International relations, sociolinguistics and the ‘everyday’: a linguistic ethnography of peace-building through language education

The professionalization of transitional justice (TJ) has received extensive academic attention in TJ and related international relations and peacebuilding scholarship. This article adds an element that has received hardly any attention: namely the presence of activism even among professional and usually donor-funded TJ work. I argue that noticing activism in professional contexts requires attention to the ‘everyday’, meaning to life in between, aside and beyond high politics and officially important actors, actions, processes and events. Based on field research in Sierra Leone and Kenya, I describe and discuss everyday examples of a specific form of activism, namely tacit activism that I encountered with three key interlocutors, one Sierra Leonean and two Kenyan nationals involved in professional donor-funded TJ work. Their activism was ’tacit’ in the sense that it was not part of their official project activities and my interlocutors did not advertise their extra plans and efforts to (prospective) donors. And yet, it was precisely through these tacit plans and efforts that they hoped to meet at least some of the expectations that had been raised in the context of professional TJ projects.

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Historical materialism and international studies: theorising the politics of struggle in the everyday world

International Relations ◽

10.1177/0047117821991618 ◽

2021 ◽

pp. 004711782199161

Author(s):

Cemal Burak Tansel

Keyword(s):

International Relations ◽

International Political Economy ◽

Historical Materialism ◽

Global Capitalism ◽

International Studies ◽

Historical Materialist ◽

The Everyday ◽

Everyday World ◽

Global War ◽

Materialist Feminist

This forum brings together critical engagements with Andreas Bieler and Adam David Morton’s Global Capitalism, Global War, Global Crisis to assess the prospects and limits of historical materialism in International Studies. The authors’ call for a ‘necessarily historical materialist moment’ in International Studies is interrogated by scholars working with historical materialist, feminist and decolonial frameworks in and beyond International Relations (IR)/International Political Economy (IPE). This introductory essay situates the book in relation to the wider concerns of historical materialist IR/IPE and outlines how the contributors assess the viability of Bieler and Morton’s historical materialist project.

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INNOVATIVE APPROACHES TO THE TEACHING OF FOREIGN LANGUAGES AT LEVELS B2 - C1 (FROM THE EXPERIENCE OF THE TEXTBOOK)

MGIMO Review of International Relations ◽

10.24833/2071-8160-2013-6-33-49-61 ◽

2013 ◽

pp. 49-61

Author(s):

E. B. Yastrebova ◽

D. A. Kryachkov

Keyword(s):

Foreign Language ◽

International Relations ◽

Teaching And Learning ◽

Communicative Competence ◽

Language Teaching ◽

Language Education ◽

Foreign Language Teaching ◽

Foreign Languages ◽

Per Se ◽

Basic Features

The article analyzes how professors and students of MGIMO-University’s School of International Relations perceive innovations in language teaching.As a synergy system, language teaching relies on selfdevelopment based to a great extent on innovations, which can be initiated either from the inside or from the outside. To identify the basic features of innovations in foreign language teaching, the authors conducted a survey of professors and students of the School of international Relations. The results suggest that for most respondents the main purpose of innovations in foreign language teaching and learning is to attain a significantly higher level of communicative competence, which is seen as feasible only if fundamentally new teaching materials and computer technologies are used. According to the survey, the success of innovations largely depends on their source (innovations ‘from the top’ and innovations ‘from the bottom’) and commitment on the part of professors and students to participate in them, the latter being often prompted by their discontent with the state of play. Innovations ‘from above’ tend to be more encompassing and affect the entire system of language education, whereas innovations ‘from the bottom concern the teaching process per se. Though the survey suggests that it is innovations ‘from the top’ that tend to be more successful, the authors conclude that language education as a synergy system adopts only non-shattering innovations that address its most vital needs, thus encouraging its sustainable development.

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Pissing On the Past: The Highland Clearances, Effigial Resistance and the Everyday Politics of the Urinal

Millennium Journal of International Studies ◽

10.1177/0305829819840422 ◽

2019 ◽

Vol 47 (3) ◽

pp. 444-469 ◽

Cited By ~ 3

Author(s):

Robert A. Saunders ◽

Rhys Crilley

Keyword(s):

International Relations ◽

Human Condition ◽

The Past ◽

Historical Figures ◽

The Everyday ◽

Political Intervention ◽

Highland Clearances ◽

Hautes Terres ◽

Public Toilets

When and where one can urinate is increasingly politicised around the globe. As an example of bio-political power, the provision, regulation and access to public toilets reflects larger structures in any given society. However, there is another side to micturition, that is the use of urine as a manifestation of bodily power over another/others. This article analyses the politics of the urinal through a close reading of the men’s toilet in The Lismore pub in Partick, Scotland, thus bringing together these two threads via the concept of everyday effigial resistance. In our interrogation of a politicised urinal that asks users to ‘piss’ on historical figures associated with the Highland Clearances, we aim to push International Relations to follow Enloe’s call for the study of ‘mundane practices… and the most intimate spaces’ by considering the most banal aspects of the human condition as part of its remit. Our case study serves as an explicit political intervention, one which through its geographic and geopolitical scales makes an argument for engaging with the mundane, vernacular and vulgar in everyday IR. Pisser sur le passé : les dédouanements des hautes terres, la résistance à l’effigie et la politique quotidienne de l’urinoir

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Marking failure, making space: feminist interventions in Security Council policy

International Affairs ◽

10.1093/ia/iiz179 ◽

2019 ◽

Vol 95 (6) ◽

pp. 1289-1306

Author(s):

Sam Cook

Keyword(s):

International Relations ◽

Security Policy ◽

International Politics ◽

Theory And Practice ◽

Starting Point ◽

The Everyday ◽

Peace And Security ◽

Creative Interventions ◽

Exquisite Corpse ◽

Central Station

Abstract Feminist interventions in international politics are, more often than not, understood (and visible) as interventions in relation to policy documents. These policies—in this case the United Nations Security Council's resolutions on Women, Peace and Security—often feature as the end point of feminist advocacy efforts or as the starting point for feminist analysis and critique. In this article the author responds to the provocations throughout Marysia Zalewski's work to think (and tell) the spaces of international politics differently, in this case by working with the concept of feminist failure as it is produced in feminist policy critique. Inspired by Zalewski's Feminist International Relations: exquisite corpse, the article explores the material and imaginary spaces in which both policies and critique are produced. It picks up and reflects upon a narrative refrain recognizable in feminist critiques on Women, Peace and Security policy—that we must not make war safe for women—as a way to reflect on the inevitability of failure and the ostensible boundaries between theory and practice. The author takes permission from Zalewski's creative interventions and her recognition of the value of the ‘detritus of the everyday’—here a walk from New York's Grand Central Station to the UN Headquarters, musings on the flash of a particular shade of blue, and the contents of a footnoted acknowledgement, begin to trace an international political space that is produced through embodied and quotidian practice.

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The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Politics and International Relations

10.1093/acref/9780199670840.001.0001 ◽

2018 ◽

Cited By ~ 6

Keyword(s):

International Relations ◽

Political Theory ◽

Open Economy ◽

International Institutions ◽

Security Studies ◽

Peace Building ◽

Fourth Edition ◽

General Reader ◽

Current Affairs ◽

New Material

Over 1,700 entriesWritten by a leading team of political scientists, this dictionary embraces the multi-disciplinary spectrum of political theory including political thinkers, history, institutions, theories, and schools of thought, as well as notable current affairs that have shaped attitudes to politics.Fully updated for its fourth edition, it has had its coverage of international relations heavily revised and expanded, reflected in its title change, and it includes a wealth of new material in areas such as international institutions, peace building, human security, security studies, global governance, and open economy politics.The dictionary is international in its coverage and will prove invaluable to students and academics studying politics and related disciplines, as well as politicians, journalists, and the general reader seeking clarification of political terms.

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Building a Ukrainian Identity in Odessa: Negotiation of Markers and Informal Nationalism

Otoritas Jurnal Ilmu Pemerintahan ◽

10.26618/ojip.v8i1.1014 ◽

2018 ◽

Vol 8 (1) ◽

pp. 1

Author(s):

Abel Polese

Keyword(s):

Identity Construction ◽

Black Sea ◽

Nation Building ◽

Language Education ◽

The Black Sea ◽

Ordinary People ◽

National Narratives ◽

Construction Of Identity ◽

The Everyday ◽

The Way

A large and established body of literature on nation building in post-socialist spaces has initially put emphasis on state-centred construction of identity references and markers such as language, education or institutions and governance. In contrast, a recent stream of scholarship has attempted to bring agency into identity debates to propose new tools and approaches that can be used in the study of identity construction. This article is a further exploration of the latter position. It looks at the way identities are constructed, and renegotiated, at the everyday level, by ordinary people, by illustrating the competition between Russian and Ukrainian languages in Odessa, a Ukrainian city on the Black sea, to look at the synergy generated by the competition between local and national narratives.

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Preventive diplomacy in international law and its implementation on the territories of former Yugoslavia

Medjunarodni problemi ◽

10.2298/medjp0902112s ◽

2009 ◽

Vol 61 (1-2) ◽

pp. 112-140

Author(s):

Maja Sahadzic

Keyword(s):

International Relations ◽

United Nations ◽

International Law ◽

Secretary General ◽

Peace Building ◽

Former Yugoslavia ◽

The United Nations ◽

The Cold War ◽

The Impact ◽

Political Priority

The term preventive diplomacy was first used in the United Nations in the late fifties when Secretary General Dag Hammarskj?ld 'invented' it to describe the remaining function that the United Nations could apply in the bipolar system of international relations. Secretary General Boutros Boutros Ghali included it in the Agenda for Peace in 1992 putting it in the same rank with peace-keeping, peace?making and peace-building concepts, thus giving preventive diplomacy a high political priority. In this paper the author deals with the following questions: the impact of the Cold War on the emergence of preventive diplomacy, meaning of preventive diplomacy, international documents and institutions related to preventive diplomacy and the attempts to implement preventive diplomacy in the former Yugoslavia.

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Engaging non-state armed actors in state- and peace-building: options and strategies

International Review of the Red Cross ◽

10.1017/s1816383112000148 ◽

2011 ◽

Vol 93 (883) ◽

pp. 603-621 ◽

Cited By ~ 14

Author(s):

Claudia Hofmann ◽

Ulrich Schneckener

Keyword(s):

International Relations ◽

International Politics ◽

International Relations Theory ◽

Peace Building ◽

Degree Of Dispersion ◽

External Actors ◽

Armed Actors

AbstractArmed actors dominate contemporary conflict environments dramatically. Their degree of dispersion, influence, and effect on international politics make it necessary to establish strategies for interaction with them. This article makes a contribution by assessing particular strategies and their suitability and applicability with regard to specific actors. First, it delineates options for dealing with armed actors based on three perspectives from international relations theory: realist, institutionalist, and constructivist. Second, it matches these perspectives to the capabilities of international actors. Finally, it offers an assessment of the difficulties that arise from the plurality of forms of armed actors, as well as of external actors.

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