scholarly journals Why is there no philosophy of international relations

2019 ◽  
pp. 19-41
Author(s):  
Andrzej Gałganek
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
International Relations ◽  
Political Science ◽  
Subject Matter ◽  
Institutional Development ◽  
Social World ◽  
World War ◽  
The Social ◽  
Opening Up ◽  
Rela Tions

Why is there no philosophy of International Relations? Why, despite the significant intellectual and institutional development of International Relations after World War II, has IR failed to generate any ‘grand ideas’ that would influence the broadly understood humanities? None of the theories of international relations indicates the exceptional features of interna- tionality as its foundation. None of these theories formulates a fundamental claim to its subject matter in International Relations the way geography, history or sociology do. This leads to the conviction that international relations do not have to be formed by aspects of the social world that are specific to them, and can be interpreted in terms of ideas imported from the disciplines that deal with examining aspects relevant to them. The basic disadvantage of this openness of International Relations to other disciplines is the lack of reflection on its own ‘deep ontology.’ This seems to be the most important reason for the lack of a philosophy of International Rela- tions. The author accomplishes two basic goals in his text. Firstly, he undermines the legitimacy of the three attitudes prevailing in IR on understanding internationality, which he calls internal- ism, externalism and correlationism. Secondly, he presents the essence and consequences of the negative character of IR, which involves the absence of the philosophy of IR and studying internationality in the same manner as political science does. The author argues that understanding this ‘strange orthodoxy’ can be a means to overcom- ing it, thereby opening up the possibility of conceiving the ontology of IR, or outlining the path leading to the philosophy of International Relations. Finally, the author refers to the proposal of Justin Rosenberg, to then present an idea for an ontology on which the philosophy of Interna- tional Relations could be founded.

Introduction: Mrs. A. and Dev Satya Nand

2019 ◽  
pp. 1-40
Author(s):  
Sarah Pinto
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
Young Woman ◽  
Social World ◽  
New Method ◽  
Colonial Rule ◽  
World War ◽  
Dream Analysis ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Mind

In the middle of World War II and at the end of colonial rule, a young woman in Punjab met with family friend Dev Satya Nand as a willing participant in his new method of dream analysis. This chapter introduces Mrs. A., Satya Nand, and the outlines of the case, which began with a discussion of bringing “Hindu Socialism” to Indian peasants and turned into an exploration of love, sexuality, ambition, and life after marriage. The case appeared early in the career of Satya Nand, a prolific but little remembered figure in twentieth-century Indian psychiatry, who theorized complex connections between the mind and the social world, casting the psyche as an organic vehicle for ethical imagination. This introduction also introduces Draupadi, Shakuntala, and Ahalya, central mythic figures who entered Mrs. A.’s musings and Satya Nand’s science. It asks what it means to begin a conversation about ethics from elsewhere than the usual sources in European myth and philosophy, and wonders at how we might consider this narrative in and beyond its place and time, Punjab on the eve of Partition, considering what it demands of us as readers of and alongside Mrs. A., an anonymous yet intimate voice.

Emergence of the Modern Research University: Harvard and M.I.T., 1945–1970

1992 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard M. Freeland
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Research University ◽  
Institutional Development ◽  
Academic Community ◽  
Massachusetts Institute Of Technology ◽  
World War ◽  
The Social ◽  
War Effort ◽  
Institute Of Technology ◽  
Institutional Model

Harvard and M.I.T. were ideally positioned to exploit the advantageous possibilities for development that arose after World War II. Both did so, pursuing routes that reflected their different histories, stages of development, organizational characteristics, and current priorities. Both became, in the process, contrasting versions of a modern research university, together helping to define a new institutional model for the nation’s academic community. For most universities, World War II continued the difficult circumstances of the Depression, but the wartime role of academics also fostered hopes for recognition and growth in the postwar years. This optimism prompted organized planning for institutional development well before the end of the war. As Conant put it in 1943: “The period immediately following the cessation of hostilities ... will be a time when [Harvard’s] educational house can be put in order, when changes perhaps long overdue can be made most readily.” The leaders of M.I.T. anticipated even more dramatic gains. Referring in 1944 to the Institute’s contributions to the war effort, Compton observed that “the value, effectiveness and prestige of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have never been at so high a level; this is certainly a strategic vantage point from which to initiate the next advance.” The prewar years at Harvard had left little doubt about the “changes ... long overdue” on which Conant would focus. From the beginning of his presidency, he had insisted that Harvard’s goal should not be expansion but “intensification”: the raising of intellectual standards within established programs and the reducing of concern with the social, localistic values associated with Harvard’s Brahmin traditions. The two major expressions of these policies prior to 1940 had been the efforts to tighten scholarly standards for promotion in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences and to attract more able undergraduates by recruiting in public and non-northeastern secondary schools. As Conant anticipated the postwar years, especially in the context of the veterans’ program, he was aware that the new popularity of higher education might support a level of growth that had not been possible during the Depression, but he continued to oppose expansion. If demand for admission increased, Conant argued in the mid-1940S, Harvard should raise standards, not increase in size.

scholarly journals The Brazilian Army nurses' uniforms: visual identity in World War II

2019 ◽  
Vol 72 (1) ◽  
pp. 111-117
Author(s):  
Margarida Maria Rocha Bernardes ◽  
Alexandre Barbosa de Oliveira ◽  
Sônia Kaminitz ◽  
Antônio Marcos Tosoli Gomes ◽  
Sérgio Corrêa Marques ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Social World ◽  
World War ◽  
Army Nurses ◽  
Historical Method ◽  
Visual Identity ◽  
The Social ◽  
World Theory ◽  
Military Uniform ◽  
The Military

ABSTRACT Objective: To analyze the symbolic effects of the official military uniform of the nurses from Brazilian Army in World War II. Method: This research was developed using the historical method, with iconographic sources. The data were discussed based on the concepts of the social world theory, by Pierre Bourdieu. Results: The images selected demonstrate the own meaning of the uniforms, evidencing the functions and the social position of those who wear it, being private and obligatory to use it in the military field. Final considerations: In the case of the nurses from the Brazilian Expeditionary Force, the appropriation of uniforms promoted the visual communication representing military nurse in the context of war, at the same time it served for distinction purposes in the army, but not necessarily in the nursing field. Symbolically, they remained amongst the walls of the barracks even after the end of the war and, thus, they remained unknown and marked by the symbols of forgetfulness.

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.

Game Theory and Generalization in Ethics

1965 ◽  
Vol 27 (4) ◽  
pp. 491-500 ◽  
Author(s):  
Raymond F. Hopkins
Keyword(s):  
Game Theory ◽  
Decision Making ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
International Relations ◽  
Political Science ◽  
Rational Decision ◽  
World War ◽  
Broad Interest

SINCE World War II and particularly in the last decade game theory has acquired broad interest, attention, and application by behavioral scientists. Basically, game theory is an attempt to simulate mathematically a situation of decision-making so as to discover the most rational decision. Situations involving two or more “persons” (that is, sets of individuals, groups or environments with isomorphic interests and/or capabilities) can be simulated. Currently game theory is employed in both university and corporate research for studying problems in the areas of economics, sociology, political science, international relations, and militarydefense strategy.

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.

History of Social Psychology at Mid-20th Century

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Thomas F. Pettigrew
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Social Psychology ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
Social Science ◽  
Political Science ◽  
20Th Century ◽  
Past Century ◽  
Global Changes ◽  
World War ◽  
The Social

The discipline of psychology has an extremely broad range—from the life sciences to the social sciences, from neuroscience to social psychology. These distinctly different components have varying histories of their own. Social psychology is psychology’s social science wing. The major social sciences—anthropology, economics, sociology, and political science—all had their origins in the 19th century or even earlier. But social psychology is much younger; it developed both in Europe and North America in the 20th century. The field’s enormous growth over the past century began modestly with a few scant locations, several textbooks, and a single journal in the 1920s. Today’s social psychologists would barely recognize their discipline in the years prior to World War II. But trends forming in the 1920s and 1930s would become important years later. With steady growth, especially starting in the 1960s, the discipline gained thousands of new doctorates and multiple journals scattered throughout the world. Social psychology has become a recognized, influential, and often-cited social science. It is the basis, for example, of behavioral economics as well as such key theories as authoritarianism in political science. Central to this extraordinary expansion were the principal events of mid-20th century. World War II, the growth of universities and the social sciences in general, rising prosperity, statistical advances, and other global changes set the stage for the discipline’s rapid development. Together with this growth, social psychology has expanded its topics in both the affective and cognitive domains. Indeed, new theories are so numerous that theoretical integration has become a prime need for the discipline.

Super-leveling, fraying-out, internal restructuring: A century of present be concord in Tristan da Cunha English

2016 ◽  
Vol 28 (2) ◽  
pp. 203-224 ◽  
Author(s):  
Daniel Schreier
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Social History ◽  
Social Changes ◽  
Geographic Isolation ◽  
World War ◽  
Contact Conditions ◽  
Tristan Da Cunha ◽  
The Social ◽  
Pattern Variability ◽  
Opening Up

ABSTRACTThe present study analyzes present be leveling with pivot is (as in I is, we is, the old dogs is) in Tristan da Cunha English, a variety of South Atlantic English that developed in geographic isolation and under intense contact conditions. The findings, based on data from a total of 45 speakers born throughout the 20th century, indicate that community-wide variation correlates with social history; whereas present be was subject to (near-)categorical leveling until the 1940s, an opening-up phase after World War II saw interaction with speakers of other dialects on the island, which triggered an increase of a standard am/is/are concord pattern. Variability began to increase from the 1950s onward and the community has now frayed out widely in its usage of leveled is forms (ranging from 10% to over 90% in speakers of the youngest generation, born in the 1980s). The internal constraint ranking for preceding environment in younger generations was partially restructured, which suggests that the social changes affected the grammatical variable. Three outliers represent exonormative orientation and outward mobility.

Nature Behind Barbed Wire

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Connie Y. Chiang
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Civil Liberties ◽  
Natural World ◽  
Japanese Americans ◽  
Japanese American ◽  
World War ◽  
Us History ◽  
War Relocation Authority ◽  
The Social ◽  
Japanese Ancestry

The mass imprisonment of over 110,000 people of Japanese ancestry during World War II was one of the most egregious violations of civil liberties in US history. Removed from their homes on the temperate Pacific Coast, Japanese Americans spent the war years in ten desolate camps in the nation’s interior. Although scholars and commentators acknowledge the harsh environmental conditions of these camps, they have turned their attention to the social, political, or legal dimensions of this story. Nature Behind Barbed Wire shifts the focus to the natural world and explores how it shaped the experiences of Japanese Americans and federal officials who worked for the War Relocation Authority (WRA), the civilian agency that administered the camps. The complexities of the natural world both enhanced and constrained the WRA’s power and provided Japanese Americans with opportunities to redefine the terms and conditions of their confinement. Even as the environment compounded their feelings of despair and outrage, they also learned that their willingness (or lack thereof) to transform and adapt to the natural world could help them endure and even contest their incarceration. Ultimately, this book demonstrates that the Japanese American incarceration was fundamentally an environmental story. Japanese Americans and WRA officials negotiated the terms of confinement with each other and with a dynamic natural world.

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