National and Post-National Performances at the Venice Biennale: Site-specific Seeing through the Photo Essay

2021 ◽  
pp. 030582982110313
Author(s):  
Lene Hansen ◽  
Johan Spanner
Keyword(s):  
International Relations ◽  
Social Process ◽  
Theoretical Framework ◽  
World Politics ◽  
Site Specific ◽  
Embodied Experiences ◽  
A Site ◽  
Photo Essay ◽  
Venice Biennale

This article makes three contributions to research on visuality and international relations. First, it provides a theoretical framework through which sites and their politics can be understood. Sites are places where certain objects and structures are shown and engaged with. Visitors to sites experience them visually and bodily and visiting sites is a social process. Second, the article introduces the format of the photo essay as an epistemology and a method through which the seeing of sites can be captured. Photo essays about site-specific seeing select photos that convey particular, embodied experiences. Photo essays make photos as important to the analysis as text and they adopt a suggestive form of writing that encourages the reader to see and respond to images in specific ways. Third, the article introduces the Venice Biennale as a site where international relations are performed. National exhibitions called ‘pavilions’ are a central part of the Biennale. Some pavilions invoke ‘the national’ as the privileged lens on world politics, other pavilions challenge this lens. The article provides an analysis of the Serbian, Armenian and Icelandic pavilions in the 2015 Biennale and the national and post-national performances they involved. The analysis draws on an original photo essay composed from a research visit and photo shoot in May 2015.

Parties, Pavilions and Protests: The Heteronomous World Politics of the Russian Pavilion at the Venice Biennale

2019 ◽  
Vol 27 (2) ◽  
pp. 29-61
Author(s):  
Julia Bethwaite ◽  
Anni Kangas
Keyword(s):  
International Relations ◽  
Contemporary Art ◽  
Soft Power ◽  
Cultural Diplomacy ◽  
World Politics ◽  
The State ◽  
Different Types ◽  
A Site ◽  
Venice Biennale

This paper focuses on the role of contemporary art in international relations and world politics. In IR, art is often examined within the framework of cultural diplomacy, country branding, and soft power, or approached as a site of resistance. We argue that the concept of heteronomy offers an alternative conceptual framework for analysing contemporary art in world politics. It highlights the interaction of various fields such as art, commerce, the state and media. We concretise this approach with an analysis of the Venice Biennale. We show that the Biennale is heteronomous in the sense of being an arena where actors from various fields struggle for power by accumulating different types of capital. We focus our analysis on the Russian national pavilion in 2011–2015 and show how the efforts of the country's elite to legitimise its position intertwined with the projects of the state, sponsors, artists, curators and art market actors.

Islamic International Relations Towards a Theoretical Framework

2015 ◽  
Vol 1 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gubara Hassan
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
International Relations ◽  
Modern Society ◽  
Theoretical Framework ◽  
World Politics ◽  
Muslim World ◽  
The West ◽  
The Past ◽  
Alternative Approach ◽  
The World

The Western originators of the multi-disciplinary social sciences and their successors, including most major Western social intellectuals, excluded religion as an explanation for the world and its affairs. They held that religion had no role to play in modern society or in rational elucidations for the way world politics or/and relations work. Expectedly, they also focused most of their studies on the West, where religion’s effect was least apparent and argued that its influence in the non-West was a primitive residue that would vanish with its modernization, the Muslim world in particular. Paradoxically, modernity has caused a resurgence or a revival of religion, including Islam. As an alternative approach to this Western-centric stance and while focusing on Islam, the paper argues that religion is not a thing of the past and that Islam has its visions of international relations between Muslim and non-Muslim states or abodes: peace, war, truce or treaty, and preaching (da’wah).

scholarly journals POSTSTRUCTURALISM AND ITS PRACTICAL RELEVANCE IN INTERNATIONAL POLITICS

2020 ◽  
Vol 3 (2) ◽  
pp. 121-129
Author(s):  
Rifki Dermawan
Keyword(s):  
International Relations ◽  
International Politics ◽  
Theoretical Framework ◽  
World Politics ◽  
Modern World ◽  
Practical Relevance ◽  
International Issues

There are many different theories and approaches in international relations studies. They emerge as tools to understand world politics as well as to prevent the occurrence of wars and conflicts. Poststructuralism is one of them. This article addresses the practical relevance of poststructuralism in international politics. It looks at the role of poststructuralism, which provides a novel view on international issues in the globalized era. There are three major focuses of this paper. First, the discussion on the concept of sovereignty and state in a modern world. Second, the role of discourse in the poststructuralism theoretical framework. Third, the function of poststructuralism as a meta-theoretical critique in international relations. This article concludes that poststructuralism is practically useful in the study of international politics.   Keywords: poststructuralism, theory, international politics, international relations.     Abstrak   Ada beragam teori dan pendekatan yang digunakan di dalam studi ilmu hubungan internasional. Teori dan pendekatan tersebut muncul sebagai alat untuk memahami kondisi peepolitikan dunia dan juga untuk mencegah terjadinya peperangan dan konflik. Poststrukturalisme adalah salah satunya. Tulisan ini membahas relevansi secara praktikal dari poststrukturalisme dalam politik internasional. Tulisan ini melihat peranan poststrukturalisme yang memberikan pandangan baru terhadap isu-isu internasional di zaman globalisasi. Ada tiga fokus utama dari tulisan ini. Pertama, pembahasan mengenai konsep kedaulatan dan negara di zaman modern. Kedua, peranan wacana dalam kerangka teori poststrukturalisme. Ketiga, fungsi poststrukturalisme sebagai kritik metateori di ilmu hubungan internasional. Kesimpulan yang dapat diambil dari tulisan ini adalah poststrukturalisme memiliki manfaat secara praktikal dalam studi politik internasional.   Kata kunci: poststrukturalisme, teori, politik internasional, ilmu hubungan internasional.

scholarly journals Accounting for Change in IR

2021 ◽  
Vol 49 ◽  
pp. 33-52
Author(s):  
Esther Ng K.H.
Keyword(s):  
International Relations ◽  
Sense Of Self ◽  
Theoretical Framework ◽  
World Politics ◽  
Ir Theory ◽  
Ontological Security ◽  
The West

Most theories of International Relations (IR) are cautious, if not pessimistic, about the potential for change in IR. In this regard, the concept of ontological security holds promising yet oft-overlooked prospects. This article argues that applications of ontological security to IR theory thus far have been limited due to the narrow conceptualisations of practices and how they contribute to one’s attempts to preserve their ontological security. As such, this paper seeks to expand the theoretical framework through which ontological security is applied to IR, which involves a more comprehensive conceptualisation of practice that considers reflexivity as key. Accordingly, the theory demonstrates that a state, faced with threats to their sense of Self, can respond either by rigidising or changing their practices rather than being limited to the former. This allows one to account for change—especially big change—in world politics such as the increasingly inward-looking turn of the West.

Historical Theories of International Relations

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joseph MacKay ◽  
Christopher David LaRoche
Keyword(s):  
International Relations ◽  
International System ◽  
World Politics ◽  
Systematic Change ◽  
International Studies ◽  
Historical Inquiry ◽  
Long Run ◽  
History Of ◽  
A Site ◽  
International Thought

History has provided a site of theoretical inquiry for scholars of International Relations since the discipline’s inception. However, serious and sustained historical inquiry has only returned to the foreground of international studies in the last two decades or so, after a prolonged period of postwar uninterest. How can scholars identify moments or processes of systematic change? Does history have a long run structure or trajectory? Moreover, scholars have begun to take seriously the epistemological problem of historicism. International relations scholarship on history during this period addresses the intersection of theory and history in four broad ways. The first encompasses substantive historical studies that take history as a site of theory building about world politics. Here, accounts of early modern Europe, ancient China, precolonial South Asia, European colonial expansion, and other settings have challenged previous historical narratives that assert or assume linear progress or realist cyclicality alike. A second category follows on the first, comprising a plurality of methodological turns. Here, scholars have developed ways of inquiring into history, ranging across macrohistorical or structural analysis, rationalist accounts of international-system building, relational accounts of international hierarchies, discursive accounts of colonialism and resistance, and others. A third focuses directly on theoretical questions drawn from philosophy of history. These works aim to provide not methods of historical inquiry so much as theoretical tools for thinking philosophically about the historical long run itself. Fourth and finally, scholars of the history of international thought have developed contextualist accounts of the intellectual history of international theory. These approaches rethink how theory interfaces with history by interrogating international thought itself.

Race(ing) International Relations: A Critical Overview of Postcolonial Feminism in International Relations

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Geeta Chowdhry ◽  
L.H.M. Ling
Keyword(s):  
International Relations ◽  
World Politics ◽  
Postcolonial Feminism ◽  
Contemporary World ◽  
Empirical Inquiry ◽  
Subaltern Agency ◽  
Disciplinary Field ◽  
The Masses ◽  
A Site ◽  
Critical Overview

Postcolonial feminism in international relations (PFIR) is a disciplinary field devoted to the study of world politics as a site of power relations shaped by colonization. PFIR combines postcolonial and feminist insights to explore questions such as how the stratum of elite power intersects with subterranean layers of colonization to produce our contemporary world politics; how these interrelationships between race, gender, sex, and class inform matrices of power in world politics; and how we account for elite and subaltern agency and resistance to the hegemonic sphere of world politics. PFIR is similar to Marxism, constructivism, and postmodernism in that they all posit that the masses underwrite hegemonic rule and, in so doing, ultimately have the means to do away with it. One difference is that PFIR emanates from the position of the subaltern; more specifically, the colonized’s colonized such as women, children, the illiterate, the poor, the landless, and the voiceless. Three major components are involved in PFIR in its analysis of world politics: culture, politics, and material structures. Also, eight common foci emerge in PFIR: intersectionality, representation, and power; materiality; relationality; multiplicity; intersubjectivity; contrapuntality; complicity; and resistance and accountability. PFIR gives rise to two interrelated projects: an empirical inquiry into the construction and exercise of power in daily life, and theory building that reflects this empirical base. A future challenge for PFIR is to elucidate how we can transform, not just alleviate, the hegemonies that persist around the world.

scholarly journals Scopic regimes and the visual turn in International Relations: Seeing world politics through the drone

2018 ◽  
Vol 25 (2) ◽  
pp. 431-457 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kyle Grayson ◽  
Jocelyn Mawdsley
Keyword(s):  
International Relations ◽  
World Politics ◽  
The Political ◽  
Targeted Killing ◽  
Representational Practices ◽  
Drone Warfare ◽  
A Site ◽  
Kinetic Force ◽  
Do So

In this article, we argue that the lack of attention paid to the scopic regimes of modernity in the ‘visual turn’ literature misses a key aspect of how visuality produces and shapes the international as both a site — and sight — of politics. In making the case that systemised ways of seeing are central to world politics, we contend that the scopic regimes of modernity help us to understand how it becomes possible for particular representational practices and outputs to resonate within broader discourses as authoritative, truthful, and/or emotively powerful. To do so, we draw from ongoing controversies over targeted killing via drones. We argue that disagreements over the legality and governance of drone warfare are more than disputes over legal statutes and legitimate techniques for the application of kinetic force; they also encompass disagreements over how we see, who we see, what we see, and what counts as being seen. Thus, by demonstrating the importance of scopic regimes, we provide evidence of the value of engaging with how the visual produces the political in International Relations. Moreover, we argue for International Relations to engage with scopic regimes from beyond Western traditions in order to decolonise the ‘visual turn’.

Constructing Identity in “Glocal” Politics

1998 ◽  
Vol 15 (3) ◽  
pp. 81-106
Author(s):  
M. A. Muqtedar Khan
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
International Relations ◽  
World Politics ◽  
Socioeconomic Conditions ◽  
Post Cold War ◽  
Important Concept ◽  
Construction Of Identity ◽  
The World ◽  
The Impact ◽  
The Relationship

This paper seeks to understand the impact of current global politicaland socioeconomic conditions on the construction of identity. I advancean argument based on a two-step logic. First, I challenge the characterizationof current socioeconomic conditions as one of globalization bymarshaling arguments and evidence that strongly suggest that along withglobalization, there are simultaneous processes of localization proliferatingin the world today. I contend that current conditions are indicative ofthings far exceeding the scope of globalization and that they can bedescribed more accurately as ccglocalization.~H’2a ving established thisclaim, I show how the processes of glocalization affect the constructionof Muslim identity.Why do I explore the relationship between glocalization and identityconstruction? Because it is significant. Those conversant with current theoreticaldebates within the discipline of international relations’ are awarethat identity has emerged as a significant explanatory construct in internationalrelations theory in the post-Cold War era.4 In this article, I discussthe emergence of identity as an important concept in world politics.The contemporary field of international relations is defined by threephilosophically distinct research programs? rationalists: constructivists,’and interpretivists.’ The moot issue is essentially a search for the mostimportant variable that can help explain or understand the behavior ofinternational actors and subsequently explain the nature of world politicsin order to minimize war and maximize peace.Rationalists contend that actors are basically rational actors who seekthe maximization of their interests, interests being understood primarilyin material terms and often calculated by utility functions maximizinggiven preferences? Interpretivists include postmodernists, critical theorists,and feminists, all of whom argue that basically the extant worldpolitical praxis or discourses “constitute” international agents and therebydetermine their actions, even as they reproduce world politics by ...

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