws that work greatly to the disadvantage of any given nation. He envisioned the global order as a loose affiliation of equal sovereign states, each of which participates on an equal basis in a common congress accorded legislative authority through their participation and is subject to judgments of a common tribunal. Bentham’s ultimate solution to the problem of war was threefold: (i) the law was to be put on a clear, authoritative, and fully public basis in a carefully drafted and systematic code; (ii) all disputes arising in international relations were to be directed to this code and a common tribunal was empowered to resolve the disputes in an impartial way; (iii) judgments of the tribunal were to be enforced by the soft power of Public Opinion Tribunal consisting of both nations and individuals.

scholarly journals Faktor Kebudayaan dalam Teori Hubungan Internasional [The Cultural Factors in International Relations Theory]

2017 ◽  
Vol 9 (17) ◽  
pp. 1
Author(s):  
Umar Suryadi Bakry
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Cold War ◽  
International Relations ◽  
Soft Power ◽  
Cultural Factors ◽  
Important Variable ◽  
World Politics ◽  
Ir Studies ◽  
The Cold War

<p>This article tries to explain some thoughts on the importance of cultural factors in the study of International Relations (IR).  The mainstream theories of international relations since the end of the World War II have ignored the role of cultural factors in world politics. But, after the Cold War era in 1990s, culture began to enter the center of research on international relations.  After the Cold War ended, cultural factors become particularly prominent and began to gain more attention from the scholars of International Relations. There are at least three prominent theories which are increasingly taking into account the role of cultural factors in international relations, that is, Huntington’s “clash of civilization” theory, Nye’s “soft power” theory, and constructivism theory. In addition, since the 1990s, many studies conducted by IR scholars have focused on the relationship between culture and the foreign policy of a country. The emergence of international culturology as a sub-field of IR studies further confirms that culture is an important variable in international relations.</p>

scholarly journals CULTURAL DIPLOMACY IN INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS THEORY AND STUDIES ON DIPLOMACY

2016 ◽  
Vol 2 (127) ◽  
pp. 4-19 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anna Uminska-Woroniecka
Keyword(s):  
International Relations ◽  
Soft Power ◽  
International Politics ◽  
Cultural Diplomacy ◽  
Theoretical Perspective ◽  
International Relations Theory

This article analyses how the concept of cultural diplomacy has appeared in the theoretical debate on international relations and studies on diplomacy. As cultural diplomacy has long been present in the practice of diplomacy, it was examined primarily by its historians and practitioners. As a result, it was conceptualized and perceived mostly as an instrument with which states advance their interests and achieve political objectives. As far as theoretical perspective is considered, cultural diplomacy has appeared most of all in relation to the concept of «soft power». The goal of this paper is to present in a systematised way how this category has been present in the theoretical discourse. Furthermore, the article aims at determining whether the content of the concept has changed in response to processes and phenomena currently observed in international politics.

The Practice of Socialist Internationalism

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Talbot Imlay
Keyword(s):  
International Relations ◽  
International Politics ◽  
World War ◽  
National Politics ◽  
The First World War ◽  
History Of ◽  
International Issues ◽  
State Actors ◽  
Post War ◽  
First World

The Practice of Socialist Internationalism examines the efforts of British, French, and German socialist parties to cooperate with one another on concrete international issues. Drawing on archival research in twelve countries, it spans the years from the First World War to the early 1960s, paying particular attention to the two post-war periods (1918 to the late 1920s and 1945 to the mid-1950s), during which national and international politics were recast. During these years, European socialists operated simultaneously in national and transnational spaces, and the book explores the ways in which these two spaces overlapped. In addition to highlighting a neglected dimension of twentieth-century European socialism, it provides novel perspectives on two related subjects: the history of internationalism and the history of international politics. Scholars of internationalism focus either on state or on non-state actors (INGOs), but socialist parties constituted something of a hybrid: rooted more firmly in national politics than most INGOs, they were also more self-consciously internationalist than state actors. Just as importantly, European socialists sought to forge a new practice of international relations, one that would emerge from their collective efforts to work out ‘socialist’ approaches to pressing issues of European politics such as post-war reconstruction, European integration, and decolonization. While the extent of their success is debatable, the efforts of European socialists to identify distinct approaches act as a spotlight, illuminating obscure yet vital aspects of an issue.

Democratic Commitments: Legislatures and International Cooperation. By Lisa L. Martin. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2000. 225p. $49.50 cloth, $18.95 paper.

2002 ◽  
Vol 96 (1) ◽  
pp. 270-271
Author(s):  
Kathleen R. McNamara
Keyword(s):  
International Relations ◽  
International Cooperation ◽  
Rule Of Law ◽  
International Politics ◽  
International System ◽  
Political Life ◽  
International Level ◽  
The Rule Of Law ◽  
Princeton University ◽  
Independent Effects

One of the sharpest and most consequential divisions in international relations lies between those who believe that international politics is a realm unto its own and those who see the lines between domestic and international politics as both permeable and pertinent. For the former group, the consequences of anarchy swamp any potential for politics to be ordered at the international level as it is within states. In this view, the dynamics of domestic political life, such as the rule of law, norms of trust, or the independent effects of institutions, are foreign to the international system.

Recognizing religion: Politics, history, and the “long 19th century”

2017 ◽  
Vol 23 (4) ◽  
pp. 729-755 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jonathan C. Agensky
Keyword(s):  
International Relations ◽  
19Th Century ◽  
Social Life ◽  
International Politics ◽  
Political Life ◽  
Critical Element ◽  
Conditions Of Possibility ◽  
History Approach ◽  
Analytical Category

Analyses of religion and international politics routinely concern the persistence of religion as a critical element in world affairs. However, they tend to neglect the constitutive interconnections between religion and political life. Consequently, religion is treated as exceptional to mainstream politics. In response, recent works focus on the relational dimensions of religion and international politics. This article advances an “entangled history” approach that emphasizes the constitutive, relational, and historical dimensions of religion — as a practice, discursive formation, and analytical category. It argues that these public dimensions of religion share their conditions of possibility and intelligibility in a political order that crystallized over the long 19th century. The neglect of this period has enabled International Relations to treat religion with a sense of closure at odds with the realities of religious political behavior and how it is understood. Refocusing on religion’s historical entanglements recovers the concept as a means of explaining international relations by “recognizing” how it is constituted as a category of social life. Beyond questions of the religious and political, this article speaks to renewed debates about the role of history in International Relations, proposing entanglement as a productive framing for international politics more generally.

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