Suchergebnisse

A review essay covering books by: 1) Mariano Barbato, Pilgrimage, Politics, and International Relations: Religious Semantics for World Politics (2013) and 2) Jodok Troy, Christian Approaches to International Affairs (2012).

The "facts" of international politics constitute the first-order representations of political life and can be reflected in popular entertainment as second-order or fictional representations. This article demonstrates that discourses of popular culture are powerful and implicated in International Relations (IR) studies. The article makes two correlated claims: the first is that the humanist and anthropological methodology often used to analyse pop culture could also be used to analyse international issues, if appropriately contextualized; the second claim is that a nation can manifest its 'discourse' in international politics via its popular culture, as soft power.

Examines emphasis on the role of ideas, especially ethical reflection, in forming actors and foreign policy, but also the importance of reintegrating religious ideas and institutions into Catholicism; since the 1970s, chiefly.

"This book offers a completely new and unique introduction to the economics of international relations. It treats all the traditional major themes of international relations theory while giving each a refreshing new twist with the incorporation of the influence of private power, particularly in the realm of war and peace. It reframes the history of the modern global economy and politics by thoroughly purging the myth of the market, a systematic blindness to private power. It not only draws on, but also illuminates major themes and empirical findings of comparative politics, business history, business strategy, business cycle theory, social evolutionary theory, as well as the practical wisdom of traders and investors. Part I introduces the major concepts of competing theories of international relations, emphasizing a unique approach: corporatism. Part II introduces the critical importance of dynamic and oppositional analysis of issues. Part III traces the rise of the modern world from the mercantilist period until the rise of modern corporate organizations and the demise of imperialism in the crucible of World War I. Part IV begins with the origins of the contemporary dominance of business internationalism before and during World War II, then analyzes three major facets of the postwar era: the unification of much of Europe, the industrialization of the Third World, and the Cold War and its aftermath. The final chapter considers the present and future of a fairly peaceful yet economically unstable world. This book presents a refreshing and exciting portrayal of the global economy which challenges every major subject from money to markets to the business cycle. This book eschews the economics of dull averages to restore the drama of contending business forces struggling for wealth and, in the process, influencing war and peace"--

Scholars have been studying whether China's call for "discourse power" in international politics (initially made in 2011) is simply a tactic in the country's now-familiar pursuit of national interests as part of its ascendency. A closer look is required to avoid mistakenly considering it as no more than the Communist Party's propaganda, which would miss the point regarding China's use of the phrase in the context of prevailing normative worldviews regarding fairness and justice. The current Chinese international relations (IR) literature contains a significant number of articles on discourse power ( huayuquan) that discuss how calls for protecting sovereignty and rights in international affairs represent a perceived cultural need on the part of the Chinese government to articulate its own worldview while promoting its national interests. The author argues that without identifying theoretical or conceptual rationales and processes that support China's assertion of a need for discourse power in international affairs, it is possible to overlook the important cultural roots underlying the Chinese government's repeated demands for legitimacy in its dealings with other nation-states. (China/GIGA)

"This book focuses on sub-region as a new social unit of international society. It is based on the findings obtained through meticulous fieldwork and joint studies conducted over the past 10 years by about 20 researchers, primarily from Japanese universities and Chiang Mai University, Thailand. The sub-regions described here are mostly international cross-border spaces or units in the interior of a certain region, which include: multiple states, states and parts of states, or more than two parts of states (often referred to as micro-regions). Such sub-regions have been formed in various parts of the world since the end of the Cold War. However, studies on sub-regions remain unexplored in the existing studies of regionalism. The few studies that do exist mainly focus on the economic aspects of sub-regions. In contrast, this book will specifically examine the sub-regions in Asia (especially the Mekong region and Europe) as main cases from a political science and international relations perspective, aiming to establish a new/alternative international relations by carving out a political angle of sub-region as a new social unit of international society and attempting to shift the paradigm of conventional international relations. To understand the political dimension of a sub-region, this book will mainly focus on three aspects: sub-regions and state strategies, bottom-up dimension of sub-regions, and sub-regions and borders"--