Halvard Leira

Ideenes relevans — Svar til Målfrid Braut-Hegghammer og Helge Pharo

Beastly Diplomacy

Even if beastly iconography has been pervasive in international politics, the study of diplomacy has traditionally focused solely on man as a political animal. Animals in diplomacy have been treated as a curiosity. This article stakes a claim for a more serious engagement with beastly diplomacy, arguing that animals matter through their ontic status; by representing states; as diplomatic subjects; and as objects of diplomacy. The article places particular emphasis on how animals are a special kind of diplomatic gift, with a variety of meanings and functions. Taking animals seriously implies a rethinking of both the process and the outcomes of diplomacy.

A conceptual history of diplomacy

Scholars of diplomacy have identified diplomatic practices across the human experience, spanning the globe and going back before recorded history. Even so, the actual term ‘diplomacy’ did not enter into usage until the last decade of the 18th century. Does this discrepancy matter, and if so, what can it tell us? These are the underlying questions of this chapter. Drawing on a relatively modest secondary literature, as well as a number of primary sources, Leira emphasises the relative modernity of the concept of ‘diplomacy’, and how it emerged very rapidly as part of a much wider transformation of political vocabularies around 1800. Furthermore, he stresses, how it emerged as a contested concept (almost a term of abuse), and how it has repeatedly been contested over the last two centuries.

Kvinner i diplomati og internasjonal politikk

Hvor er kvinnene? Dette spørsmålet har vært et av utgangspunktene for flere tiår med kvinnestudier i humaniora og samfunnsfag, etter hvert kjønnsstudier, der det slående ofte har vist seg at kvinnene har vært til stede hele tiden, det har bare ikke vært noen (menn) som har brydd seg om å lete etter dem. Innenfor diplomatistudier er de bøkene som vurderes her blant de første som reiser spørsmålet på systematisk vis. I denne bokanmeldelsen tar Halvard Leira for seg Glenda Sluga og Carolyn James' "Women, Diplomacy and International Politics since 1500".

Russia and China in Iceland?

Russia and China in Greenland?

CONSTRUCTION TIME AGAIN: HISTORY IN CONSTRUCTIVIST IR SCHOLARSHIP

In this article we seek to understand how succeeding generations of constructivists have invoked history to exact narratives of change within IR. We make the case that there is a move from a rst generation where history served primarily to undermine generalised and ahistorical mainstream arguments through a second generation where history was providing data to undercut speci c mainstream stories, replacing them with their own largely progressive stories, to a third generation where history is embraced for its own purpose, where history is seen as more open-ended and contingent. This has been a move from the general to the particular and from a meta-critique of the mainstream through accommodation with the mainstream, to a more localised opposition against the mainstream.