Conceptualising Militarism

2019 ◽  
pp. 45-64
Author(s):  
Chris Rossdale
Keyword(s):  
International Relations ◽  
Political Violence ◽  
Social Practices ◽  
Public Institutions ◽  
Value Systems ◽  
Final Part ◽  
Military Studies ◽  
Institutional Formation

This chapter sets out in broad terms how militarism has been conceptualised, both by anti-militarists and by social theorists. The chapter looks first at how anti-militarist activists recognise militarism as an institutional formation, a (localised) network encompassing militaries, branches of government, the arms industry, public institutions and more. The second part of the chapter draws on International Relations, Critical Military Studies and cognate disciplines to show how militarism can be understood as a complex of value systems, rationalities, social practices and subjectivities which tend towards the production and legitimisation of political violence. The final part of the chapter introduces two anti-militarist organisations, Veterans for Peace UK and the Peace Pledge Union, showing how they resist various forms of militarism.

Men and citizens in international relations

1981 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 23-37 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrew Linklater
Keyword(s):  
International Relations ◽  
Public Institutions ◽  
Political Life ◽  
Significant Advance ◽  
Modern World ◽  
Individual Freedom ◽  
Positive Aspect ◽  
Human Equality ◽  
Public World ◽  
The Right

Since Rousseau political theorists have had frequent recourse to a contrast between the fragmented nature of modern social and political life and the allegedly communitarian character of the Greek polis. At the heart of this opposition was the belief that the polis represented a condition of unsurpassable harmony in which citizens identified freely and spontaneously with their public institutions. Unlike their ancient counterparts, modern citizens exhibited less identification with their public world than resolution to advance their separate individual interests and pursue their private conceptions of the good. Nevertheless, the disintegration of the polis was not depicted in the language of unqualified loss. History had not been simply an unmitigated fall, because the individual's claim to scrutinize the law of the polis on rational grounds involved a significant advance in man's self-consciousness. The positive aspect of its decline was man's transcendence of a parochial culture in which neither the right of individual freedom nor the principle of human equality had been recognized. If the modern world had lost the spontaneous form of community enjoyed by the ancients, it surpassed that world in its understanding and expression of freedom.

From Unity to Divergence and Back Again: Security and Economy in Feminist International Relations

2015 ◽  
Vol 11 (02) ◽  
pp. 408-413 ◽  
Author(s):  
Laura Sjoberg
Keyword(s):  
Political Economy ◽  
International Relations ◽  
Political Violence ◽  
International Security ◽  
Economic Security ◽  
Peace Studies ◽  
Ecological Security ◽  
Global Security ◽  
Early 21St Century ◽  
Feminist Perspectives

InGender and International Security: Feminist Perspectives on Achieving Global Security, J. Ann Tickner (1992) identified three main dimensions to “achieving global security”—national security, economic security, and ecological security: conflict, economics, and the environment. Much of the work in feminist peace studies that inspired early feminist International Relations (IR) work (e.g., Brock-Utne 1989; Reardon 1985) and many of Tickner's contemporaries (e.g., Enloe 1989; Peterson and Runyan 1991; Pettman 1996) also saw political economy and a feminist conception of security as intrinsically interlinked. Yet, as feminist IR research evolved in the early 21st century, more scholars were thinking either about political economy or about war and political violence, but not both.

Youth Bulge in a Pandemic-Stricken World

2022 ◽  
pp. 30-51
Author(s):  
Madiha Batool
Keyword(s):  
Social Psychology ◽  
Social Media ◽  
International Relations ◽  
Political Psychology ◽  
Political Violence ◽  
International Security ◽  
Age Groups ◽  
Paradigmatic Shift ◽  
The World ◽  
Youth Bulge

As the year 2020 dawned, the world underwent a paradigmatic shift that impacted all aspects of life. While it is axiomatic that the coronavirus pandemic left an indelible effect on all age groups, the author is especially interested in analysing the impressions that the pandemic can leave on the lives of youth. With history providing anecdotes of contagions having led to political violence and widespread massacres, this chapter will explore how the current pandemic can lead to youth radicalisation in an age of social media and in countries witnessing youth bulge. This study will be carried out at the intersection of international relations, international security, and political psychology and within the parameters of youth bulge, social-psychology, and radicalisation. In doing so, the author will propose a prognostic approach to provent youth radicalisation rather than prevent it in retrospect.

Enabling Militarism? The Inclusion of Soldiers with Disabilities in the Israeli Military

2019 ◽  
Vol 13 (4) ◽  
pp. 430-446 ◽  
Author(s):  
James Eastwood
Keyword(s):  
International Relations ◽  
Intellectual Disabilities ◽  
Disability Studies ◽  
Settler Colonialism ◽  
Critical Disability Studies ◽  
Military Studies

Abstract Soldiers are rarely imagined as having disabilities, other than when they are injured in war. Yet in recent years the Israeli military has devoted considerable resources to programs promoting the inclusion of soldiers with intellectual disabilities. This paper critically examines two such programs, arguing that they should prompt a reexamination of assumptions in both critical military studies and critical disability studies. These two fields are rarely placed in dialogue, especially in international relations. Yet this paper argues that they have productive insights to offer each other and suggests that the Israeli case raises important questions when their analytical frames are combined. First, the paper argues that this example complicates the category of soldier fitness in critical military studies and reveals that militarist distinctions between ability and disability can be destabilized in ways suggested elsewhere by critical disability studies. Second, however, the paper cautions that the emancipatory potential of alternative “crip” subjectivities explored in critical disability studies remains circumscribed by geopolitical processes (including neoliberalism, settler colonialism, and militarism), which international relations is well placed to analyze. These arguments are advanced by showing how these inclusionary programs for soldiers with disabilities are implicated in the debilitating violence of Israel's settler colonial project.

Towards an International Political Ergonomics

2019 ◽  
Vol 25 (4) ◽  
pp. 979-1006 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jonathan Luke Austin
Keyword(s):  
International Relations ◽  
Violence Prevention ◽  
Knowledge Production ◽  
Theoretical Basis ◽  
Political Change ◽  
Research Programme ◽  
Social Practices ◽  
World Politics ◽  
The Unconscious ◽  
Practice Turn

This article introduces International Political Ergonomics. International Political Ergonomics is a novel research programme focused on achieving political change through the ergonomic (re)design of world politics. The approach is grounded on a shift across International Relations which recognizes that its epistemic (i.e. knowledge-producing) core is often inadequate to achieve change. Insights from the practice turn and behaviouralist International Relations, as well as from philosophy, sociology and neuroscience, demonstrate that much international behaviour is driven by the ‘unconscious’ or ‘non-reflexive’ re-articulation of repertoires of actions even where the pathologies of this process are known. This implies that knowledge production and dissemination (i.e. to policymakers, global publics) is often unable to effect influence over social practices. What is thus required is a non-epistemic means of producing world political change. International Political Ergonomics is a research programme that takes up this task. It does so by describing how small material interventions into world politics can radically shift individual behaviours by encouraging greater rationality, reflexivity and deliberation. After laying out the theoretical basis for this claim, the article demonstrates it by detailing the application of International Political Ergonomics to violence-prevention efforts. The article concludes by reflecting on the radical implications that International Political Ergonomics has for the vocation of International Relations.

scholarly journals Conceptions of The Baccalaureate Students of The Eastern Region of Morocco on the Environment and Sustainable Development

2020 ◽  
Vol 5 (10) ◽  
pp. 1235-1242
Author(s):  
Abdelkader Sbai ◽  
Abdeljabbar El Mediouni ◽  
Hassan Hakim ◽  
Said Mentak
Keyword(s):  
Sustainable Development ◽  
Environmental Education ◽  
Natural Resources ◽  
Scientific Knowledge ◽  
Social Practices ◽  
Value Systems ◽  
Eastern Region ◽  
Training Of Trainers ◽  
Teaching Programs ◽  
Different Characteristics

The conceptions of the baccalaureate students of Bouarfa and Jerada are analyzed on the basis of a questionnaire relating to the environment and sustainable development. These conceptions are analyzed as interactions between scientific knowledge (K), social practices (P), and value systems (V). The multivariate analyzes used highlight two major poles or systems of conceptions. The first pole brings together people with rather anthropocentric tendencies concerned first with the use of natural resources. The second pole brings together people who tend to be more ecocentric and concerned about preserving the environment. Within these clusters appear sub-groups with different characteristics: for or against GMOs, preservation of the environment, activism in favor of the environment, actions of defense or protection of the environment. Most of the students interviewed lent feelings towards animals, but with a difference from one animal to another and from one city to another (sentiment-centered attitude). These different conceptions deserve to be taken into account in the training of trainers and teaching programs to better assume the objectives of Environmental Education.

scholarly journals Justiça e segurança pública desde uma perspectiva de transição

2017 ◽  
Vol 18 (2) ◽  
pp. 491-508
Author(s):  
Antonio Sérgio Escrivão Filho ◽  
Fernando Luis Coelho Antunes
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Political Violence ◽  
Rule Of Law ◽  
Transitional Justice ◽  
Public Institutions ◽  
Public Security ◽  
Institutional Reforms ◽  
Reconstruction Process ◽  
Democratic Rule ◽  
Delayed Reconstruction

Resumo: O Brasil passou por um processo tardio de reconstrução da sua história no que diz respeito à Justiça de transição. Entre os elementos que desde uma perspectiva conceitual compõem uma noção de Justiça de transição encontram-se os processos compreendidos pelas reformas institucionais, caracterizados pela realização de medidas voltadas à reeducação e refuncionalização das instituições públicas, a fim de reorientá-las para o cotidiano do Estado Democrático de Direito, com vistas à promoção dos direitos humanos, extirpando resquícios autoritários das estruturas normativas, institucionais e culturais do Estado. No interior desse debate, as instituições de justiça e segurança pública são comumente identificadas como alvos prioritários de processos de transição, dada a sua relação intrínseca e direta com o tratamento da violência política sistemática e a restrição de direitos e liberdades. Nesse sentido, o artigo apresenta uma discussão sobre o cenário das reformas institucionais referentes ao poder judiciário e aos sistemas de segurança pública, em um esforço analítico para contribuir com os debates realizados no contexto tardio de Justiça de transição no Brasil.Palavras-chave: Justiça de transição. Reformas institucionais. Poder Judiciário. Segurança pública. Brasil. Abstract: Brazil has passed through a delayed reconstruction process of its history, from a perspective of the so called transitional justice. Among the elements that usually make up a conceptual notion of transitional justice, it can be found the processes understood by institutional reforms, characterized by carrying out measures aimed at reeducation and refunctionalization of public institutions, in order to redirect them to the Democratic Rule of Law, and the promotion of human rights, putting away authoritarian remnants from normative, institutional and cultural public structures. Within this debate, the institutions of justice and public security are commonly identified as priority targets for transition processes, because of its intrinsic and directly relation to the treatment of systematic political violence and the restriction of rights and freedoms. In this sense, the article presents a discussion on the scenario of institutional reforms regarding the judiciary, public security in the context of the late Transitional Justice in Brazil.Keywords: Transitional justice. Institutional reforms. Judicial role. Public security. Brazil.

Women in Combat

2019 ◽  
pp. 1-13
Author(s):  
Ayelet Harel-Shalev ◽  
Shir Daphna-Tekoah
Keyword(s):  
International Relations ◽  
Theoretical Framework ◽  
Security Studies ◽  
Women Soldiers ◽  
Women's Voices ◽  
Research Framework ◽  
Military Studies ◽  
Personal Stories ◽  
War And Conflict

The book focuses on the importance of the study of women combat soldiers and veterans in the fields of Security Studies and International Relations. The chapter addresses this issue by bringing women’s voices and silences to the forefront of research in these domains and by presenting women soldiers as narrators of war and conflict through their alternative and very personal stories. The pivotal motif that runs through the book is the theoretical framework it provides for understanding the process of integration of women soldiers into combat and combat-support roles and the challenges they face. The research seeks to explore narratives of women as violent actors rather than as women struggling for peace. The book prompts scholars to be critical of widely accepted knowledge and binary conceptions in military studies. Chapter 1 outlines the book’s rationale, the research framework, the context of the research, and the contents of the subsequent chapters.

Protestant Paramilitary Mothering

2020 ◽  
pp. 36-50
Author(s):  
Sandra M. McEvoy
Keyword(s):  
Northern Ireland ◽  
International Relations ◽  
Political Violence ◽  
Interview Data ◽  
Key Informant ◽  
The Relationship

This chapter explores what often appear to be the irreconcilable differences between embracing and resisting normative tropes of maternity and motherhood that have long preoccupied some feminist scholars of International Relations. Drawing on interview data collected by McEvoy from 2006 to 2017, the chapter interrogates the use of political violence by politically violent mothers who served in Protestant paramilitary organizations (PPOs) in Northern Ireland during the 30-year conflict between 1968 and 1998. The chapter sheds new light on understanding mothers’ roles in political violence in their service to PPOs by exploring motivation for participation and familial opinions of this participation. To further complicate women’s revelations in this regard, the chapter investigates the strategic (gendered) benefits and implications of mothers who embrace political violence. The chapter also reaches beyond scholarly interpretations of motherhood and political violence by including of a coauthor and key informant, “Chloe White.” Chloe is a mother and former member of a PPO in Northern Ireland, and her insights on the relationship between political violence and motherhood complement similar insights from more than a dozen PPO mothers who participated in groups during the conflict.

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