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Clear all filtersClaiming the early state for the relational turn: the case of Rus' (ca. 800-1100)
The importance of the Eurasian steppe to the study of international relations
International Diplomacy vol I-IV
Following on from where 2004's widely acclaimed three-volume SAGE collection, Diplomacy (ed. Jonsson & Langhorne) left off, this new four-volume major work takes a new look at a subject which has matured and developed significantly over the past decade. With the rise of India, China and Brazil as well as of the global south, diplomacy's history looks different. Significant shifts have prompted scholars in the field to reconsider the historical sequences that are relevant to an understanding of what diplomacy is today, and where it may be heading. Increased mediazation of global politics and diplomacy has prompted an exponential growth in literature on public diplomacy. This collection has been carefully structured so that each volume gives the reader an overview of the literature on a new area of development in the study of diplomacy: Volume One: Diplomatic institutions Volume Two: Diplomacy in a Multicultural World Volume Three: The Pluralisation of Diplomacy - Changing Actors, Developing Arenas and New Issues Volume Four: Public Diplomacy
Battlestar Galactica and International Relations
Looking at a television franchise like Battlestar Galactica (BSG) is no longer news within the discipline of International Relations. A growing number of scholars in and out of IR are studying the importance of cultural artifacts – popular or otherwise – for the phenomena that make up the core of our discipline. The genre of science fiction offers the analyst an opportunity that cannot be matched by more mimetic genres, namely the chance to look at how sets of widely-circulating expectations of the social serve to constrain authors as they work to introduce as yet unexplored problematiques, the fantasy aspect in much of science fiction storytelling is premised simply on a material difference. As such, while the physical setting of a science fiction tale might appear novel, its imaginative life world will likely retain many elements of the world we already live in and which we can readily recognize as similar to our own. For Critical IR scholarship then, BSG presents an opportunity to examine how these purported homologies or elements of redundancy between the fantastic and the real have been drawn and perhaps to consider, too, whether the show can teach us things about world politics, its various logics and structures, which we might not otherwise be sensitive to. Tackling some of the key contemporary issues in IR, the writers of BSG have taken on a range of important political themes and issues, including the legitimacy of military government, the tactical utility of genocide, and even the philosophical implications of artificial intelligence technologies for the very category of what it means to be 'human'. The contributors in this book explore in depth the argument that one of the most important aspects of popular culture is to naturalize or normalise a certain social order by further entrenching the expectations of social behaviour upon which our mentalities of rule are founded. This work will be of interest to student and scholars of international relations, popular culture and security studies.
Diplomatic Sites: A Critical Enquiry
Although diplomacy increasingly takes place in untraditional settings that are increasingly non-Western, our debates about diplomacy still focus on traditional points of contact such as the conference table, the ministerial office and the press conference. This book is framed as a discussion on whether increasing globalisation and the rise of powers such as China, India and Brazil will precipitate a crisis in diplomacy; it also tackles the problem of diplomatic Eurocentrism head on. The author, who has broad working experience of diplomacy, reflects on sites that range from the dining table a quotidian and elementary meeting place where all kinds of business is settled amid a variety of culturally specific but little-known practices via the civil-war interstices where diplomats from third parties try to facilitate and mediate conflict, to grand diplomatic extravaganzas, the object of which is to overwhelm the other party. In a media age, popular understanding of diplomacy is a force to be reckoned with, hence the book discusses how diplomacy is represented in an almost wholly overlooked space, namely that of popular culture. The author concludes that, far from being in crisis, diplomatic activity is increasingly in evidence in a variety of sites. Rather than being a dying art, in today's globalised world it positively thrives.
'Religion in Sort of a Global Sense’: The Relevance of Religious Practices for Political Community in Battlestar Galactica and Beyond