Still critical after all these years? The past, present and future of Critical Theory in International Relations

2007 ◽  
Vol 33 (S1) ◽  
pp. 3-24 ◽  
Author(s):  
NICHOLAS RENGGER ◽  
BEN THIRKELL-WHITE
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
International Relations ◽  
The United States ◽  
Natural Sciences ◽  
Rand Corporation ◽  
Contemporary Philosophy ◽  
The Past ◽  
Game Theoretic ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
Theoretical Reflection

Twenty-five years ago, theoretical reflection on International Relations (IR) was dominated by three broad discourses. In the United States the behavioural revolution of the 1950s and 1960s had helped to create a field that was heavily influenced by various assumptions allegedly derived from the natural sciences. Of course, variety existed within the behaviourist camp. Some preferred the heavily quantitative approach that had become especially influential in the 1960s, while others were exploring the burgeoning literature of rational and public choice, derived from the game theoretic approaches pioneered at the RAND corporation. Perhaps the most influential theoretical voice of the late 1970s, Kenneth Waltz, chose neither; instead he developed his Theory of International Politics around an austere conception of parsimony and systems derived from his reading in contemporary philosophy of science.

scholarly journals SKYHAWK, SKYSHIELD, AND THE SOVIETS: REVISITING CANADA'S COLD WAR

2017 ◽  
Vol 61 (2) ◽  
pp. 453-475
Author(s):  
ASA MCKERCHER ◽  
TIMOTHY ANDREWS SAYLE
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Foreign Policy ◽  
Cold War ◽  
International Relations ◽  
The United States ◽  
Full Account ◽  
The Past ◽  
Canadian Foreign Policy ◽  
The Cold War

AbstractFor the past two decades, Canadian international historians have largely missed the Cold War, or at least a significant portion of it. Certainly, there has been no shortage of studies of Canadian foreign policy featuring the bipolar struggle, and yet historians have largely confined their attention to Canada's admittedly crucial relationship with the United States, while Canadian–Soviet relations have been ignored. Indeed, in the historiography of Canada's Cold War international relations, the communist powers are largely missing. Hoping to challenge this limited focus, we frame our article around two Canada–US air defence exercises held in 1959 and 1960. While historians have viewed these exercises within the context of Canada's relationship with the United States, we highlight the wider Cold War framework in which Canadian policy was formed. After all, these exercises occurred during the mini-détente of the late 1950s and the collapse of the Paris summit in May 1960. As we demonstrate, the failure to take full account of the Cold War is a shortcoming of much of the writing on Canadian international relations, and so we offer an example of the need to take seriously Canada's foreign policy toward the communist bloc.

The Virtual Disappearance of the White Male Sprinter in the United States: A Speculative Essay

1994 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 70-78 ◽  
Author(s):  
John George
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Racial Differences ◽  
White Male ◽  
The United States ◽  
Physical Characteristics ◽  
The Past ◽  
World Class ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
Almost All

Over the past 30 years almost all world-class United States sprinters have been black. There were also many fast black sprinters in the United States before the 1960s, but in addition there were a considerable number of world-class white sprinters. In fact, during the 1940s and 1950s the fastest men were white. This was not the case during the 1930s, when the best male sprinters were black. This essay discusses the phenomenon and attempts to give reasons for it. Sociological explanations seem considerably more plausible than physical characteristics based on perceived racial differences.

Challenges and Possibilities of Empirical International Relations Theory: Evidence From Research in Brazil

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Fernanda Barasuol ◽  
Andre Reis da Silva
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
International Relations ◽  
Empirical Research ◽  
General Trend ◽  
The United States ◽  
International Relations Theory ◽  
Ir Theory ◽  
Teaching And Research ◽  
The Past ◽  
Theoretical Approaches

Much of the debate in international relations (IR) theory in the past decades has concerned epistemological matters and the possibility of empirical research in the field. Most of this debate happened either within the United States or between Americans and Europeans, translating the general trend of keeping the theoretical core of the discipline centered around its geographical (developed) core. Brazilian international relations provides an additional peripheral view to IR theory (IRT). It is worth analyzing how theory has been used in Brazilian teaching and research, with the aim of understanding how Brazilian academics have used different theoretical approaches to understand their objects of study. With this objective, it is important to look into teaching syllabi, PhD dissertations, and articles published in academic journals in the field of international relations. There are considerable differences between teaching and research in Brazil, with the first following traditional American textbook standards. Research, however, shows considerably different theoretical and methodological bases.

The roles of revolutionary song – a Nicaraguan assessment

Popular Music ◽  
1987 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
pp. 179-189 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert Pring-Mill
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Latin America ◽  
The United States ◽  
Spanish American ◽  
Political Commitment ◽  
The Past ◽  
Oral Cultures ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
Protest Song

The term ‘protest song’, which became so familiar in the context of the anti-war movement in the United States during the 1960s, has been widely applied to the songs of socio-political commitment which have developed out of traditional folksong in most of the countries of Latin America over the past twenty years (see Pring-Mill 1983 and forthcoming). Yet it is misleading insofar as it might seem to imply that all such songs are ‘anti’ something: denouncing some negative abuse rather than promoting something positive to put in its place. A more helpful designation is that of ‘songs of hope and struggle’, enshrined in the titles of two Spanish American anthologies (C. W. 1967 and Gac Artigas 1973), which nicely stresses both their ‘combative’ and their ‘constructive’ aspects, while one of the best of their singers – the Uruguayan Daniel Viglietti – describes his own songs as being ‘in some measure both de protesta and de propuesta’ (i.e. as much ‘proposing’ as they are ‘protesting’). The document with which this article is chiefly concerned uses the term ‘revolutionary song’, which clearly covers both those aspects, but such songs may be seen to perform a far more complex range of tasks than any of those labels might suggest, as soon as their functions are examined ‘on the ground’ within the immediate context of the predominantly oral cultures of Latin America to which they are addressed: cultures in which traditional folksong has retained its power and currency largely undiminished by the changes of the twentieth century, and in which the oral nature of song (with the message of its lyrics reinforced by music) helps it to gain a wider popular diffusion than the more ‘literary’ but unsung texts which make up the greater part of the genre of so-called ‘committed poetry’ (‘poesía de compromiso’) to which the lyrics of such songs clearly belong (see Pring-Mill 1978, 1979).

The United States and the Origins of NATO 1946–1949

1969 ◽  
Vol 31 (2) ◽  
pp. 210-222 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lawrence A. Kaplan
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
International Relations ◽  
North Atlantic ◽  
The United States ◽  
Multinational Organizations ◽  
Founding Fathers ◽  
The Past ◽  
The North ◽  
The North Atlantic

Nato has been a phenomenon in international relations. It is unlike most multinational organizations of the past in that it has survived for a generation, and it has thereby fulfilled, at least, the minimal expectations of its founding fathers. Even more phenomenal for Americans has been the identification of the United States with an idea, a particular group of nations, and an organization which were all repugnant to a tradition that specifically isolated America from Europe. The origins of the North Atlantic Treaty are inextricably linked with the rediscovery of Europe by the United States.

The Significance of The Review of Politics

1955 ◽  
Vol 17 (1) ◽  
pp. 24-32 ◽  
Author(s):  
John U. Nef
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
The United States ◽  
Natural Sciences ◽  
Second World War ◽  
Standard Of Living ◽  
World War ◽  
Creative Mind ◽  
The Past ◽  
National Life ◽  
Second World

During the past fourteen years, since the entry of the United States into the Second World War, and especially since the end of the war (with its disillusioning peace blending into the so-called cold war), the United States has had thrust upon it the problems of the overwhelming difficulties of world leadership. Leadership in the true sense of the word cannot be totalitarian or authoritarian. It must be intellectual, moral and spiritual. This our leading statesmen have sometimes recognized, though not, I am inclined to think, often enough. In any event, it is in these spheres that our peoples have been perhaps the least prepared for our mission. Even in the natural sciences, one of the principal creative sources of American leadership has been individual scientists—such as Einstein, Fermi and Teller—bom and trained in Europe, who found asylum in the United States from Nazi or Fascist tyranny. In so far as the creative mind and its place in the national life are concerned, our main weakness has not been, however, in the natural sciences. During the first half of the twentieth century in the United States these have become distinguished in their own right. When it comes to the practical application of science we have led the world. In no other country have the results of new scientific knowledge been utilized technologically to produce as high a standard of living, measured in material quantity, as in the United States.

Early Music and Popular Music

2020 ◽  
pp. 508-529
Author(s):  
Elizabeth Randell Upton
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
New York ◽  
Los Angeles ◽  
Popular Music ◽  
The United States ◽  
Early Music ◽  
The Past ◽  
Beach Boys ◽  
Rolling Stones ◽  
The 1960S

In the 1960s, recordings and performances of preclassical music brought new sounds to musical performers, creators, and audiences. Through play with new sounds and with ideas about the past, medievalist popular music helped to shape the range of meanings associated with “the medieval” for scholars as well as audiences. At first, early music sounds, especially that of the harpsichord, were used for their novelty, becoming fashionable and hip by the mid-1960s, first in London (as seen in recordings by the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, the Zombies, and Procol Harum; this trend fed into 1970s prog rock) and then, following the British Invasion, in the United States (particularly the Left Banke in New York and the Beach Boys and the Doors in Los Angeles). Some folk-rock performers used early music sounds to signal the past, drawing on tropes of nostalgia and medievalist fantasy (e.g., Simon and Garfunkel’s “Scarborough Fair/Canticle” [1966] and the Beatles’ “Penny Lane” [1967]).

Migration drives Central America-Mexico tensions

2017 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
International Relations ◽  
Central America ◽  
Significant Risk ◽  
The United States ◽  
Central American ◽  
Humanitarian Crisis ◽  
Content Type ◽  
The Past ◽  
Trump Administration

Subject Implications of US immigration policy for relations between Mexico and Central American countries. Significance The rhetoric of US President Donald Trump and his government's initial moves to deal with illegal immigration have caused great concern in Central America and Mexico. Central American migration through Mexico to the United States in recent years has been viewed as a humanitarian crisis. There is a significant risk that Trump administration policy could undermine international relations within the region, potentially exacerbating problems of violence and insecurity. Impacts There is a risk of increased collusion between Mexican authorities and trafficking cartels to abuse Central American migrants. Despite improvements over the past year, the Mexican asylum system would struggle to cope with a large increase in claims. The challenges of migrating to the United States and Mexico could make Costa Rica increasingly attractive for Northern Triangle citizens.

Age, Period and Cohort Differences Between the Homicide Trends of Canada and the United States

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mateus Rennó Santos ◽  
Yunmei Lu ◽  
Rachel E Fairchild
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Criminal Justice ◽  
The United States ◽  
Cohort Effects ◽  
The Past ◽  
Cohort Differences ◽  
The 1950S ◽  
The 1960S

Abstract A robust literature has investigated homicide trends in the United States since 1950. The prevalence of homicide in the country almost doubled in the 1960s, remained high until the 1990s and then declined precipitously. Surprisingly, Canada displayed the same trend. We decompose the age, period and cohort effects on the homicide trends of the United States and Canada since 1950, exploring shared effects in light of these countries’ historical and policy differences over the past seven decades. Our study reveals remarkably similar trends and effects in Canada as those previously documented for the United States, despite diverging approaches to criminal justice and to the use of incarceration since the 1950s. We explore these findings and expand on their implications.

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