scholarly journals Engaging the “Animal Question” in International Relations

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tore Fougner
Keyword(s):  
International Relations ◽  
Subject Matter ◽  
Cultural Context ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Human Animal ◽  
Animal Question

Abstract By raising the “animal question” in International Relations (IR), this essay seeks to contribute not only to put animals and human–animal relations on the IR agenda, but also to move the field in a less anthropocentric and non-speciesist direction. More specifically, the essay does three things: First, it makes animals visible within some of the main empirical realms conventionally treated as the subject matter of IR. Second, it reflects on IR's neglect of animals and human–animal relations in relation to both how IR has been constituted as a field and the broader socio-cultural context in which it is embedded. Third, it explores various ways in which IR scholars can start incorporating and take animals and human–animal relations seriously in studies on international relations.

scholarly journals On the subject matter of International Relations

2017 ◽  
Vol 43 (5) ◽  
pp. 898-917 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mathias Albert ◽  
Barry Buzan
Keyword(s):  
International Relations ◽  
Subject Matter ◽  
Final Section ◽  
Academic Discipline ◽  
Social World ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Subject

AbstractThis article deals with the subject matter of International Relations as an academic discipline. It addresses the issue of whether and how one or many realms could legitimately be claimed as the discipline’s prime subject. It first raises a number of problems associated with both identifying the subject matter of IR and ‘labelling’ the discipline in relation to competing terms and disciplines, followed by a discussion on whether, and to what degree, IR takes its identity from a confluence of disciplinary traditions or from a distinct methodology. It then outlines two possibilities that would lead to identifying IR as a discipline defined by a specific realm in distinction to other disciplines: (1) the ‘international’ as a specificrealmof the social world, functionally differentiated from other realms; (2) IR as being about everything in the social world above a particularscale. The final section discusses the implications of these views for the study of International Relations.

Challenges to Traditional International Relations Theory Posed by Environmental Change

2010 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hugh Dyer
Keyword(s):  
International Relations ◽  
Environmental Change ◽  
Subject Matter ◽  
International Relations Theory ◽  
The World ◽  
Practical Challenge ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Over Time

Changes in the environment can impact international relations theory, despite enjoying only a limited amount of attention from scholars of the discipline. The sorts of influence that may be identified include ontology, epistemology, concepts, and methods, all of these being related to varying perspectives on international relations. It is likely that the most profound implications arise at the ontological level, since this establishes assumptions about, for example, whether the world we wish to understand is both political and ecological. However, more recently the recognition of the practical challenge presented by the environment has become widespread, though it has not yet translated into a significant impact on the discipline of international relations, even when theoretical implications are noted. It is now almost obligatory to include the environment in any list of modern international relations concerns, as over time it has become necessary to include peace, underdevelopment, gender, or race, as they quite rightly became recognized as significant aspects of the field. Moreover, the environment, as a relatively novel subject matter, has naturally brought some critique and innovation to the field. However, studies of the environment are also subject to such descriptors as “mainstream” and “radical” in debates about how best to tackle the subject. As is often the case, the debates are sharpest among those with the greatest interest in the subject.

scholarly journals Beyond Eurocentrism: Kautilya’s realism and India’s regional diplomacy

2021 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Arshid Iqbal Dar
Keyword(s):  
International Relations ◽  
South Asia ◽  
Subject Matter ◽  
Strategic Culture ◽  
Ancient India ◽  
The Subject

AbstractThe article is a modest attempt to deparochialize Eurocentrism embedded within the discipline of International Relations by examining Kautilya and his Arthashastra. Kautilya’s text serves as a potent non-Western theoretical and conceptual reservoir to engage with and thereby to interrogate the Eurocentric realist tradition. The subject matter of Arthashastra precisely earns him the title of ‘first great political realist’ because much of the bedrock assumptions of realism that Europe came to know very late, Kautilya had in ancient India grasped them. Therefore, his Arthasastran realism offers an indigenous theoretical toolkit to examine India’s strategic culture. In fact, Kautilya’s realism is there in the DNA of India’s strategic culture and has been the default strategy for South Asia as India still perceives the region through the historical sub-continental prism. Nevertheless, its application varied across leadership. However, the rise of Modi had revitalized the dynamic of Arthashastra by openly and boldly embracing Kautilya as vividly underscored by his ‘Neighborhood First’ diplomacy in South Asia. Thus Kautilya apart from being a non-Western begetter of the realist tradition offers a reliable understanding of India’s regional diplomacy in the subcontinent.

The Study of International Politics: A Survey of Trends and Developments

1952 ◽  
Vol 14 (4) ◽  
pp. 433-467 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kenneth W. Thompson
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
International Relations ◽  
Subject Matter ◽  
Academic Discipline ◽  
Integrative Approach ◽  
Evolution And Development ◽  
The Social ◽  
Integrated Curricula ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The One

The question was raised at the end of World War II as to whether or not international relations could stand as a separate field of study. Views were expressed by scholars and teachers in history and political science to the effect that in substance there was nothing peculiar to the subject matter of international relations which did not fall under other separate fields of social studies. At some universities and colleges there were dissenters to this prevailing viewpoint. Their particular philosophy manifested itself in attempts to create and establish integrated curricula under academic committees or departments dedicated to the broad generalized study of die subject matter of the field. It is still too early to pass judgment with any finality on the merits of these two points of view, the one viewing international relations as a mere duplication of the subject matter of many fields; the odier insisting that diere must be an ordering and integrative approach to die field. No serious student would presume to claim that die study of international relations had arrived at die stage of an independent academic discipline. However, there have been three significant developments within no more than a single generation which illuminate certain aspects of this problem. First we have witnessed the evolution and development of a point of focus or core in the field. Secondly, diere have been die first faint and feeble beginnings of attempts to create a mediodology appropriate for the field, or at least to determine those related mediodologies in the social sciences whose methods and techniques could most usefully be appropriated for the study of persistent international issues. Thirdly, inventories have been drawn up by individual scholars, universities and institutes, of topics and concrete projects which would best serve in the development of general principles in the field and the validation of them dirough systematic inquiry.

scholarly journals The nature of the action undertaken by the UN Special Rapporteur on migrant rights . Selected issues and problems

2021 ◽  
pp. 151-168
Author(s):  
Iwona Wrońska
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
International Relations ◽  
Subject Matter ◽  
International Community ◽  
Special Role ◽  
Special Rapporteur ◽  
Host Countries ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Third Country Nationals

Despite the contribution they make to the life of host countries, migrants are often subjected to inappropriate or often cruel treatment because they are third-country nationals or are in an uncertain situation. The growing interest of the international community in the subject matter of human rights means that particular attention is now being devoted to migrant rights. The activity of the UN Special Rapporteur on migrant rights, who operates within the framework of the so-called Special Procedures established by the Human Rights Coun­cil, plays a special role among the mechanisms of protection of migrant rights in international relations.

International Relations: The Disputed Search for Method

1972 ◽  
Vol 34 (1) ◽  
pp. 40-66 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard B. Finnegan
Keyword(s):  
International Relations ◽  
Subject Matter ◽  
Traditional Approach ◽  
Political Realism ◽  
Scientific Approach ◽  
The Subject

The study of international relations has passed through a series of intellectual controversies. These have included the debate between political realism and political idealism and the debate as to whether international relations is a distinct discipline or the subject matter of several other disciplines. Now the discipline is debating appropriate methodology. Proponents of a traditional approach and proponents of a scientific approach both contend for their particular methodology.

Fiction in the Magazines

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gillian Hughes
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Subject Matter ◽  
Cultural Context ◽  
Jane Austen ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Formed Part

This chapter focuses on magazine fiction. Magazine fiction before 1820 has been viewed as irredeemably derivative and ephemeral. Notions of the canon, however, are now wider than they were and there is more interest in the typical as well as in the best fiction of the period. Novelists themselves read magazine fiction, which formed part of the cultural context from which their work developed and in which it may be understood: specific strands of eighteenth-century magazine fiction share ground with the writings of Jane Austen, for instance, or anticipate the subject matter of the Brontës. Indeed, the emergence of the professionally written tale in the 1820s can be seen as meeting a growing desire for more sophisticated magazine fiction and as providing for the needs of those who were attempting to produce it.

A normative enquiry in international relations: the case of ‘pacta sunt servanda’

1983 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 35-54 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hidemi Suganami
Keyword(s):  
International Relations ◽  
Subject Matter ◽  
Academic Discipline ◽  
Division Of Labour ◽  
International Context ◽  
The World ◽  
Moral Problems ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Normative Considerations ◽  
Moral Philosophers

A study of ethics must be regarded as incomplete if it does not offer tools for analysing moral problems arising in the international context, particularly in an age of growing interdependence between the peoples of the world. Similarly, a study of international relations must be thought to be imperfect if it leaves out normative questions.To this it may be objected that International Relations is an empirical discipline, and that it can legitimately leave normative considerations to moral philosophers. However, such a division of labour is unfortunately more likely to result in mere division rather than efficient co-operation. Moreover, international relations, the subject-matter, is logically, as well as historically, prior to International Relations, the academic discipline. Therefore, a study of international relations, undertaken by International Relations experts, cannot be claimed to be complete if it neglects those aspects of the subject-matter which have occupied the minds of many thinkers who do not consider themselves as IR specialists.

Edgar Allan Poe's Aesthetic Theory, the Insanity Debate, and the Ethically Oriented Dynamics of ““The Tell-Tale Heart””

2008 ◽  
Vol 63 (3) ◽  
pp. 321-345 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dan Shen
Keyword(s):  
Subject Matter ◽  
Structural Design ◽  
Cultural Context ◽  
Edgar Allan Poe ◽  
Insanity Defense ◽  
Aesthetic Theory ◽  
Prose Fiction ◽  
Prose Narratives ◽  
The Subject

For over one hundred years, critics have widely regarded Edgar Allan Poe as an aesthetician of literature as a whole, which has to a great extent oriented the interpretation of his prose narratives. In this essay I revisit Poe's relevant essays and reveal that Poe's aesthetic conception of the subject matter of poetry is due to poetry's peculiar generic characteristics not shared by prose fiction. Poe makes an unequivocal distinction in prose fiction between structural design and subject matter. While putting the tale's structural design completely on a par with that of poetry, Poe treats the tale's subject matter as different in nature from that of poetry——as ““antagonistical”” to Beauty and often based on the ethically related, though not ethically confined, ““Truth.”” In this essay I argue that if some of Poe's tales convey a moral, then that moral tends to be implicit and inseparable from the structural ““unity of effect,”” and the tale may react or respond to the cultural context in a certain way. In Poe's ““The Tell-Tale Heart”” we can see a characteristic interaction among a structurally unified dramatic irony, an implicit moral, and the historical ““insanity defense”” controversy.

scholarly journals Determinanty bezpieczeństwa narodowego. Nowe zagrożenia – nowe wyzwania

2018 ◽  
pp. 39-44
Author(s):  
Maciej Bąk
Keyword(s):  
International Relations ◽  
National Security ◽  
Subject Matter ◽  
Social Life ◽  
Security System ◽  
Spatial Range ◽  
The World ◽  
The Subject ◽  
New Challenges ◽  
Different Parts

This paper analyzes the definitions and characterizes the elements related to national security. The author pays particular attention to the change of determinants and threats which significantly influence the way in which a given state’s security is perceived, and how it evolves. In the author’s opinion, at present one can observe the tendency to expand the subject matter and spatial range of national security in international relations, which follows from the internationalization of various realms of social life. It is impossible to improve the national security of a given state while tolerating the disturbances of peace that result from the widening gaps between different parts of the world, or unsolved regional and local conflicts. The main purpose of this paper is to draw the reader’s attention to the changes resulting from the need to adjust the national security system to the new challenges; the changes that not only aim to defy these challenges, but also to prevent the factors that generate them.

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