Alternative Accountabilities in Global Politics
Alternative Accountabilities in Global Politics

Author: Brent J. Steele

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2013-02-15

Total Pages: 210

ISBN-13: 1136179275

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In fields such as politics, international relations, public administration and international law, there is a rapidly growing interest in the topic of ‘accountability’. In this innovative new work, Steele shows how we might recognize how an alternative form of accountability in global politics has been present for some time, and that, furthermore, this form’s continued presence remains one of the most politically powerful, if not endurable, possibilities for resistance in the near future. This book argues that the physical and visually shocking outcomes of violence found on the bodies of humans, as well as the buildings and landscapes which surround us, specifically the scars they leave behind, remain one of our most compelling forms of accountability. Steele develops the theoretical argument on scars and exteriority utilizing insights from several philosophical and theoretical resources including Hannah Arendt, Erving Goffmann, and Richard Rorty. The work examines scars and their effects through several illustrations, including the accounts of Emmett Till, Iranian protestor Neda Agha-Soltan, the Syrian boy Hamza al-Khateeb, the massacre in WWII and then memorializing throughout the 20th century of the Lidice children in the modern-day Czech Republic, the particular architecturally destructive outcomes of the 2008-9 Gaza War, the loss of the Twin Towers in New York, as well as a variety of violent scars found on the landscapes of Europe and Southeast Asia. Emphasizing the importance of the space and ‘time’ of scars, the book illustrates how an alternative form of accountability in the scar can be a useful, disruptive, spontaneous, but also creative practice to challenge the discourses of violence which remain with us today.

Alternative Accountabilities in Global Politics
Alternative Accountabilities in Global Politics

Author: Brent J. Steele

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2013

Total Pages: 210

ISBN-13: 0415632692

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In this innovative new work, Steele shows how we might recognize how an alternative form of accountability in global politics has been present for some time, and that, furthermore, this form's continued presence remains one of the most politically powerful, if not endurable, possibilities for resistance in the near future.

The Politics of Haunting and Memory in International Relations
The Politics of Haunting and Memory in International Relations

Author: Jessica Auchter

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2014-03-21

Total Pages: 308

ISBN-13: 131796246X

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International Relations has traditionally focused on conflict and war, but the effects of violence including dead bodies and memorialization practices have largely been considered beyond the purview of the field. Drawing on Jacques Derrida’s notion of hauntology to consider the politics of life and death, Auchter traces the story of how life and death and a clear division between the two is summoned in the project of statecraft. She argues that by letting ourselves be haunted, or looking for ghosts, it is possible to trace how statecraft relies on the construction of such a dichotomy. Three empirical cases offer fertile ground for complicating the picture often painted of memorialization: Rwandan genocide memorials, the underexplored case of undocumented immigrants who die crossing the US-Mexico border, and the body/ruins nexus in 9/11 memorialization. Focusing on the role of dead bodies and the construction of particular spaces as the appropriate sites for memory to be situated, it offers an alternative take on the new materialisms movement in international relations by asking after the questions that arise from an ethnographic approach to the subject: viewing things from the perspective of dead bodies, who occupy the shadowy world of post-conflict international politics. This work will be of great interest to students and scholars of critical international relations, security studies, statecraft and memory studies.

Postcolonial Theory and International Relations
Postcolonial Theory and International Relations

Author: Sanjay Seth

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2013-03-05

Total Pages: 217

ISBN-13: 1135101876

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What can postcolonialism tell us about international relations? What can international relations tell us about postcolonialism? In recent years, postcolonial perspectives and insights have challenged our conventional understanding of international politics. Postcolonial Theory and International Relations is the first book to provide a comprehensive and accessible survey of how postcolonialism radically alters our understanding of international relations. Each chapter is written by a leading international scholar and looks at the core components of international relations – theories, the nation, geopolitics, international law, war, international political economy, sovereignty, religion, nationalism, Empire etc. – through a postcolonial lens. In so doing it provides students with a valuable insight into the challenges that postcolonialism poses to our understanding of global politics.

Postcolonial Encounters in International Relations
Postcolonial Encounters in International Relations

Author: Alina Sajed

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2013-07-18

Total Pages: 254

ISBN-13: 1135047790

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Postcolonial Encounters in International Relations examines the social and cultural aspects of the political violence that underpinned the French colonial project in the Maghreb, and the multi-layered postcolonial realities that ensued. This book explores the reality of the lives of North African migrants in postcolonial France, with a particular focus on their access to political entitlements such as citizenship and rights. This reality is complicated even further by complex practices of memory undertaken by Franco-Maghrebian intellectuals, who negotiate, in their writings, between the violent memory of the French colonial project in the Maghreb, and the contemporary conundrums of postcolonial migration. The book pursues thus the politics of (post)colonial memory by tracing its representations in literary, political, and visual narratives belonging to various Franco-Maghrebian intellectuals, who see themselves as living and writing between France and the Maghreb. By adopting a postcolonial perspective, a perspective quite marginal in International Relations, the book investigates a different international relations, which emerges via narratives of migration. A postcolonial standpoint is instrumental in understanding the relations between class, gender, and race, which interrogate and reflect more generally on the shared (post)colonial violence between North Africa and France, and on the politics of mediating violence through complex practices of memory.

Race and Racism in International Relations
Race and Racism in International Relations

Author: Alexander Anievas

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2014-10-30

Total Pages: 255

ISBN-13: 1317933281

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International Relations, as a discipline, does not grant race and racism explanatory agency in its conventional analyses, despite such issues being integral to the birth of the discipline. Race and Racism in International Relations seeks to remedy this oversight by acting as a catalyst for remembering, exposing and critically re-articulating the central importance of race and racism in International Relations. Focusing especially on the theoretical and political legacy of W.E.B. Du Bois’s concept of the "colour line", the cutting edge contributions in this text provide an accessible entry point for both International Relations students and scholars into the literature and debates on race and racism by borrowing insights from disciplines such as history, anthropology and sociology where race and race theory figures more prominently; yet they also suggest that the field of IR is itself an intellectually and strategic field through which to further confront the global colour line. Drawing together a wide range of contributors, this much-needed text will be essential reading for students and scholars in a range of areas including Postcolonial studies, race/racism in world politics and international relations theory.

Memory and Trauma in International Relations
Memory and Trauma in International Relations

Author: Erica Resende

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2013-11-20

Total Pages: 297

ISBN-13: 1134692889

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This work seeks to provide a comprehensive and accessible survey of the international dimension of trauma and memory and its manifestations in various cultural contexts. Drawing together contributions and case studies from scholars around the globe, the book explores the international political dimension of feeling, suffering, forgetting, remembering and memorializing traumatic events and to investigate how they function as social practices for overcoming trauma and creating social change. Divided into two sections, the book maps out the different theoretical debates and then moves on to examine emerging themes such as ontological security, social change, gender, religion, foreign policy & natural disasters. Throughout the chapters, the editors consider the social, political and ethical implications of forgetting and remembering traumatic events in world politics Showcasing how trauma and memory deepen our understanding of IR, this work will be of great interest to students and scholars of international relations, memory and trauma studies and security studies.

Critical Imaginations in International Relations
Critical Imaginations in International Relations

Author: Aoileann Ní Mhurchú

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2016-01-29

Total Pages: 503

ISBN-13: 131758533X

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This exciting new text brings together in one volume an overview of the many reflections on how we might address the problems and limitations of a state-centred approach in the discipline of International Relations (IR). The book is structured into chapters on key concepts, with each providing an introduction to the concept for those new to the field of critical politics – including undergraduate and postgraduate students – as well as drawing connections between concepts and thinkers that will be provocative and illuminating for more established researchers in the field. They give an overview of core ideas associated with the concept; the critical potential of the concept; and key thinkers linked to the concept, seeking to address the following questions: How has the concept traditionally been understood? How has the concept come to be understood in critical thinking? How is the concept used in interrogating the limits of state centrism? What different possibilities for engaging with international relations have been envisioned through the concept? Why are such possibilities for alternative thinking about international relations important? What are some key articles and volumes related to the concept which readers can go for further research? Drawing together some of the key thinkers in the field of critical International Relations and including both established and emerging academics located in Asia, Europe, Latin America and North America, this book is a key resource for students and scholars alike.

Politics of Violence
Politics of Violence

Author: Charlotte Heath-Kelly

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2013-10-15

Total Pages: 206

ISBN-13: 1135005915

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Critical thinkers like Foucault, Benjamin, Derrida and Žižek have long challenged the liberal separation of violence and politics by highlighting the implicit violence within political and economic structures. But in an era of international terrorism and counter-terrorism, should we not also reverse the question to ask ‘what is political about violence?’ Using interviews with ex-militants from Italian leftist struggle of the 1970s and the Cypriot anti-colonial militancy of the 1950s, Heath-Kelly explores the political utility of violence. Studies of conflict and international politics rarely address how killing and injuring function to win wars or overturn regimes. But by rejecting conceptions of violence as a means-to-an-end found in the works of Clausewitz and Arendt, this book draws upon studies of pain to explore the ways in which armed struggle produces new political subjects and regimes, and discredits others, through experiences of violence. Using Elaine Scarry’s conception of pain as ‘world-destroying’ and Walter Benjamin’s delineation of violence as either lawmaking or law-preserving to frame ex-militant discussions of participation in armed struggle, the book contributes a pathbreaking empirical exploration of violence to international politics literatures - moving the study of political violence away from an understanding of violence as just a means-to-an-end. Drawing out insights that have a far wider resonance and significance for the analysis of the ‘politicality’ of political violence, this work will be of interest to students and scholars in areas such as international relations, security studies and international relations theory.

Visual Politics and North Korea
Visual Politics and North Korea

Author: David Shim

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2013-10-15

Total Pages: 188

ISBN-13: 1135011370

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In the realm of international relations, there are seemingly few states like North Korea. Whether it is the country’s human rights situation, its precarious everyday life or its so-called foreign policy of coercion and nuclear brinkmanship, no matter what this ‘pariah’ nation says and does it affects the state and stability of regional and global politics. But what do we know about North Korea and how do we come to know it? This book argues that visual imagery plays a decisive role in this operation. By discussing two exemplary areas – everyday photography and satellite imagery – the book takes into account the role of images in the way that particular issues related to North Korea are understood in contemporary geopolitics. Images work. They do something by evoking a particular perspective of what is shown in them, allowing only specific ways of seeing and knowing. In this sense, images are deeply political. Individual methodological usages in the book can provide a procedural basis from which to start or rethink further studies on visuality, both in IR and beyond. It also opens an innovative path for future studies on East Asia, making the book attractive to a range of specialists and thus holding an appeal beyond the boundaries of a single discipline.