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