scholarly journals Affective neuroscience, emotional regulation, and international relations

2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (2) ◽  
pp. 189-219
Author(s):  
Earl Gammon

AbstractInternational relations (IR) has witnessed an emerging interest in neuroscience, particularly for its relevance to a now widespread scholarship on emotions. Contributing to this scholarship, this paper draws on the subfields of affective neuroscience and neuropsychology, which remain largely unexplored in IR. Firstly, the paper draws on affective neuroscience in illuminating affect's defining role in consciousness and omnipresence in social behavior, challenging the continuing elision of emotions in mainstream approaches. Secondly, it applies theories of depth neuropsychology, which suggest a neural predisposition originating in the brain's higher cortical regions to attenuate emotional arousal and limit affective consciousness. This predisposition works to preserve individuals’ self-coherence, countering implicit assumptions about rationality and motivation within IR theory. Thirdly, it outlines three key implications for IR theory. It argues that affective neuroscience and neuropsychology offer a route toward deep theorizing of ontologies and motivations. It also leads to a reassessment of the social regulation of emotions, particularly as observed in institutions, including the state. It also suggests a productive engagement with constructivist and poststructuralist approaches by addressing the agency of the body in social relations. The paper concludes by sketching the potential for a therapeutically-attuned approach to IR.

2021 ◽  
pp. 004711782110214
Author(s):  
King-Ho Leung

This article offers a reading of Plato in light of the recent debates concerning the unique ‘ontology’ of International Relations (IR) as an academic discipline. In particular, this article suggests that Plato’s metaphysical account of the integral connection between human individual, the domestic state and world order can offer IR an alternative outlook to the ‘political scientific’ schema of ‘levels of analysis’. This article argues that Plato’s metaphysical conception of world order can not only provide IR theory with a way to re-imagine the relation between the human, the state and world order. Moreover, Plato’s outlook can highlight or even call into question the post-metaphysical presuppositions of contemporary IR theory in its ‘borrowed ontology’ from modern social science, which can in turn facilitate IR’s re-interpretation of its own ‘ontology’ as well as its distinct contributions to the understanding of the various aspects of the social world and human life.


2017 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 72
Author(s):  
LG Saraswati Putri

This research and community engagement investigates an ancient Balinese ritual known as Sang Hyang Dedari. The dance is interrelated to an agricultural aspect of the traditional Balinese living. As the Balinese struggle to maintain their values from the constant threat of modernization and industrialization, this dance reveals the powerful impact of creating an awareness of socio-ecological equilibrium. The effort made by the villagers of Geriana Kauh, Karangasem, displays how local community rebuilds its environment based on their traditional ecological value. Analyzing Sang Hyang Dedari dance through phenomenological approach, thus, it can be discovered how the ritual sustains the social relations. The bodies of the dancers are the center of an elaborate nexus between people, nature and god. To understand how the dualism of sacred and profane bodies, this research utilizes the body theory by Maurice Merleau-Ponty. The importance of phenomenology as a theory relates to the understanding on how the ritual works as an event in its totality. Understanding the unity between the presence of the divine, nature and human. The output of this research and community engagement is a museum built in cooperation between University of Indonesia with the villagers of Geriana Kauh, Karangasem. As the performance and knowledge about Sang Hyang Dedari appeared to be scarce, this museum is a form of collaboration to retrace the history of Sang Hyang Dedari ritual, in an attempt to conserve the ancient knowledge.


2002 ◽  
Vol 96 (1) ◽  
pp. 266-267
Author(s):  
Cynthia Weber

Conceptualizing the sovereign nation-state remains a core concern in the discipline of international relations (IR). Yet, as the volumes by Sarah Owen Vandersluis and Beate Jahn demonstrate, the theoretical location of this conceptual debate is shifting. Questions of identity, like those regarding sovereign nation-states, were answered in the 1990s with reference to terms like social construction. In the new millennium, “the social” is increasingly joined by “the cultural” as an intellectual marker of how serious IR scholars must pose questions of identity. Why this shift? And what difference does it make to our understandings of sovereign nation-states, not to mention IR theory more generally?


2022 ◽  
pp. 145-201

In this chapter, the body is re-envisioned as a cybernetic organism, and new types of exchange of information, matter, and energy are anaylsed. Through the cybernetic understanding of a human being as a machine system, it is possible for man to modify and replace lost organs or functions and create a partially artificial being. When the body becomes a scientific and technological creation and real relationships become a cyborg prosthesis of the non-human, the body and the social relations become a problem of cybernetic functioning.


Author(s):  
Steven C. Roach

Max Horkheimer, one of the founders of the Frankfurt Institute of Social Research established in 1923, coined the term critical theory in 1937. While the school failed to produce what could be called a systematic theory, it drew on, and interweaved, various philosophical strands and prominent themes of political and social thought, including historical materialism (Marxism/Western Marxism), Freudian analysis, cultural disenchantment, Hegelian dialectics, and totality. Yet by the 1940s, many of the first-generation Frankfurt school thinkers sought to counter the emasculation of critical reason, dialectics, and self-conscious theory with a focus on the negativity of dialectics. Later critics would claim that they had abandoned the progressive platform of the Enlightenment, or the project of emancipation from social and political oppression. In the 1980s, Jürgen Habermas’s communicative action theory would provide a so-called critical turn in Frankfurt school critical theory by resituating reason and social action in linguistics. It was during this time that international relations (IR) theorists would draw on Habermas’s theory and that of other critical theorists to critique the limits of realism, the dominant structural paradigm of international relations at the time. The first stages of this critical theory intervention in international relations included the seminal works of Robert Cox, Richard Ashley, Mark Hoffman, and Andrew Linklater. Linklater, perhaps more than any other critical IR theorist, was instrumental in repositioning the emancipatory project in IR theory, interweaving various social and normative strands of critical thought. As such, two seemingly divergent critical IR theory approaches emerged: one that would emphasize the role of universal principles, dialogue, and difference; the other focusing predominantly on the revolutionary transformation of social relations and the state in international political economy (historical materialism). Together, these critical interventions reflected an important “third debate” (or “fourth,” if one counts the earlier inter-paradigm debate) in IR concerning the opposition between epistemology (representation and interpretation) and ontology (science and immutable structures). Perhaps more importantly, they stressed the need to take stock of the growing pluralism in the field and what this meant for understanding and interpreting the growing complexity of global politics (i.e., the rising influence of technology, human rights and democracy, and nonstate actors). The increasing emphasis on promoting a “rigorous pluralism,” then, would encompass an array of critical investigations into the transformation of social relations, norms, and identities in international relations. These now include, most notably, critical globalization studies, critical security studies, feminism, postmodernism, and postcolonialism.


2017 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 186-202
Author(s):  
Pedro Salgado

Ao inserir a luta de classes no centro da análise histórica, o Marxismo Político propõe uma reinterpretação da disciplina de Relações Internacionais que pode ser entendida em três passos. O primeiro é uma visão histórica da formação do sistema de estados moderno, a partir de transformações da geopolítica feudal após a origem do capitalismo. O segundo, uma metodologia historicista que parte da forma como a operação de tal sistema pode ser entendida através dos conflitos entre classes com suas respectivas estratégias de espacialização. Por fim, resta justificar a centralidade da luta de classe, e de “classe” enquanto categoria analítica, através do retorno à obra de Marx, resgatando a forma como a noção sociológica de agência é antecipada em sua filosofia da práxis. Assim, reinscrevendo a distinção entre “global” e “(inter)nacional” nas relações sociais que lhe dão origem, a disciplina de Relações Internacionais assume a forma de Sociologia Histórica.ABSTRACTBy bringing class struggle into the core of historical analysis, Political Marxism suggests a reinterpretation of International Relations that can be understood in three steps. Firstly, a historical account of of the rise of the modern states-system through the transformations in feudal geopolitics after the rise of capitalism. Secondly, the development of a radically historicist methodology that is explains this system's operation through the conflict between classes and their respective spatialization strategies. At last, the justification for having class struggle at the core of the analysis, and of "class" as an analytical unit, comes from a return to Marx's work to see how he grounds the sociological notion of agency in his philosophy of praxis. Therefore, by reviving the distinctiong between "global" and "(inter)national" in the social relations that give birth to this very distinction, the discipline of International Relations assumes the form of Historical Sociology.Palavras-chave: Relações Internacionais, Marxismo, GeopolíticaKeywords: International Relations, Marxism, GeopoliticsRecebido em 24 de Abril de 2017 | Aceito em 07 de Agosto de 2017Received on April 24, 2017 | Accepted on August 7, 2017 DOI: 10.12957/rmi.2016.28437 


2018 ◽  
Vol 212 (1) ◽  
pp. 241-266
Author(s):  
Dr. Suhad S. Sahib

After the finishing of the research, we found the following results: The writer has sought to search for what they were through the heroines were often open text voice of equality, and take the heroines of women's rejecting voices the marginalization and persecution and to advocate openness to the world, it owes a world governed by traditions and superstitions. Touched on topics of interest to women crossing of the suffering of Arab women that hurt of sexual oppression, spinsterhood, and the violence of the man, her novel represent a cry against feminist ideas of traditional and stereotypical suffered by mothers in the stillness and silence. Taken from the body axis of subjects and penetrated the depth of the social relations and psychological generated through it, but most of her novels are breaking taboos has boldly as high in the description of intimate relations. - The masculine power is considered as the strategic entrance to the persecution of feminist is the central authority and control over the oppressed in society and especially the Algerian society, especially as this was the authority is the authority of the Father. Did not denounce the authority of the Father, but long-pen authority of the husband and brother. Masculine authority is in the eyes of the writer is the authority racist dictatorship, they are calling for the lost harmony between the female and masculine power, they are rejecting the personality of the woman in Haramlik or Psychological tension which is necessary characters and suffering from spiritual unity in spite of the presence of the man, the husband. Then enter into a world of utopia to achieve what cannot be achieved on the ground. At the level of the language we note that it choose the language appropriate to the contents of that address Sometimes it tends to discipline and sometimes tend to slang, but it did not disturb the nerve, especially with male photographed moments of intimate relationships.


2021 ◽  
Vol 32 (4) ◽  
pp. 518-537
Author(s):  
Milos Jovanovic

The paper compares Pierre Bourdieu?s sociological approach with the one developed by Peter Berger and Thomas Luckmann. The aim of the paper is to identify the complementarities and incongruences of these approaches. The main similarity consists in the intention to ?dialectically? overcome/bridge the gap between ?objectivism? and ?subjectivism? in social theory. Another parallel includes a negative attitude towards the relativistic tendencies of postmodernism. These authors share the thematization of: the body as a locus of social influences, the centrality of language in social life, the social functions of knowledge, and the importance of power in social relations. Differences in theorizing are attributed to the different intellectual, theoretical, and socio-cultural contexts in which these scientists operated. The divergences of these theoretical approaches become evident when one examines the different meaning and significance attached to the concepts of individuation, structure, action, habitus and habitualization, structure of relevance and relation of common-sense and scientific knowledge. Finally, there is a visible difference in political views: Bourdieu was a critic ?from the left,? while Berger and Luckmann were self-proclaimed liberal conservatives.


Author(s):  
Naeem Inayatullah ◽  
David L. Blaney

Heterodox work in Global Political Economy (GPE) finds its motive force in challenging the ontological atomism of International Political Economy (IPE) orthodoxy. Various strains of heterodoxy that have grown out of dependency theory and World-Systems Theory (WST), for example, emphasize the social whole: Individual parts are given form and meaning within social relations of domination produced by a history of violence and colonial conquest. An atomistic approach, they stress, seems designed to ignore this history of violence and relations of domination by making bargaining among independent units the key to explaining the current state of international institutions. For IPE, it is precisely this atomistic approach, largely inspired by the ostensible success of neoclassical economics, which justifies its claims to scientific rigor. International relations can be modeled as a market-like space, in which individual actors, with given preferences and endowments, bargain over the character of international institutional arrangements. Heterodox scholars’ treatment of social processes as indivisible wholes places them beyond the pale of acceptable scientific practice. Heterodoxy appears, then, as the constitutive outside of IPE orthodoxy.Heterodox GPE perhaps reached its zenith in the 1980s. Just as heterodox work was being cast out from the temple of International Relations (IR), heterodox scholars, building on earlier work, produced magisterial studies that continue to merit our attention. We focus on three texts: K. N. Chaudhuri’s Asia Before Europe (1990), Eric Wolf’s Europe and the People Without History (1982), and L. S. Stavrianos’s Global Rift (1981). We select these texts for their temporal and geographical sweep and their intellectual acuity. While Chaudhuri limits his scope to the Indian Ocean over a millennium, Wolf and Stavrianos attempt an anthropology and a history, respectively, of European expansion, colonialism, and the rise of capitalism in the modern era. Though the authors combine different elements of material, political, and social life, all three illustrate the power of seeing the “social process” as an “indivisible whole,” as Schumpeter discusses in the epigram below. “Economic facts,” the region, or time period they extract for detailed scrutiny are never disconnected from the “great stream” or process of social relations. More specifically, Chaudhuri’s work shows notably that we cannot take for granted the distinct units that comprise a social whole, as does the IPE orthodoxy. Rather, such units must be carefully assembled by the scholar from historical evidence, just as the institutions, practices, and material infrastructure that comprise the unit were and are constructed by people over the longue durée. Wolf starts with a world of interaction, but shows that European expansion and the rise and spread of capitalism intensified cultural encounters, encompassing them all within a global division of labor that conditioned the developmental prospects of each in relation to the others. Stavrianos carries out a systematic and relational history of the First and Third Worlds, in which both appear as structural positions conditioned by a capitalist political economy. By way of conclusion, we suggest that these three works collectively inspire an effort to overcome the reification and dualism of agents and structures that inform IR theory and arrive instead at “flow.”


2021 ◽  

We need new analytical tools to understand the turbulent times in which we live, and identify the directions in which international politics will evolve. This volume discusses how engaging with Emanuel Adler's social theory of cognitive evolution could potentially achieve these objectives. Eminent scholars of International Relations explore various aspects of Adler's theory, evaluating its potential contributions to the study of world orders and IR theory more generally. Each chapter focuses on a different aspect of the social theory of cognitive evolution, such as power, morality, materiality, narratives, and practices, and identifies new theoretical vistas that help break new ground in International Relations. In the concluding chapter, Adler responds, engaging in a rich dialogue with the contributors. This volume will appeal to scholars and advanced students of International Relations theory, especially evolutionary and constructivist approaches.


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