Towards International Relations beyond the mind

2018 ◽  
Vol 16 (1) ◽  
pp. 89-105
Author(s):  
Dirk Nabers
Keyword(s):  
International Relations ◽  
Philosophy Of Science ◽  
Final Section ◽  
State Of The Art ◽  
Discourse Theory ◽  
The Political ◽  
Political Ontology ◽  
Large Segment ◽  
The Mind

The analysis focuses on the centrality of the mind and the mental, and their relationship with the notion of discourse in International Relations theorizing. While many forms of discourse theory are linked with anti-materialist idealism, the article develops an alternative argument, that is, that discourse theory should primarily be situated ‘beyond the mind’. The analysis starts with a discussion of prominent International Relations work on ideas and discourse and argues that that a large segment of International Relations work is insufficiently clear on these crucial notions. I therefore contend subsequently that this state of the art is reflected in how the philosophy of science and the philosophy of the mind have been treated in prominent International Relations work by following a particular version of Cartesian rationalism. It is on this basis that the article proposes to transcend the antinomies between mind and world as well as ideas and materiality by advancing a political ontology that stresses a particular concept of discourse in the final section. On that basis, it will become possible in the conclusion to summarize a path towards International Relations beyond the mind that engages in the study of the political more seriously.

scholarly journals Identity and Discourse in Securitisation Theory

2018 ◽  
Vol 40 (2) ◽  
pp. 229-248
Author(s):  
Marcos Cardoso dos Santos
Keyword(s):  
Social Capital ◽  
Foreign Policy ◽  
International Relations ◽  
The Self ◽  
Discourse Theory ◽  
The Political ◽  
Security Strategy ◽  
Political Identities

Abstract This article examines the complementarities among Laclau and Mouffe’s discourse theory, Bourdieu’s notions of habitus and field, and Huysmans’s conception of discursive security strategy as a mediator of people’s relation to death. The interplay among these theories explains how hegemonic security discourses emerge. The self-referential aspect of the Copenhagen School’s Securitisation Theory (ST) does not contradict the existence of a relation of forces among securitising actors and audiences in given security fields, based on the ownership of social capital. This article rejects the theoretical positions adopted by Bigo, Tsoukala and Balzacq in terms of which ST is regarded as intersubjective. Utilising the discourse theory of Laclau and Mouffe, it is possible to verify how hegemonic security discourses are determined. Bourdieu’s concepts of habitus and field and Huysmans’s premises about security strategy also have implications for ST, mainly for the discussions about whether it has an intersubjective or self-referential aspect. As discourses of danger construct the political identities of states, the study of their influence on foreign policy is relevant to international relations. This article concludes that when the degree of otherness gets closer to the radical Other, extraordinary measures are easily tolerated by the agents involved in the securitisation process.

Revolutionary securitization: an anthropological extension of securitization theory

2012 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 165-197 ◽  
Author(s):  
Martin Holbraad ◽  
Morten Axel Pedersen
Keyword(s):  
International Relations ◽  
Alternative Model ◽  
Cuban Revolution ◽  
The Political ◽  
Political Ontology ◽  
States Of Emergency ◽  
Revolutionary Politics ◽  
Copenhagen School ◽  
Securitization Theory ◽  
School Model

This article proposes an anthropological extension of the so-called Copenhagen School theory of securitization in International Relations. In contrast to existing attempts to show how, suitably elaborated, this model can be ‘applied’ to various non-Western contexts, our anthropological strategy is to use the contingency of empirical materials (namely the Cuban Revolution and the political forms it instantiates) as a means for transforming the basic coordinates of the model itself. The argument involves two main steps. First we relativize the Copenhagen School model, showing the contingency of its premises. In its paradigmatic form, we argue, the model is liberal in that its abiding concern with states of emergency turns on an ontological distinction between political subjects (e.g. people) and political structures (e.g. state). By contrast, revolutionary politics in Cuba concertedly rescinds just this distinction, to bring about an alternative, non-liberal political ontology. We then go on to use the Cuban case to construct an alternative model of securitization, which we call revolutionary. On this model, the move of securitization pertains, not to a passage from ordinary politics into a realm of emergency, but to a deliberate ontological fusion of the two, such that rule and exception also become coterminous.

Arguing and Deliberation in International Relations

2018 ◽  
pp. 517-534
Author(s):  
Thomas Risse
Keyword(s):  
International Relations ◽  
Global Governance ◽  
Social Constructivism ◽  
Communicative Action ◽  
State Of The Art ◽  
Empirical Evaluation ◽  
Discourse Theory ◽  
Theory Of Communicative Action ◽  
Internationale Beziehungen ◽  
Global Affairs

It was not until the late 1980s when social constructivism gradually entered the stage that International Relations (IR) scholars started paying attention to communicative action. Today, this picture has changed dramatically and there is no IR textbook which does not cover “discourse” or “discourse theory.” This chapter concentrates on deliberation, arguing, and communicative action in a Habermasian sense. I start with a controversy in the German IR journal Zeitschrift für Internationale Beziehungen, which concentrated on the extent to which Habermas’s theory of communicative action could be made fruitful for the study of international relations, namely diplomacy and negotiations. I then discuss the state of the art with regard to the empirical evaluation of Habermasian assumptions. Scholarship not only demonstrated that arguing matters in global affairs, but discerned the (institutional) scope conditions under which deliberation affects negotiation outcomes. The chapter concludes with some thoughts on the normative implications for global governance.

scholarly journals In-between Translation, Transformation and Contestation: Studying Human Rights Activism as Politics-as-Ruptures in Violent Social Conflicts

2019 ◽  
Vol 48 (1) ◽  
pp. 3-24 ◽  
Author(s):  
F. Richard Georgi
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
International Relations ◽  
Discourse Theory ◽  
The Political ◽  
Social Conflicts ◽  
Political Relationships ◽  
Political Function ◽  
Discursive Politics ◽  
Human Rights Norms ◽  
New Research

How can we study the politics of human rights activism in violent social conflicts? International Relations scholarship has long neglected the ambiguous political relationships between human rights activism and violent social conflicts. Addressing this gap requires new research methodologies that place the focus not on the normative or legal dimensions of human rights, but in how their usage constitutes the political. In this article I argue that using post-foundational discourse theory makes visible ‘politics-as-ruptures’ that locate the political function of human rights activism precisely in the resistance to representations of violence in conflict discourses. I analyse this political function by asking how activists translate human rights norms, transform conflict discourses, and thereby contest power relations. As examples, the article presents three types of discursive politics that I studied in Colombia. These examples point out further pathways to pose empirical questions about the roles of human rights activism in transforming social conflicts.

The Pole of Power and the Pole of Indifference

1951 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 39-63 ◽  
Author(s):  
Arnold Wolfers
Keyword(s):  
International Relations ◽  
The Political ◽  
Political Arena ◽  
Woodrow Wilson ◽  
Power Politics ◽  
Political Issue ◽  
New Era ◽  
Modern Age ◽  
The Mind ◽  
First Time

In international relations, two opposing schools of thought have fought each other throughout the modern age. Ever since Machiavelli published the Prince, his “realistic” views have shocked “idealist” thinkers. As a battle of the mind, fought by and large outside the political arena, the dispute between the two schools was of great concern to philosophers and moralists; but not until Woodrow Wilson set out to bring Utopia down to earth did it become a political issue of the first magnitude. For the first time, the responsible head of one of the leading powers acted as though the world were on the verge of crossing the thresh-old from sordid “power politics” to a “new era” in which the admonitions of the idealist philosophers would suddenly become the political order of the day.

The Modern Aristotle: Michael Polanyi’s Search for Truth against Nihilism

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ronald Hoinski ◽  
Ronald Polansky
Keyword(s):  
Philosophy Of Science ◽  
Modern Science ◽  
Michael Polanyi ◽  
Contemporary Philosophy ◽  
The Face ◽  
Human Desire ◽  
The Mind ◽  
Theoretical Science

David Hoinski and Ronald Polansky’s “The Modern Aristotle: Michael Polanyi’s Search for Truth against Nihilism” shows how the general tendencies of contemporary philosophy of science disclose a return to the Aristotelian emphasis on both the formation of dispositions to know and the role of the mind in theoretical science. Focusing on a comparison of Michael Polanyi and Aristotle, Hoinski and Polansky investigate to what degree Aristotelian thought retains its purchase on reality in the face of the changes wrought by modern science. Polanyi’s approach relies on several Aristotelian assumptions, including the naturalness of the human desire to know, the institutional and personal basis for the accumulation of knowledge, and the endorsement of realism against objectivism. Hoinski and Polansky emphasize the promise of Polanyi’s neo-Aristotelian framework, which argues that science is won through reflection on reality.

The Use and Misuse of Religious Language: Zionism and the Palestinians

2005 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 73-86 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Wetherell
Keyword(s):  
International Relations ◽  
Figurative Language ◽  
Religious Language ◽  
The Political ◽  
Political Scientist ◽  
Late 19Th Century ◽  
The Bible ◽  
Title Deed ◽  
History Of ◽  
Land Question

Every discipline which deals with the land question in Canaan-Palestine-Israel is afflicted by the problem of specialisation. The political scientist and historian usually discuss the issue of land in Israel purely in terms of interethnic and international relations, biblical scholars concentrate on the historical and archaeological question with virtually no reference to ethics, and scholars of human rights usually evade the question of God. What follows is an attempt, through theology and political history, to understand the history of the Israel-Palestine land question in a way which respects the complexity of the question. From a scrutiny of the language used in the Bible to the development of political Zionism from the late 19th century it is possible to see the way in which a secular movement mobilised the figurative language of religion into a literal ‘title deed’ to the land of Palestine signed by God.

The Science in Hume's Science of Man

2020 ◽  
Vol 18 (3) ◽  
pp. 257-271
Author(s):  
Tamás Demeter
Keyword(s):  
Comparative Analysis ◽  
Philosophy Of Science ◽  
Dynamic Theory ◽  
Newtonian Dynamic ◽  
The Mind

This paper sketches a recently emerging divide between two interpretations of Hume's methodology and philosophy of science. On the first interpretation Hume relies on an inductive methodology and provides a (Newtonian) dynamic theory of the mind, and his philosophy of science reflects this methodology. On the second, Hume relies on inferences to the best explanation via comparative analysis of instances, and offers an anatomy of the mind relying on a chemical and organic imagery. The paper also aspires to lean the reader's sympathies toward the latter interpretation while outlining some of its potential consequences for the character of Hume's psychology, the limits of associationism, and his empiricism.

The Geography of War and Peace

2004 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Northern Ireland ◽  
Final Section ◽  
The Political ◽  
Complex World ◽  
War And Peace ◽  
Peace Movements ◽  
Resource Conflicts ◽  
Political Processes ◽  
Post War ◽  
Spatial Rhetoric

Our world of increasing and varied conflicts is confusing and threatening to citizens of all countries, as they try to understand its causes and consequences. However, how and why war occurs, and peace is sustained, cannot be understood without realizing that those who make war and peace must negotiate a complex world political map of sovereign spaces, borders, networks of communication, access to nested geographic scales, and patterns of resource distribution. This book takes advantage of a diversity of geographic perspectives as it analyzes the political processes of war and their spatial expression. Contributors to the volume examine particular manifestations of war in light of nationalism, religion, gender identities, state ideology, border formation, genocide, spatial rhetoric, terrorism, and a variety of resource conflicts. The final section on the geography of peace covers peace movements, diplomacy, the expansion of NATO, and the geography of post-war reconstruction. Case studies of numerous conflicts include Israel and Palestine, Afghanistan, Northern Ireland, Bosnia-Herzogovina, West Africa, and the attacks of September 11, 2001.

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