scholarly journals Hidden in Plain Sight: Coloniality, Capitalism and Race/ism as Far as the Eye Can See

2020 ◽  
Vol 48 (2) ◽  
pp. 221-241 ◽  
Author(s):  
Olivia U. Rutazibwa
Keyword(s):  
Puerto Rico ◽  
International Relations ◽  
New England ◽  
Status Quo ◽  
Narrative Approach ◽  
Special Issue ◽  
Race And Racism ◽  
Time Space ◽  
The World ◽  
White Innocence

This review essay is a generative reading of four monographs and one special issue to rethink the discipline of International Relations (IR) and its syllabus anticolonially. At the centre of White Innocence by Gloria Wekker, In the Wake: On Blackness and Being, by Christina Sharpe, The Colonial Lives of Property by Brenna Bhandar, Beyond Coloniality by Aaron Kamugisha and the New Political Economy special issue titled Raced Markets edited by Robbie Shilliam and Lisa Tilley are issues of race and racism, neoliberalism and capital and (the afterlives of) colonisation and slavery. This essay deploys a narrative approach of the autobiographical example to write the themes and arguments of the works onto the international everyday, i.c. a period of five months (April-September 2019) and the five places (Toronto, Stellenbosch, (New) England, Ghana and Puerto Rico) in which these works were read. First, the themes of racism, capitalism and coloniality – to varying degrees disavowed and erased in both IR as a discipline and public opinion – appear as persistent, pervasive yet adapting across time, space and situatedness. Second, both the autobiographical examples and the works point at the equally omnipresent cracks in the system and invite reflection on anticolonial alternatives (of solidarity). In conclusion, the essay explores how these works could inform reconceptualisation of the IR syllabus, towards a discipline that engages with the world rather than itself, against the colonial status quo.

scholarly journals Conceptualising backlash politics: Introduction to a special issue on backlash politics in comparison

2020 ◽  
Vol 22 (4) ◽  
pp. 563-584 ◽  
Author(s):  
Karen J Alter ◽  
Michael Zürn
Keyword(s):  
International Relations ◽  
Comparative Politics ◽  
Public Discourse ◽  
Contentious Politics ◽  
World Politics ◽  
Threshold Condition ◽  
Special Issue ◽  
Time Space ◽  
Emotional Appeals ◽  
Distinct Category

Despite the widespread sense that backlash is an important feature of contemporary national and world politics, there is remarkably little scholarly work on the politics of backlash. This special issue conceptualises backlash politics as a distinct form of contentious politics. Backlash politics includes the following three necessary elements: (1) a retrograde objective of returning to a prior social condition, (2) extraordinary goals and tactics that challenge dominant scripts, and (3) a threshold condition of entering mainstream public discourse. When backlash politics combines with frequent companion accelerants – nostalgia, emotional appeals, taboo breaking and institutional reshaping – the results can be unpredictable, contagious, transformative and enduring. Contributions to this special issue engage this definition to advance our understanding of backlash politics. The special issue’s conclusion draws insights about the causes and dynamics of backlash politics that lead to the following three potential outcomes: a petering out of the politics, the construction of new cleavages, or a retrograde transformation. Creating a distinct category of backlash politics brings debates in American politics, comparative politics, and international relations together with studies of specific topics, facilitating comparisons across time, space, and issue areas and generating new questions that can hopefully promote lesson drawing.

scholarly journals Chopping the world into bits: Africa, the World Bank, and the good governance norm

2014 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
pp. 332-349 ◽  
Author(s):  
Julia Gallagher
Keyword(s):  
International Relations ◽  
World Bank ◽  
International Organizations ◽  
Good Governance ◽  
The Other ◽  
Special Issue ◽  
The World Bank ◽  
The World

This article explores norms as idealizations, in an attempt to grasp their significance as projects for international organizations. We can think about norms as ‘standards of proper behaviour’. In this sense they are somehow natural, things to be taken for granted, noticed only really when they are absent. We can also think about norms as ‘understandings about what is good and appropriate’. In this sense, norms embody a stronger sense of virtue and an ability to enable progress or improvement. Norms become ideal when they are able to conflate what is good with what is appropriate, standard, or proper. It is when the good becomes ‘natural’ that a norm appears immanent and non-contestable, and so acquires an idealized form.45Along with the other articles in this special issue, I will attempt to challenge some of the complacency surrounding the apparent naturalness and universality of norms employed in international relations.

Afterword

2020 ◽  
Vol 50 (3) ◽  
pp. 659-670
Author(s):  
John Watkins
Keyword(s):  
International Relations ◽  
State System ◽  
Special Issue ◽  
Policy Goals ◽  
The World ◽  
Foreign Office ◽  
Global Corporations ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
State Relations ◽  
International Systems

Scholars of contemporary international relations have long noted the rise of such nonstate agents as global corporations and NGOs on the world stage. With that shift in mind, John Robert Kelley has questioned the continued viability of an institutional definition of diplomacy that dates back to the eighteenth century. If corporate directors and NGO officers have as much impact in shaping international systems as traditionally commissioned diplomats, it might make more sense to redefine diplomacy as a behavior that can be carried out by nonstate, noncommissioned agents. As the essays gathered in this special issue suggest, that behavioralist redefinition of diplomacy might apply just as well to the premodern state system, before the rise of the familiar foreign office, as to the postmodern state system, whose multilayered complexities extend, resist, and often successfully counter the policy goals of traditional diplomats. Diplomats mattered in premodern state relations. But so did merchants and missionaries, writers, actors, and other artists.

Allowing ourselves to follow our bodies: Cultivating student curiosity via sensorily-oriented modes of teaching

2021 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
pp. 233-247 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ian Bruff
Keyword(s):  
Popular Culture ◽  
International Relations ◽  
Teaching Practice ◽  
Ways Of Knowing ◽  
The Other ◽  
Pedagogical Practice ◽  
Special Issue ◽  
Metal Music ◽  
The World ◽  
Extreme Metal

This article addresses the themes animating the Special Issue from the other side of the coin, namely the notion of aestheticizing political pedagogies. This reflects the direction of travel in some sections of politics and international relations scholarship, where there has been an upsurge of interest in aesthetics and especially popular culture. While there have been valuable contributions on teaching within such work, there has been a lack of sustained reflection on how, for example, a more aesthetically informed pedagogical practice can help us encourage students to think critically in creative ways. There has also been a rather bloodless account of aesthetics, diverting attention away from its visceral essence. Taking inspiration from the writings of Matt Davies on aesthetics, Jennifer Mason on the sensory and Cynthia Enloe on curiosity and surprise, the article explores the potential for aestheticizing political pedagogies to be mobilized in purposeful, strategic ways for enhancing the capacity of students to think critically and creatively. More specifically, I discuss how sensorily-oriented modes of teaching can disrupt entanglements between students’ ways of knowing and experiencing the world and their ‘objective’ understandings of politics, society, culture and so on. Three examples from my own teaching practice are discussed, all rooted in my utilization of extreme metal music with the aim of cultivating curiosity among students about their topics.

A Lovely, Creative Woman and an All-American Boy from the South

2020 ◽  
pp. 18-21
Author(s):  
Peter H. Reid
Keyword(s):  
North Carolina ◽  
International Relations ◽  
New England ◽  
World Peace ◽  
Pulitzer Prize ◽  
The South ◽  
The World

Peverley (Peppy) Dennett Kinsey came from a prominent New England background. Her grandfather, Tyler Dennett, received the Pulitzer Prize for his biography of John Hay. Her father graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Harvard and was director of the World Peace Foundation and president of the American Scandinavian Foundation. She attended prestigious schools, including Mount Holyoke College, where she became an accomplished dancer. Peppy’s longtime friend Victoria Ferenbach speculates on what might have happened on Impala Hill, where Peppy died. Bill Kinsey grew up in North Carolina, attended Washington and Lee University, where he excelled academically, and participated in a great many activities, such as, the Washington Literary Society, publication of Ariel, track, rifle team, and the International Relations Club.

The poverty of Grand Theory

2013 ◽  
Vol 19 (3) ◽  
pp. 483-497 ◽  
Author(s):  
Chris Brown
Keyword(s):  
International Relations ◽  
International Relations Theory ◽  
Special Issue ◽  
Current State ◽  
The Social ◽  
The World ◽  
Is Theory ◽  
The One ◽  
Late Modern ◽  
Made In

The editors of the special issue, in their call for papers for this special issue, expressed a degree of disquiet at the current state of International Relations theory, but the situation is both better and worse than they suggest. On the one hand, in some areas of the discipline, there has been real progress over the last decade. The producers of liberal and realist International Relations theory may not have the kind of standing in the social/human sciences as the ‘Grand Theorists’ identified by Quentin Skinner in his seminal mid-1980s’ collection, but they have a great deal to say about how the world works, and the world would have been a better place over the last decade or so if more notice had been taken of what they did say. On the other hand, the range of late modern theorists who brought some of Skinner’s Grand Theorists into the reckoning in the 1980s have, in the main, failed to deliver on the promises made in that decade. The state of International Relations theory in this neck of the woods is indeed a cause for concern; there is a pressing need for ‘critical problem-solving’ theory, that is, theory that relates directly to real-world problems but approaches them from the perspective of the underdog.

scholarly journals Introduction: A Xi change in policy?

2021 ◽  
pp. 136914812199249
Author(s):  
Shaun Breslin ◽  
Pan Zhongqi
Keyword(s):  
International Relations ◽  
Considerable Increase ◽  
Xi Jinping ◽  
Special Issue ◽  
The World

Have China’s international relations changed fundamentally under Xi Jinping? Or is it rather a matter of heading in the same direction as before, but with a considerable increase in pace accompanied by a greater confidence in outlining where this journey is taking China (and as a consequence, the world as well)? This introduction outlines some of the collective conclusions of the special issue as a whole, and in explaining the rationale for constructing it, pays tribute to John Peterson’s contribution and support.

American Perspectives and Blind Spots on World Politics

2019 ◽  
Vol 4 (3) ◽  
pp. 300-309 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jeff D Colgan
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
International Relations ◽  
The United States ◽  
World Politics ◽  
Special Issue ◽  
Fine Grained ◽  
The World ◽  
Survey Experiments ◽  
Previous Scholarship ◽  
Blind Spots

AbstractScholars of international relations (IR) from the United States, like any country, view the world with particular perspectives and beliefs that shape their perceptions, judgments, and worldviews. These perspectives have the potential to affect the answers to a host of important questions—in part by shaping the questions that get asked in the first place. All scholars are potentially affected by national bias, but American bias matters more than others. This special issue focuses on two issues: attention and accuracy in IR research. While previous scholarship has raised principally normative or theoretical concerns about American dominance in IR, our work is heavily empirical and engages directly with the field's mainstream neopositivist approach. The collected articles provide specific, fine-grained examples of how American perspectives matter for IR, using evidence from survey experiments, quantitative datasets, and more. Our evidence suggests that American perspectives, left unexamined, negatively affect our field's research. Still, the essays in this special issue remain bullish about the field's neopositivist project overall. We also offer concrete steps for taking on the problems we identify, and improving our field's scholarship.

scholarly journals Militarism and security: Dialogue, possibilities and limits

2017 ◽  
Vol 49 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 3-18 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anna Stavrianakis ◽  
Maria Stern
Keyword(s):  
International Relations ◽  
The Other ◽  
Special Issue ◽  
Political Work ◽  
The World ◽  
And Shifts ◽  
Analytical Tools ◽  
The Relationship

While attention to security has grown exponentially over the last few decades, militarism – the preparation for and normalization and legitimation of war – has not received the widespread and sustained focus it warrants in mainstream or critical circles. Rather than stake a claim for one concept over the other, however, this article – and the special issue to which it serves as an introduction – asks how we are to understand the relationship between security and militarism, both as analytical tools and as objects of analysis. We examine, first, what analytical and political work militarism and security do as concepts, and how they can be mobilized methodologically; second, what the possibilities are of fruitful exchange between knowledges produced about these concepts or practices; and, third, what the limits are of militarism and security. In the process, we address the shifts in the world that international relations and its related subfields study; shifts in the institutional framing and materiality of fields and subfields of research; and shifts in how international relations studies the world. Read together, the contributions to the special issue make the case for a reinvigorated focus on the mutual co-constitution of militarism and security.

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