Religious violence, gender and post-secular counterterrorism

2020 ◽  
Vol 96 (2) ◽  
pp. 279-303
Author(s):  
Katherine E Brown

Abstract This article argues that despite the framing of religion in the discipline and practice of International Relations (IR) as a force for good, or a cause of evil in the world, IR fails to treat religion on its own terms (as sui generis). With a few exceptions, the discipline has pigeonholed religion as a variable of IR, one that can be discussed as one might GDP, HIV, or numbers of nuclear missiles: measurable, with causality and essential properties. IR has also tended to treat religion as equivalent to features of global politics that it already recognizes—as an institution or community or ideology, for example—but in doing so, it misses intrinsic (and arguably unique) elements of religion. Drawing on feminist insights about how gender works in IR, namely that gender is a construct, performative and structural, this article argues a similar case for religion. A reframing of religion is applied to the case of Daesh (so-called Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, ISIS) to show how our understanding of the organization changes when we view religion differently. The implications for counterterrorism policies if religion is viewed as more than a variable are explored in light of recent territorial and military losses for Daesh. The article therefore proposes a post-secular counterterrorism approach.

Author(s):  
Lior Herman

Oil and natural gas have frequently been used as instruments of foreign policy. While scholars have given substantial attention to the economics of exports and imports, much less has been paid to theorizing how energy can be its own type of carrot or stick, influencing international relations around the world. Future scholarship should focus on developing foreign policy theories specific to energy, including renewable energy sources and drawing on constructivist theories. In addition, the role of transit states, energy firms, sovereign wealth funds, and civil society should be more carefully theorized. Future theoretical and empirical research should also focus on the use of electricity and renewable energies as foreign policy instruments and their effects on global politics.


2020 ◽  
Vol 26 (1_suppl) ◽  
pp. 14-38
Author(s):  
Chengxin Pan

This article stands at the intersection between the relational turn in International Relations (IR) and the quantum turn in the social sciences (and more recently in IR as well). The relational turn draws much-needed attention to the centrality of relations in global politics, yet its imprecise conceptualization of whole-part relations casts shadow over its relational ontological foundation. The quantum turn, meanwhile, challenges the observed–observer dichotomy as well as the classical views about causality, determinacy, and measurement. Yet, despite their common stance against the Newtonian ontology, the relational and quantum turns have largely neglected each other at least in the IR context. This article aims to bridge this gap by introducing a quantum holographic approach to relationality. Drawing on theoretical physicist David Bohm’s work on quantum theory and his key concepts about wholeness and the implicate order, the article argues that the world is being holographically (trans)formed: its parts are not only parts of the whole, but also enfold the whole, like in a hologram. This quantum holographic ontology contributes to both a clearer differentiation between internal/implicate relations and external/explicate relations and a renewed emphasis on wholeness and whole-part duality. In doing so, it not only provides new conceptual tools to rethink IR as holographic relations which involve the dynamic processes and mechanisms of enfoldment and unfoldment, but also has important policy and ethical implications for the conduct of “foreign” relations and for transforming the way we think about identity, survival, relationship, and responsibility.


2020 ◽  
Vol 46 (3) ◽  
pp. 337-349 ◽  
Author(s):  
Shine Choi

AbstractMarysia Zalewski's Feminist International Relations: Exquisite Corpse on feminism and global politics directly addresses matters of style, that is, questions of language and representation that foreground the invisible yet so palpable aspect of how meanings circulate. This article puts Zalewski's work in conversation with Trinh Minh-ha's D-Passage: The Digital Way and Lynda Barry's What It Is that similarly push the limits of how we craft feminist arguments. These feminists show how styles of writing and thinking, and how ideas gain shape to circulate matter in academic sites of knowledge as much as in art and culture. Building on these works, I put forward the thesis: to theorise is to feel out boundaries and question the questions we encounter that perennially relegate women as taint and malaise. I further explore this thesis by highlighting the visual dimensions of writing and thinking, in particular, what drawing, and drawing lines that shape ideas do. I focus on caricatures from the currently evolving North Korean nuclear crisis to loosen up the ways we go about thinking about war and politics wherein thinking is recognised not so much as a craft to be perfected but a democratic form of being in the world.


2007 ◽  
Vol 40 (3) ◽  
pp. 777-778 ◽  
Author(s):  
Edelgard Mahant

Interregionalism and International Relations, Heiner Hänggi, Ralf Roloff and Jürgen Rüland, eds., Routledge Advances in International Relations and Global Politics; London: Routledge, 2006, pp. 364.How do we explain a widespread international phenomenon that only occasionally contributes to the geo-strategic or economic interests of the participating states? This book is about interregionalism, the international organizations and institutions that link regional organizations from more than one region of the world (as, for example, ASEM, also known as Asia-Europe Meeting) or that span across more than one region, such as APEC (Asia-Pacific Economic Co-operation) or FTAA (Free Trade Area of the Americas). The fact is that few of these institutions have accomplished much in concrete terms, yet they continue to proliferate, as the four-and-a-half page list of acronyms at the beginning of this volume amply demonstrates.


Politics ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 37 (1) ◽  
pp. 5-18 ◽  
Author(s):  
William Clapton ◽  
Laura J Shepherd

People learn about global politics not (solely or even mostly) from conventional teaching in the discipline of International Relations (IR) but from popular culture. We use the television series Game of Thrones to expand upon this premise. We show how representations of the gendered foundations of political authority can be found in popular culture in ways that challenge the division of such knowledge in IR. Game of Thrones and other cultural texts potentially enable different ways of thinking about the world that subvert both the disciplinary mechanisms that divide up knowledge and the related marginalisation of various knowledge claims.


Author(s):  
Rosalba Icaza

Decolonial thinking has introduced border thinking as an epistemological position that contributes to a shift in the forms of knowing in which the world is thought from the concrete incarnated experiences of colonial difference and the wounds left. In this chapter, Argentinean feminist philosopher Maria Lugones’ (1992) interpretation of Gloria Anzaldua’s Borderlands foregrounds its main argument: border thinking as an embodied consciousness in which dualities and vulnerability are central for a decolonisation of how we think about the geo and body politics of knowledge, coloniality, political economy and of course, gender in International Relations and Global Politics.


2008 ◽  
Vol 19 (2) ◽  
pp. 161-189
Author(s):  
Dusko Prelevic

The Cosmopolitan idea of the World Government is quite rarely proposed in theory of international relations. Kant already claimed that this idea oscillates between anarchy and brute despotism. This is the reason why he described this standpoint as naive. The author tries to show that alternative theories, such as realism, Kantian and Rawlsian versions of statism and the conception of multilayered scheme of sovereignty, lead to more serious problems. The first one is rejected for the reason of the 'prisoner's dilemma' it implies. It is also argued that the Kantian version of statism is either inconsistent, or allows for totalitarian states if they have peaceful international politics. Many liberals reject Rawls's position because of his tolerant attitude towards 'decent peoples'. On the other hand, the conception of multilayered scheme of sovereignty is dismissed because of the non-existence of a unified decision-making procedure in global politics. At the end of the paper, the author defends Classical Cosmopolitanism theory from Kant's objections and indicates the main obstacles to its realization.


2021 ◽  
pp. arabic cover-english cover
Author(s):  
محمد أبوغزله

This study aims at: First, examining the various opinions of the traditional theory of foreign relations from the perspective of the true Islamic religion, which historically was a reflection of the periods of the Islamic Conquests, and the reality of conflicts between the Islamic State, throughout its ages, and its enemies. Second, developing a realistic and a more adequate theoretical framework that consists with the current assumptions and concepts of international relations; but without contradicting with the principles governing the external relations of Muslim States in the past. It was not within the aims of this study to contradict jurisprudential opinions or develop others. Rather, it is an attempt to provide a better and more realistic understanding to the relations between Muslims, and other countries and societies; then, formulating the various opinions that we describe here-for the purpose of study only- as non-Traditionalism, within a framework through which the external behavior of Muslim societies or states can be interpreted from the perspective of the real teachings of Islam, not only normatively, according to the rule of "what should be; but also realistically, according to the contemporary circumstances and developments; so that any conflict between the Old, which had its legal and logical justifications, and the New, that requires more practical assumptions, will be resolved. The study has shown that some of the views of the traditional theory, specifically the division of the World into two domains, and the consideration of fight as an organizing principle of foreign relations in Islam, are not realistic. In addition, the Quranic texts that deal with this issue indicate, clearly, that peace is the legal basis for these relations. Accordingly, five general principles underpinning the contemporary Islamic theory of international relations have been defined, namely: The unity of the World on the basis that Islam is a global religion; peace is the principal that governs and regulates these relations; building forces for deterrence; and using power (force) in certain cases, specifically for self-defense, defending home/country and religion; and finally rejecting preemptive wars. Key Words: International Relations in Islam, War and Peace, Traditional Theory, Contemporary Theory, Preemptive Wars. تهدف هذه الدارسة إلى: أولاً، مراجعة آراءِ النظرية التقليدية الخاصة بالعلاقات الخارجية من منظور الدين الإسلامي الحنيف؛ والتي كانت تاريخياً انعكاساً لفترات الفتوحات الإسلامية، ولواقع النزاعات بين الدولة الإسلامية في مراحلها المختلفة، وأعدائها من الدول والإمبراطوريات المنافسة. وثانيا، بلورة إطار نظري واقعي وملائم ينسجم ومعطيات العصر ومفاهيمه؛ ولكن دون أن يتعارض مع القواعد الحاكمة لعلاقات الدولة والمجتمعات الإسلامية الخارجية في السابق. ولم يكن من أهداف هذه الدراسة مطلقاً، مخالفة اجتهادات فقهية أو استحداث أخرى؛ وإنما هي محاولة لتقديم فهم أفضل، وأكثر واقعية، للعلاقات بين المسلمين، وبين غيرهم من الدول والمجتمعات؛ ومن ثم صياغة الآراء، التي يمكننا وصفها هنا –لأغراض التمييز فقط-بالغير تقليدية، في إطار يُمكن من خلاله تفسير السلوك الخارجي للدولة من منظور الدين الإسلامي، ليس قِيَميّا وفق قاعدة "ما يجب أن يكون" فقط،-كما هو شائع في معظم أو ربما كل الدراسات التي تناولت هذا الموضوع المهم-، وإنما أيضاً واقعياً، وفق ما تفرضه الظروف والمستجدات المعاصرة؛ بحيث يُزال أي تعارض بين القديم، الذي كان له ظروفه ومبرراته الشرعية والمنطقية؛ والمستجد، الذي يتطلب طروحات أكثر عملية. وقد أظهرت الدراسة أن بعض آراء النظرية التقليدية، وتحديداً الخاصة بتقسيم العالم إلى دارين، واعتبار القتال أساس حاكم ومنظم للعلاقات الخارجية في الإسلام، ليست واقعية. كما أن النصوص القرآنية التي عالجت هذه المسألة، تشير بوضوح إلى أن السلم هو الأساس الشرعي لهذه العلاقات. وعليه فقد تم تحديد خمسة مبادئ عامة تقوم عليها النظرية الإسلامية المعاصرة للعلاقات الدولية، وهي: وحدة العالم على أساس أن الإسلام دين عالمي؛ والسلم كأساس حاكم ومنظم لهذه العلاقات؛ وبناء القوة للردع؛ واستخدامها في حالات محددة، وهي الدفاع عن النفس والدين والبلاد؛ ورفض الحروب الوقائية. كلمات دالة: علاقات دولية في الإسلام، السلم والحرب، النظرية التقليدية، النظرية المعاصرة، حروب وقائية.


Author(s):  
Jakana L. Thomas

Women have a complicated relationship with violence. While they are affected by conflict disproportionately, they are also perpetrators and enablers of violence. These female militants are not rare nor are they aberrations. Countless women have contributed to wars fought from antiquity to the present. Yet, their impact on the security realm is often overlooked or underestimated. This oversight is consequential as it is impossible to truly understand international relations without considering women’s diverse contributions to global politics. This chapter examines female participation in the execution of political violence across time and space and discusses how gender diversity in conflicts across the world affects U.S. national security.


2021 ◽  
pp. 3-25
Author(s):  
Stephanie Lawson

This introductory chapter provides an overview of global politics, starting with an account of the global political sphere as a specialized area of study—more conventionally known as the discipline of International Relations (IR)—and including an explanation of the distinction between the ‘global’ and the ‘international’. It also addresses the extent to which the world is ‘globalized’, even as some pundits herald a halt to globalization and a return to the closed politics of nationalism. The chapter then explores the history of globalization, which provides an essential backdrop to the understanding of the phenomenon in the present, and the challenges to it. This includes attention to the interweaving of globalization’s political, economic, social, and cultural dimensions and some of the implications for the current state-based world order. Finally, the chapter considers the role of theory and method, including concerns raised by the notion of a ‘post-truth’ world.


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