Patterns of Radicalization in Political Activism

2012 ◽  
Vol 36 (3) ◽  
pp. 311-320 ◽  
Author(s):  
Donatella della Porta ◽  
Heinz-Gerhard Haupt
Keyword(s):  
International Relations ◽  
Social Movement ◽  
Political Violence ◽  
Modern Society ◽  
Political Activism ◽  
Scientific Understanding ◽  
Security Studies ◽  
Political Conflicts ◽  
Social Scientific

Research on political violence occurs in waves, generally corresponding to the successive swells of violence that in many ways define modern society. Critically, this violence is characterized as much by diversity as by uniformity. As each new spate in research on political violence has shown us, rarely can we generalize about either the aims or the repertoires of action of the purveyors of violence. Some similar mechanisms are in play, however, as violence develops from political conflicts between states and their opponents.This suggestion comes from social movement studies, whose influence is increasing in the analysis of political violence. These studies developed especially from a critique of ‘terrorism studies,’ which emerged within security studies as a branch of international relations and have traditionally been more oriented toward developing antiterrorist policies than toward a social scientific understanding of political violence.

Theorizing the Temporal Exception: The Importance of the Present for the Study of War

2019 ◽  
Vol 5 (4) ◽  
pp. 543-558 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christopher McIntosh
Keyword(s):  
International Relations ◽  
Political Violence ◽  
Temporal Dynamics ◽  
Security Studies ◽  
Close Reading ◽  
Collective Violence ◽  
Temporal Dimension

Abstract Despite an increasing focus on the importance of temporality, time, and timing in international relations (IR) and security studies, there has been relatively less movement toward thinking about the temporal present as a conceptual area of inquiry. This article argues that taking the present seriously as a concept, method, and theoretical area of analysis offers unique value for the study of war. Paying attention to the manner in which the present time of war (wartime) is sociopolitically articulated as a space of temporal exception exposes how it is understood as diverging from representations of politics, past and future. It also foregrounds war's irreducible temporal dimension and exposes the relational bases of wartime's apparent universality. This article uses a close reading of Clausewitz's On War (1832) as generative dialogue and illustrative example, showing how an awareness of the importance of temporal dynamics—particularly, the concept of the present—is both valuable and workable in the study of war. A temporal imaginary of war centered on what Hutchings calls the “heterotemporal” present enhances inquiry into contemporary political violence, the ontology of war, and the emergent attributes of collective violence.

Dynamics, Endogeneity, and Complexity in Protest Campaigns

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Karen A. Rasler
Keyword(s):  
International Relations ◽  
Social Movement ◽  
Political Violence ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Single Case ◽  
Process Approach ◽  
Civil Resistance ◽  
Partial Analysis ◽  
Political Contention ◽  
Analytical Tools

There is an argument that nonviolent civil resistance or protest campaigns should be studied as dynamic and complex phenomenon, rather than a single case comprised of various attributes, such as size, scale, and scope, which are then compared with other cases. As protest campaigns have increased all over the world during the last few years, international relations scholars have begun to devote more time and resources to studying them systematically with new data projects and analytical tools and methods. In light of this emerging research program, one needs to understand that protest campaigns contain large-scale processes of political contention that evolve across time and space. Such evolutionary processes are the result of the interactive relationships among multiple governmental and nongovernmental actors. These interactions reflect “highly interdependent sets of actions and reactions” that generate causal mechanisms and intersect with other large-scale processes which can produce similar and dissimilar outcomes across different political contexts. An argument will be advanced that a “relational mechanisms-process” approach articulated by McAdam, Tarrow, and Tilly provides analytical leverage over such complexity. Most, international relations scholars, unlike social movement scholars, are not familiar with this approach. So, the effort herein is to not only make the case for a relational mechanisms-process approach but also to illustrate it with a partial analysis of the Egyptian uprising on January 25, 2011, which led to Mubarak’s resignation. The end result is a call for theoretical and empirical research that bridges two communities of scholars, one that is dominated by sociologists (social movement scholars) and the other that is dominated by political science (international relations political violence scholars).

The Longitudinal Effects of Chronic Mediated Exposure to Political Violence on Ideological Beliefs about Political Conflicts among Youth

2014 ◽  
Author(s):  
Shira Dvir Gvirsman ◽  
L. Rowell Huesmann ◽  
Eric F. Dubow ◽  
Simha F. Landau ◽  
Paul Boxer ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Political Violence ◽  
Political Conflicts ◽  
Longitudinal Effects

Risk, Desire and Adaptation: The Paradox of Queer Solidarity and the Political Possibility of Death Under Neoliberalism and Homonationalism

Somatechnics ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 185-200
Author(s):  
Natalie Kouri-Towe
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Social Movement ◽  
Political Activism ◽  
State Violence ◽  
The Political ◽  
Sexual Rights ◽  
Political Strategy ◽  
Rights Discourse ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Strategy I

In 2015, Queers Against Israeli Apartheid Toronto (QuAIA Toronto) announced that it was retiring. This article examines the challenges of queer solidarity through a reflection on the dynamics between desire, attachment and adaptation in political activism. Tracing the origins and sites of contestation over QuAIA Toronto's participation in the Toronto Pride parade, I ask: what does it mean for a group to fashion its own end? Throughout, I interrogate how gestures of solidarity risk reinforcing the very systems that activists desire to resist. I begin by situating contemporary queer activism in the ideological and temporal frameworks of neoliberalism and homonationalism. Next, I turn to the attempts to ban QuAIA Toronto and the term ‘Israeli apartheid’ from the Pride parade to examine the relationship between nationalism and sexual citizenship. Lastly, I examine how the terms of sexual rights discourse require visible sexual subjects to make individual rights claims, and weighing this risk against political strategy, I highlight how queer solidarities are caught in a paradox symptomatic of our times: neoliberalism has commodified human rights discourses and instrumentalised sexualities to serve the interests of hegemonic power and obfuscate state violence. Thinking through the strategies that worked and failed in QuAIA Toronto's seven years of organising, I frame the paper though a proposal to consider political death as a productive possibility for social movement survival in the 21stcentury.

THE CONCEPT OF THE BALANCE OF FORCES IN THE 21ST CENTURY

2018 ◽  
Vol 28 (6) ◽  
pp. 1835-1847
Author(s):  
Vladimir Tomashevic ◽  
Hatidza Berisha ◽  
Aleksandar Cirakovic
Keyword(s):  
International Relations ◽  
21St Century ◽  
Scientific Understanding ◽  
Theoretical Understanding ◽  
Major Powers ◽  
Realistic Theory ◽  
World Power ◽  
History Of ◽  
Balance Of Forces ◽  
Single World

In this paper the authors proceed from defining the concept of balance of forces, theoretical understanding of the balance of forces from the aspect of the scientific understanding of the realistic theory of international relations with concrete examples from the history of international relations. However, the focus of the work is an analysis of the power between a single world power (USA) and major powers (Russia, China) in a possible balance of power.The aim of the paper is to try to point out, through a relatively brief review, the possibility of establishing a balance of forces in the 21st century.

Feudal Europe, 800–1300: communal discourse and conflictual practices

1992 ◽  
Vol 46 (2) ◽  
pp. 427-466 ◽  
Author(s):  
Markus Fischer
Keyword(s):  
Critical Theory ◽  
Social Science ◽  
International Relations ◽  
Social Theory ◽  
Structural Theory ◽  
Historical Change ◽  
Fundamental Significance ◽  
The Social ◽  
Social Scientific ◽  
Scientific Argument

The discipline of international relations faces a new debate of fundamental significance. After the realist challenge to the pervasive idealism of the interwar years and the social scientific argument against realism in the late 1950s, it is now the turn of critical theorists to dispute the established paradigms of international politics, having been remarkably successful in several other fields of social inquiry. In essence, critical theorists claim that all social reality is subject to historical change, that a normative discourse of understandings and values entails corresponding practices, and that social theory must include interpretation and dialectical critique. In international relations, this approach particularly critiques the ahistorical, scientific, and materialist conceptions offered by neorealists. Traditional realists, by contrast, find a little more sympathy in the eyes of critical theorists because they join them in their rejection of social science and structural theory. With regard to liberal institutionalism, critical theorists are naturally sympathetic to its communitarian component while castigating its utilitarian strand as the accomplice of neorealism. Overall, the advent of critical theory will thus focus the field of international relations on its “interparadigm debate” with neorealism.

scholarly journals Excuse and justification: What’s explanation and understanding got to do with it?

2021 ◽  
pp. 136843102098675 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nigel Pleasants
Keyword(s):  
Scientific Understanding ◽  
Scientific Explanations ◽  
Social Scientific ◽  
Moral Questions

A well-worn French proverb pronounces ‘ tout comprendre c’est tout pardonner’ (‘to understand all is to forgive all’). Is forgiveness the inevitable consequence of social scientific understanding of the actions and lives of perpetrators of serious wrongdoing? Do social scientific explanations provide excuses or justifications for the perpetrators of the actions that the explanations purport to explain? In this essay, I seek clarification of these intertwined explanatory and moral questions.

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.

From Unity to Divergence and Back Again: Security and Economy in Feminist International Relations

2015 ◽  
Vol 11 (02) ◽  
pp. 408-413 ◽  
Author(s):  
Laura Sjoberg
Keyword(s):  
Political Economy ◽  
International Relations ◽  
Political Violence ◽  
International Security ◽  
Economic Security ◽  
Peace Studies ◽  
Ecological Security ◽  
Global Security ◽  
Early 21St Century ◽  
Feminist Perspectives

InGender and International Security: Feminist Perspectives on Achieving Global Security, J. Ann Tickner (1992) identified three main dimensions to “achieving global security”—national security, economic security, and ecological security: conflict, economics, and the environment. Much of the work in feminist peace studies that inspired early feminist International Relations (IR) work (e.g., Brock-Utne 1989; Reardon 1985) and many of Tickner's contemporaries (e.g., Enloe 1989; Peterson and Runyan 1991; Pettman 1996) also saw political economy and a feminist conception of security as intrinsically interlinked. Yet, as feminist IR research evolved in the early 21st century, more scholars were thinking either about political economy or about war and political violence, but not both.

Islamic International Relations Towards a Theoretical Framework

2015 ◽  
Vol 1 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gubara Hassan
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
International Relations ◽  
Modern Society ◽  
Theoretical Framework ◽  
World Politics ◽  
Muslim World ◽  
The West ◽  
The Past ◽  
Alternative Approach ◽  
The World

The Western originators of the multi-disciplinary social sciences and their successors, including most major Western social intellectuals, excluded religion as an explanation for the world and its affairs. They held that religion had no role to play in modern society or in rational elucidations for the way world politics or/and relations work. Expectedly, they also focused most of their studies on the West, where religion’s effect was least apparent and argued that its influence in the non-West was a primitive residue that would vanish with its modernization, the Muslim world in particular. Paradoxically, modernity has caused a resurgence or a revival of religion, including Islam. As an alternative approach to this Western-centric stance and while focusing on Islam, the paper argues that religion is not a thing of the past and that Islam has its visions of international relations between Muslim and non-Muslim states or abodes: peace, war, truce or treaty, and preaching (da’wah).

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