Re-Thinking International Relations Theory via Deconstruction PDF Download

Author: Badredine Arfi
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1136462155
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 298

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Book Description
International Relations (IR) theorists have ceaselessly sought to understand, explain, and transform the experienced reality of international politics. Running through all these attempts is a persistent, yet unquestioned, quest by theorists to develop strategies to eliminate or reduce the antinomies, contradictions, paradoxes, dilemmas, and inconsistencies dogging their approaches. A serious critical assessment of the logic behind these strategies is however lacking. This new work addresses this issue by seeking to reformulate IR theory in an original way. Arfi begins by providing a thorough critique of leading contemporary IR theories, including pragmatism, critical/scientific realism, rationalism, neo-liberal institutionalism and social-constructivism, and then moves on to strengthen and go beyond the valuable contributions of each approach by employing the logic of deconstruction pioneered by Derrida to explicate the consequences of taking into account the dilemmas and inconsistencies of these theories. The book demonstrates that the logic of deconstruction is resourceful and rigorous in its questioning of the presuppositions of prevailing IR approaches, and argues that relying on deconstruction leads to richer and more powerfully insightful pluralist IR theories and is an invaluable resource for taking IR theory beyond currently paralyzing ‘wars of paradigms’. Questioning universally accepted presuppositions in existing theories, this book provides an innovative and exciting contribution to the field, and will be of great interest to scholars of international relations theory, critical theory and international relations.

Author: Torsten Michel
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 100046900X
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 214

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Book Description
This book argues that our current lack of recognising and understanding the different forms meta-theorising takes hampers the ways in which fruitful engagement between meta-theories can be conducted. It proposes a radical break with the ways in which meta-theorising in International Relations (IR) has so far been understood, and instead suggests a dyadic approach: a rhetoric of inquiry that investigates the diverging forms of argumentation currently present in IR meta-theorising and a conversational ethic that can help steer meta-theoretical engagements across existing divides in more productive ways. The central questions are as follows: where meta-theorising should go from here in order to contribute to the analysis of an ever more complex world? Can we develop ways that allow the practice of meta-theorising to channel and consolidate the multiplicity of its debates and contentions to strengthen our understanding of world politics, and if so, how? It will be of general interest in all theory and methodology courses offered at undergraduate and postgraduate levels as well as to academics working in the area of meta-theory, international political thought, normative theory as well as IR theory in its various manifestations.

Author: Martin Griffiths
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1350311685
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 202

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Book Description
International Relations (IR) theory has seen a proliferation of competing, and increasingly trenchant, worldviews with no consensus on how to evaluate their relative strengths and weakness. This innovative new text provides an original interpretation of how best to navigate the clash of perspectives in contemporary IR theory. The book provides a systematic overview of the main worldviews – such as realism, liberalism, and constructivism – and their associated theoretical underpinnings. Placing liberal internationalism at the heart of the debate, it argues that the main division in IR theory is between liberal internationalism and its critics. Griffiths examines both the strengths and weaknesses of liberal internationalism as a worldview, and also explores the competing worldviews that have been generated by the perceived flaws of this perspective. Examination of crucial policy issues is incorporated throughout the text, restoring the relevance of theory for those who wish to understand those policy issues. Moreover, this book revitalises the raison d'être of contemporary IR theory and shows the role it can play in making sense of the twenty-first century.

Author: James Der Derian
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0197568203
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 417

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Book Description
The contributors to this volume are motivated by a common apprehension and a common hope. The apprehension was first voiced by Einstein, who lamented the inability of humanity, at the individual and social level, to keep up with the increased speed of technological change brought about by the quantum revolution. As quantum science and technology fast forward into the 21st century, the social sciences remain stuck in classical, 19th century ways of thinking. Can such a mechanistic model of the mind and society possibly help us manage the fully realized technological potential of the quantum? That's where the hope appears: that perhaps quantum is not just a physical science, but a human science too. In Quantum International Relations, James Der Derian and Alexander Wendt gather rising scholars and leading experts to make the case for quantum approaches to world politics. As a fundamental theory of reality and enabler of new technologies, quantum now touches everything, with the potential to revolutionize how we conduct diplomacy, wage war, and make wealth. Contributors present the core principles of quantum mechanics--entanglement, uncertainty, superposition, and the wave function--as significant catalysts and superior heuristics for an accelerating quantum future. Facing a reality which no longer corresponds to an outdated Newtonian worldview of states as billiard balls, individuals as rational actors or power as objective interest, Der Derian and Wendt issue an urgent call for a new human science of quantum International Relations. At the centenary of the first quantum thought experiment in the 1920s, this book offers a diversity of explorations, speculations and approaches for understanding geopolitics in the 21st century.

Author: Sanjay Seth
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1135101868
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 218

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Book Description
What can postcolonialism tell us about international relations? What can international relations tell us about postcolonialism? In recent years, postcolonial perspectives and insights have challenged our conventional understanding of international politics. Postcolonial Theory and International Relations is the first book to provide a comprehensive and accessible survey of how postcolonialism radically alters our understanding of international relations. Each chapter is written by a leading international scholar and looks at the core components of international relations – theories, the nation, geopolitics, international law, war, international political economy, sovereignty, religion, nationalism, Empire etc. – through a postcolonial lens. In so doing it provides students with a valuable insight into the challenges that postcolonialism poses to our understanding of global politics.

Author: Chris Rossdale
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317298756
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 168

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Book Description
This book explores a variety of forms of radical political subjectivity. It takes its cue from the 2011 uprisings in the Middle East and North Africa, the Occupy Movement and the European Anti-Austerity Movement, alongside the wider opposition to authoritarian and neoliberal forms of governance from which they sprang, in order to ask an urgent series of questions about the subject of radical politics: Who or what is it that engages in resistance? Who or what should they be? And how are we to negotiate the many complexities of that second question? The contributions, drawing on a wide range of theoretical traditions, offer a rich series of provocations towards new ways of conceptualising, evaluating and imagining radical political praxis. They engage different kinds of subjects, including protestors, dancers, self-burners, academics, settlers and humans, in order to think through the ways in which contemporary subjects are constituted within and work to unsettle dominant relations of power. Together, the chapters open up spaces to think about how political and intellectual commitment to social change can be enlivened through attention to the subject of radical politics. This book was published as a special issue of Globalizations.

Author: Michael Dillon
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 0415556694
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 234

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Book Description
This book is the first full-length manuscript to draw on the the insights and techniques of deconstruction to analyse international relations. Influenced primarily by Derrida, it critiques the cornerstones of international relations such as modernity, the state, the subject, security and ethics and justice.

Author: Ana Omaljev
Publisher: Columbia University Press
ISBN: 3838267117
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 250

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Book Description
Serbia is still widely thought of as an unfinished state, whose people struggle to establish a compelling identity narrative in answer to the question 'who are we?'. While existing literature has over-analyzed Serbian nationalism, the Serbian public sphere remains largely ignored. This engaging and timely book fills this gap by giving context to the persistent and overwhelming dialogue between opposing factions on the identity spectrum in Serbia. Omaljev's focus on elite discourses provides a fresh perspective on this contentious subject. It offers an original understanding of the competing arguments surrounding 'First' and 'Other' Serbia and of the contested visions of Serbian national identity and broader European identity.By closely examining the identity vocabulary of Serbian elites and the opposing ways in which these elites view the use of labels such as 'anti-Serbian', 'patriot', and 'traitor', this book provides a vital lesson in post-conflict nation-building and raises important questions about the symbolic representations of political and cultural identities. A much-needed and compelling intervention in the Serbian identity discourse, Omaljev's work is a must-read for any researcher on the Western Balkans.

Author: Astrid H. M. Nordin
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317370031
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 220

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Book Description
As scholars and publics look for alternatives to what is understood as a violent Western world order, many claim that China can provide such an alternative through the Chinese dream of a harmonious world. This book takes this claim seriously and examines its effects by tracing the notion across several contexts: the policy documents and speeches that launched harmony as an official term under previous president Hu Jintao; the academic literatures that asked what a harmonious world might look like; the propaganda and mega events that aimed to illustrate it; the online spoofing culture that is used to criticise and avoid "harmonization"; and the incorporation of harmony into current president Xi Jinping’s "Chinese dream". This book finds contemporary Chinese society and international relations saturated with harmony. Yet, rather than offering an alternative to problems in "Western" thought, it counter-intuitively argues that harmony has not taken place, is not taking place, and will not take place. The argument unfolds as a contribution to wider debates on time, space and multiplicity in world politics. Offering analysis of the important but understudied concept of harmony, Nordin provides new and creative insights into wider contemporary issues in Chinese politics, society and scholarship. The book also suggests a creative and novel methodology for studying foreign policy concepts more broadly, drawing on critical thinkers in innovative ways and in a new empirical context. It will be of interest to students and scholars of IR, Chinese foreign and security policy and IR theory.

Author: Erica Resende
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1134692889
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 296

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Book Description
This work seeks to provide a comprehensive and accessible survey of the international dimension of trauma and memory and its manifestations in various cultural contexts. Drawing together contributions and case studies from scholars around the globe, the book explores the international political dimension of feeling, suffering, forgetting, remembering and memorializing traumatic events and to investigate how they function as social practices for overcoming trauma and creating social change. Divided into two sections, the book maps out the different theoretical debates and then moves on to examine emerging themes such as ontological security, social change, gender, religion, foreign policy & natural disasters. Throughout the chapters, the editors consider the social, political and ethical implications of forgetting and remembering traumatic events in world politics Showcasing how trauma and memory deepen our understanding of IR, this work will be of great interest to students and scholars of international relations, memory and trauma studies and security studies.