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EU10616 Lecture 4 Dr Dibyesh Anand
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Title: EU10616 Lecture 4 Dr Dibyesh Anand
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EU10616 Lecture 4Dr Dibyesh Anand
- Social Construction of global politics
- IR and the role of theory
- Problems with mainstream IR
- Alternative critical approaches to IR
Reflectivist theories - Postmodern IR theory
- Feminist IR theory
- Postcolonial IR theory
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Who is Cc?
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Social construction of reality Power-Knowledge
- A. Social construction of place
- Maps
- Discovery of America
- B. Politics of concepts
- Political Islam, Liberation, Development,
Terrorism, National Interest
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A. British Empire 1886
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A. Mercator vs Peters Map
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A. Upside down map
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A. Discovery of America
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1. Role of theory Positivists (i.e. Mainstream
theories of Realism and Institutionalism)
- 1. Theory as tool
- division between theory and theorists
- division between theory and real world
- faith in Rationalist tradition of Western
Enlightenment - Positivist social science
- Problem solving
- Descriptive
- Explanatory
- Prescriptive
- Predictive
- Status quoist how best to maintain order/system
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2. Role of theory Critical Theory
- Theory as critique
- theory is always for someone and for some
purpose (Robert Cox) - To understand not only the way the world is but
how it got to be the way it is and how to change
it - Does not necessarily reject Enlightenment and
emancipation
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3. Role of theory Reflectivism
- Theory as everyday practice as verb
(theorising) - Constitutive theory
- Truth claims
- Story-telling constitutes the story
- IR theory is a collection of stories about
international politics, it relies upon IR myths
in order to appear to be true (C Weber 2001). - No escape from theory - Theorists as actors,
actors as theorists dangers of back to basics
mentality - Unconventional theories theorists different
issues different understandings
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Problems with mainstream IR theories Realism
and Institutionalism
- Positivism
- State as value maximising rational actor
- Top-down approach how power is exercised not
how it is experienced - Close connection with policy making elite
- Rational choice approaches and game theory
- Globalization
- Limited questions
- Status quo oriented problem solving theories
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Alternative critical approach 1.
Poststructuralism/Postmodernism
- Terminology is contested
- Historical periodisation - postmodernism as the
cultural logic of late capitalism (Jameson)
post-fordism - Mode of thought
- Incredulity towards metanarratives (Lyotard)
- Voice of Reason is also the voice of Holocaust
- Does not provide the right answer but encourages
constant questioning - No One True Story
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Postmodern ideas
- Power-knowledge nexus (Foucault)
- Challenges the notion of power-free knowledge and
the pursuit of knowledge as a noble endeavour
above the politics of everyday life - All power requires knowledge and all knowledge
relies on and reinforces existing power relations - Binary thinking (Derrida)
- Man/woman, Reason/Emotion
- Discourse
- Discourse as constitutive of reality
- legitimises what counts as knowledge, who counts
as agents of knowledge - polices the critical limit
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Poststructuralist IR - some examples
- David Campbell in Writing Security - state
sovereignty predicated on a discourse of danger - Rob Walker in Inside/Outside - spatial way of
thinking - Richard Ashley - double-reading of the Anarchy
Problematique - Roxanne Doty in Imperial Encounters - Politics of
representation
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Feminisms
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Feminist IR - Where are the women?
- Exclusions ignore the masculinity of IR
- of women
- of issues affecting women
- of discourses of femininity and masculinity
- Gendered war
- Just Warrior and Beautiful Soul (Elshtain)
- Representations -eg.Taleban oppressing women
- Rape as tool (see I. Skjelsbaek Sexual Violence
and War, in Europeam Journal of International
Relations, vol. 7 (2), 2001 - http//csf.colorado.edu/isa/ftgs/femir.html
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Masculinity under scrutiny
- Why study only women in politics?
- Danger of ghettoisation and marginalisation
- Power relation operates in anthropological
studies - who studies whom? - It is not men per se, but certain version of
masculinity that is privileged - category
Rational Man is not only gendered but also
racialised and heterosexualised
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3. Postcolonialism
- What is postcolonial?
- Periodisation in terms of decolonisation (this
ignores continuity from colonial times, eg.
Security Council) - Critical mode of thought challenging
Eurocentrism whose main feature has been the
explaining away of parochialism (European
Enlightenment thinking) as superior, progressive
and hence universal - Orientalism as a discourse
- Edward Saids Orientalism
- The construction of the Orient as irrational,
backward, and feminine as opposed to the
rational, progressive, masculine West - During colonial times as well as in contemporary
world
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Postcolonial approach to IR
- IRs geographical parochialism
- eg Cold War as long peace (Gaddis 1987) ignores
reality for majority world - IR and civilization
- IR and Imperialism in the early 20th C
- IR and decolonisation
- Sees the non-West as a playground, as mere
appendage - Evident in the failure to understand contemporary
international political problem because of
failure to take into account the role of colonial
history
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- Not (yet) recognised widely as a theory of IR. It
studies - Neglect and marginalisation of issues affecting
people of the nonWest (eg. Dotys 1993 study of
leading IR journals between 1945-1993 regarding
use of terms race, minority, ethnicity) - Eurocentrism of basic concepts and theories
(eurocentrism masked as universal in mainstream
as well as many critical theories) - Naturalising of global hierarchies by Rationalist
theories (both realism and liberalism) and its
statusquoist implication - Argues for looking into issues of culture,
identity, representation BUT in a manner very
different from mainstream scholars - Argues for greater self-reflexivity
- Role of neocolonialism and new-imperialism
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Politics of representation and Foreign Policy
- North-South relation imperial encounter
(Roxanne Doty) - Policies and politics of representation
- Threats to global peace and security terrorism,
drugs trafficking, immigration, rogue states
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Political Islam?
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Covering Terrorist
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Terrorist Wedding
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