As International Relations enters its second century as an academic discipline, leading expert Knud Erik Jørgensen provides a provocative assessment of its past, present and future.
In this book, Jørgensen traces International Relations scholarship, from its formative interwar years through to rapid growth in students and researchers in the wake of globalization. He examines the resultant widening of scholarship in the field, and the effects that this has had on the global discipline. The result is a concise and challenging appraisal of International Relations, one which both celebrates its value and maps possible future directions.
This book brings together thirteen of Nicholas Greenwood Onuf’s previously published yet rarely cited essays. They address topics that Onuf, a celebrated international theorist, has puzzled over for decades, prompting him to develop a distinctive perspective on international theory as social theory. Among these topics are the problem of materiality in social construction, epochal change in the modern world and the power of language.
Building on the work of giants, from Aristotle and Cicero, Hume and Kant, to Derrida and Foucault, and drawing on diverse contemporary theorists, including Seyla Benhabib, James Der Derian, Johan Galtung, Morton Kaplan, Joseph Nye, James Rosenau, Elaine Scarry and Kenneth Waltz, the book ranges over the margins of the field and settles on issues that have never been put to rest.
Building on the recent initiative to truly globalize the field of international relations, this book provides an innovative interrogation of regionalism.
The book applies a globalizing framework to the study of regional worlds in order to move beyond the traditional conception of regionalism, which views regions as competing blocs dominated by great powers. Bringing together a wide range of case studies, the book shows that regions are instead dynamic configurations of social and political identities in which a variety of actors, including the less powerful, interact and partake in regionalization processes and have done so through the centuries.
International Organizations (IOs) are vital institutions in world politics in which cross-border issues can be discussed and global problems managed.
This path-breaking book shows the efforts that small states have made to participate more fully in IO activities. It draws attention to the challenges created by widened participation in IOs and develops an original model of the dilemmas that both IOs and small states face as the norms of sovereign equality and the right to develop coincide.
Drawing on extensive qualitative data, including more than 80 interviews conducted for this book, the authors find that the strategies which both IOs and small states adopt to balance their respective dilemmas can explain both continuity and change in their interactions with institutions ranging from UN agencies to the World Trade Organization.
Gender is widely recognized as an important and useful lens for the study of International Relations. However, there are few books that specifically investigate masculinity/ies in relation to world politics.
Taking a feminist-inspired understanding of gender as its starting point, the book:
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explains that gender is both an asymmetrical binary and a hierarchy;
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shows how masculinization works via ‘nested hierarchies’ of domination and subordination;
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explores the imbrication of masculinities with the nation-state and great-power politics;
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develops an understanding of the arms trade with commercial processes of militarization.
Written in an accessible style, with suggestions for further reading, this book is an invaluable resource for students and teachers applying ‘the gender lens’ to global politics.
In this engaging book, David M. McCourt makes the case for New Constructivist approaches to international relations scholarship.
The book traces constructivist work on culture, identity, and norms within the historical, geographical, and professional contexts of world politics, and reflects on recent innovations in fields including practice theory, relationalism, and network analysis. Copiously illustrated with real-world examples from the rise of China and US foreign policy, it illuminates the processes by which international politics are built. This is both an accessible tour of Constructivism to date and a persuasive declaration for its continuing application and value.
This collection brings together leading figures in the study of international relations to explore praxis as a perspective on international politics and law. With its focus on competent judgments, the praxis approach holds the promise to overcome the divide between knowing and acting that marks positivist international relations theory.
Building on the transdisciplinary work of Friedrich Kratochwil – and with a concluding chapter from him – this book reveals the scope, limits and blind spots of praxis theorizing.
For anyone involved in international politics, this is an important contribution to the reconciliation of theory and practice and an inspiration for future research.
International development is a vibrant, interdisciplinary area of the social sciences. This Short Guide offers a uniquely succinct and balanced account of this politically charged subject. It distils both the classic and newer debates together in a clear framework and illustrates them with contemporary examples.
Designed to introduce a wide readership to international development, the book:
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considers how far the field has been reconfigured over time and to what extent it is likely to change in the future;
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reviews contemporary topics including tourism, migration and digital technologies;
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includes distinctive international case studies and examples.
By providing a succinct evaluation of competing approaches to, and perspectives on, the idea and practice of international development, this book offers students across the social sciences a distinct and invaluable introduction to the field.
This book presents an academically rigorous yet practical guide to efforts to understand how knowledge, policy and power interact to promote or prevent change.It offers a power analysis perspective on the knowledge-policy process, illustrated with rich empirical examples from the field of international development, combined with practical guidance on the implications of such an approach. It provides ways to identify and address problems that have hampered previous attempts to improve the space between knowledge and policy; such as difficulties in analysing political context, persistent asymmetric relationships between actors, ignorance of the contributions of different types of knowledge, and misconceptions of the roles played by intermediary organisations. Most importantly, the book gives readers the ability to develop strategies for negotiating the complexity of the knowledge-policy interface more effectively, so as to contribute to policy dialogues, influence policy change, and implement policies and programmes more effectively.The authors focus on the dynamics of the knowledge-policy interface in international development; offering novel theoretical insights and methodological approaches that are applicable to a broader array of policy arenas and their audiences, including academics, practitioners and students.
Using detailed insights from those with first-hand experience of conducting research in areas of international intervention and conflict, this handbook provides essential practical guidance for researchers and students embarking on fieldwork in violent, repressive and closed contexts.
Contributors detail their own experiences from areas including the Congo, Sudan, Yemen, Bosnia and Herzegovina and Myanmar, inviting readers into their reflections on mistakes and hard-learned lessons. Divided into sections on issues of control and confusion, security and risk, distance and closeness and sex and sensitivity, they look at how to negotiate complex grey areas and raise important questions that intervention researchers need to consider before, during and after their time on the ground.
