Critical Approaches to International Relations

2022 ◽  
Author(s):  
M. Kürşad Özekin ◽  
Engin Sune
Keyword(s):  
International Relations ◽  
Critical Approaches

American Grand Strategy in the Indo Pacific: Plus ça change?

2019 ◽  
Vol 92 (4) ◽  
pp. 741-757
Author(s):  
Thomas S. Wilkins
Keyword(s):  
International Relations ◽  
Grand Strategy ◽  
Strategic Culture ◽  
Ir Theory ◽  
Theoretical Understanding ◽  
The Core ◽  
Rise Of China ◽  
Critical Approaches ◽  
The Rise Of China ◽  
American Grand Strategy

In an era of heightened great power competition, debates about American grand strategy in the Indo-Pacific region have returned to the fore. This review essay looks at three recent volumes that directly address such debates. After introducing the concept of grand strategy, Part I reviews each of the books individually in sequence, outlining their scope, contents, and contributions. Part II then integrates the contributions of each of the volumes into a broader discussion relating to four pertinent issues: American perspectives on "Asia"; international relations (IR) theory; American strategic culture; and the rise of China, before concluding. The books under review are to differing degrees orientated toward one of the core IR theory paradigms: realism (Green), liberalism (Campbell), and constructivism/ critical approaches (Kang). As such, read together, they contribute to a multi-faceted theoretical understanding of US grand strategy in the Indo Pacific that will be of significant value to both scholars and practitioners.

scholarly journals Self and other in critical international theory: assimilation, incommensurability and the paradox of critique

2010 ◽  
Vol 37 (1) ◽  
pp. 121-140 ◽  
Author(s):  
VASSILIOS PAIPAIS
Keyword(s):  
International Relations ◽  
The Self ◽  
The Other ◽  
Self And Other ◽  
International Theory ◽  
Critical Edge ◽  
Critical Approaches ◽  
And Function ◽  
The Way

AbstractThis article is principally concerned with the way some sophisticated critical approaches in International Relations (IR) tend to compromise their critical edge in their engagement with the self/other problematique. Critical approaches that understand critique as total non-violence towards, or unreflective affirmation of, alterity risk falling back into precritical paths. That is, either a particularistic, assimilative universalism with pretensions of true universality or a radical incommensurability and the impossibility of communication with the other. This is what this article understands as the paradox of the politics of critique. Instead, what is more important than seeking a final overcoming or dismissal of the self/other opposition is to gain the insight that it is the perpetual striving to preserve the tension and ambivalence between self and other that rescues both critique's authority and function.

Le monde de Pierre Bourdieu : Éléments pour une théorie sociale des Relations internationales

2008 ◽  
Vol 41 (3) ◽  
pp. 603-625 ◽  
Author(s):  
Frédéric Mérand ◽  
Vincent Pouliot
Keyword(s):  
International Relations ◽  
Pierre Bourdieu ◽  
World Politics ◽  
Three Dimensions ◽  
Relational Ontology ◽  
Theory Of Practice ◽  
Théorie Sociale ◽  
Social Fields ◽  
Critical Approaches ◽  
Théorie De La Pratique

Résumé. Cet article jette un regard original sur les débats contemporains en Relations internationales (RI) à la lumière de la sociologie de Pierre Bourdieu. Sa riche théorie sociale permet d'établir des ponts entre les approches conventionnelles et celles qui sont issues de la mouvance critique en RI. Plus précisément, nous identifions six contributions que pourrait apporter une approche bourdieusienne. Sur le plan métathéorique, cette approche se caractériserait par une épistémologie réflexive, une ontologie relationnelle et une théorie de la pratique, trois axes qui s'inscrivent à la jonction des grands débats théoriques en RI. D'un point de vue plus centré sur l'application, la sociologie de Bourdieu permet l'étude de la politique mondiale en tant qu'imbrication complexe de champs sociaux, l'ouverture de l'État comme champ de pouvoir, de même qu'une meilleure prise en compte de la nature symbolique de la puissance.Abstract. This article takes a fresh look at current debates in International Relations (IR) in the light of Pierre Bourdieu's sociology. We argue that Bourdieu's social theory could help build bridges between conventional and critical approaches in IR. More specifically, we identify six contributions that a Bourdieusian approach can make. At the meta-theoretical level, such an approach would be characterized by a reflexive epistemology, a relational ontology and a theory of practice – three dimensions that address key theoretical debates in IR. On a more applied level, Bourdieu's sociology enables us to study world politics as a complex of “embedded social fields”, to open up the state's field of power, and to factor in the symbolic nature of power.

scholarly journals On the theopolitics of sovereignty: Carl Schmitt and the theopolitics of global orders

2020 ◽  
Vol 46 (5) ◽  
pp. 691-712
Author(s):  
Thomas Moore
Keyword(s):  
International Relations ◽  
Historical Sociology ◽  
World Politics ◽  
Global Politics ◽  
Carl Schmitt ◽  
Global Order ◽  
Critical Approaches

AbstractThis article considers how we can develop a reflexive reading of the theological contours of global politics through Carl Schmitt's account of sovereignty. In doing this it seeks to generate a critical architecture to understand the pluralistic registers of sovereignty within world politics. This article examines the theological dimensions of sovereignty, calling for a closer reading of the theopolitical discourses of legality and legitimacy at work within the largely secular discipline of International Relations. Tracing the pluralistic dimensions of sovereignty – juristic, popular, and theopolitical – allows us to see how sovereignty is operationalised through a range of distinct political registers. When the study of sovereignty is confused with questions of preference for modes of governing (whether secular, religious, democratic, and/or juristic) the complex historical sociology of sovereignty is overlooked. Contemporary scholarship in International Relations can benefit from closer engagement with the multiple, overlapping registers of sovereignty in global politics. We may disagree with Schmitt's reading of sovereignty as ‘theopolitics’ but there is real methodological value in engaging secular scholarship in thinking about religion as a constitutive domain for global order – alongside a rich range of critical approaches.

scholarly journals You still don’t understand: why troubled engagements continue between feminists and (critical) IPE

2006 ◽  
Vol 32 (1) ◽  
pp. 145-164 ◽  
Author(s):  
GEORGINA WAYLEN
Keyword(s):  
Political Economy ◽  
International Relations ◽  
International Political Economy ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
Feminist Perspectives ◽  
Critical Approaches ◽  
The Relationship

Relatively early in the attempts to gender the discipline of International Relations (IR), it was argued by some feminist scholars that it was easier to raise feminist concerns in International Political Economy (IPE) than in IR. However, it has subsequently proved very difficult to articulate these concerns within mainstream IPE, as ‘the neo-realist and neo-liberal frameworks, with their common focus on state-centric issues of co-operation and conflict and their positivist and rationalistic methodologies, do not lend themselves to investigating gendered structures of inequality …’. In contrast, more overlap has been discerned between feminist perspectives and methodologies and the less influential ‘globalist’ (also known as critical/transdisciplinary or heterodox) approaches to IPE than with the dominant statist approaches. This article takes this position as its starting point and will focus on the relationship between gendered analyses and critical IPE (as it will be known here). It therefore does not engage with the undoubtedly important question of how far it is possible or desirable to have a gendered analysis that is not linked to feminism, as within both feminist and critical approaches to IPE an emancipatory agenda is entirely legitimate and even an integral part of those approaches.

Navigating Multiple Identities: Decentering International Relations

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Monika Thakur
Keyword(s):  
International Relations ◽  
Personal Narratives ◽  
Global South ◽  
Multiple Identities ◽  
Entry Point ◽  
Academic Practice ◽  
Theoretical Tool ◽  
Diverse Communities ◽  
Critical Approaches

Abstract The article argues that academics navigate and occupy various localities, spaces, and identities, which allows them to be self-reflexive in understanding the inherent challenges in diversifying the discipline. Using personal narratives as a methodological and theoretical tool, this article situates plural experiences and contexts of a woman of color, working in precarity in academia. The intersection of multiple identities reveals various sites of privilege and oppression, and inclusion and exclusion. Unsettling and dismantling binaries and identities reveal complex entanglements and connections that provide more nuanced understandings of IR. This article further discusses ways the discipline of IR has excluded diverse theoretical and empirical knowledges and regions, including critical approaches and the Global South. This disciplinary exclusion and erasure is reproduced in everyday academic practice and can serve as an entry point to understand why diverse communities are underrepresented in IR. Further, academia is not immune from the functions of power and social and economic hierarchies in society, and those hierarchies are manifested in various forms of asymmetry observable in academia, especially toward diverse communities and academics working in precarity.

scholarly journals Assembling credibility: Knowledge, method and critique in times of ‘post-truth’

2018 ◽  
Vol 50 (1) ◽  
pp. 40-58 ◽  
Author(s):  
Claudia Aradau ◽  
Jef Huysmans
Keyword(s):  
International Relations ◽  
Knowledge Creation ◽  
Security Studies ◽  
Critical Security Studies ◽  
Critical Approaches ◽  
Knowledge Practice ◽  
Knowledge Claims ◽  
Scientific Standards ◽  
Critical Lines ◽  
Scientific Accomplishment

Critical approaches in security studies have been increasingly turning to methods and standards internal to knowledge practice to validate their knowledge claims. This quest for scientific standards now also operates against the background of debates on ‘post-truth’, which raise pressing and perplexing questions for critical lines of thought. We propose a different approach by conceptualizing validity as practices of assembling credibility in which the transversal formation and circulation of credits and credentials combine with disputes over credence and credulity. This conceptualization of the validity of (critical) security knowledge shifts the focus from epistemic and methodological standards to transepistemic practices and relations. It allows us to mediate validity critically as a sociopolitical rather than strictly scientific accomplishment. Developing such an understanding of validity makes it possible for critical security studies and international relations to displace epistemic disputes about ‘post-truth’ with transversal practices of knowledge creation, circulation and accreditation.

Understanding and Classifying Critical Approaches

2019 ◽  
pp. 79-98
Author(s):  
J. Samuel Barkin ◽  
Laura Sjoberg
Keyword(s):  
International Relations ◽  
Global Politics ◽  
Common Elements ◽  
Theoretical Approaches ◽  
Critical Theories ◽  
Political Theories ◽  
Social Theories ◽  
Copenhagen School ◽  
Critical Approaches

This chapter argues that what various theoretical approaches to IR that describe themselves or are described as critical share in common is that they are political rather than social theories. There are no other common elements to be found across this group of approaches. Various schemas used to typify different sorts of critical theories (e.g., emancipatory/postmodern; feminist/postcolonial/poststructuralist; Copenhagen School/Aberystwyth School/Paris School) signify different political theories with different political content but share political investment in both disciplinary International Relations and global politics. They are explicitly engaged in International Relations theorizing and International Relations research as a political enterprise with political ends.

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