Suchergebnisse

Norsk diplomati har mange hverdagshelter, men få som er helter i den forstand at de har skapt noe unikt. Artikkelen diskuterer kandidat nummer en til rollen, Fridtjof Nansen. Nansens diplomatiske virksomhet var mangslungen og inkluderte vitenskapsdiplomati, sportsdiplomati, bakkanaler mellom tredjeparter og oppdrag for den norske stat og internasjonale organisasjoner. Ikke mindre enn fire av hans bidrag er unike. Det første er hans utvidelse av Norges utenrikspolitiske spillerom ved å få en engelsk-gift konge på Norges trone i 1905. Det andre er hans ferdigforhandling av stormaktenes sikkerhetsgaranti til Norge i 1907, som norsk minister til London. Den tredje er ferdigforhandlingen av forsyningsavtalen med amerikanerne i 1918. Det fjerde er hans innsats for hundretusener av flyktninger på 1920-tallet, da særlig det strukturelle grepet med å gjøre dem til juridiske subjekter ved å utstyre dem med såkalt Nansen-pass. For dette arbeidet fikk Nansen også Nobels fredspris for nøyaktig 100 år siden. Nansens svakhet som diplomat var den massive selvsentrertheten og egenrådigheten som gjorde ham til en problematisk representant for et kollektiv som den norske stat. Svakheten ble mer enn veiet opp av Nansens virtuose håndtering av diplomatiets to andre kjerneoppgaver, informasjonssanking og forhandling, som alle hans fire unike innsatser bygger på.
Abstract in EnglishThe Diplomat as Hero: Fridtjof NansenNorwegian diplomacy has seen many everyday heroes, but few who have done something unique. The article discusses the main candidate for the role, Fridtjof Nansen. Nansen carried out a number of different diplomatic functions at the behest of the Norwegian state and International Organisations, no less than four of which were unique. He increased Norway's room for manoeuvre by contributing to placing a Danish king with a British-born wife on the throne upon the country's independence in 1905. He then successfully negotiated a Great Power-guaranteed Integrity Treaty for the new state. Nansen also secured a treaty on vital goods delivery with the United States for Norway in 1918. Most famously, in the1920s, he helped hundreds of thousands of refugees with disaster relief, but also by manipulating structural preconditions so that they received identity papers and could cross borders, for which he received the 1922 Nobel Peace prize. Nansen's weakness as a diplomat was his egocentrism, complete with a programmatic aversion against seeing his specific mission as part of a united foreign policy orchestrated elsewhere. He more than made up for this by his expert handling of diplomacy's other two basic functions, information gathering and negotiation, which underlay all his four unique successes.

Iver Neumann, director of the Fritjof Nansen Institute, reviews Geopolitical Imagination: Ideology and Utopia in Post-Soviet Russia by Mikhail Suslov.

Artikkelen begynner med å takke de andre bidragsyterene til symposiet. Det argumenteres så for at offentlige intellektuelle kan bli lettere hørt når tilhørerne opplever at verden er i endring og er i villrede om hva som foregår, for da er de villige til å overveie om det sosiale kanskje kan forstås på andre måter enn de har gjort tidligere. Med referanse til Heideggers poeng om at å tenke når man står midt i en situasjon er noe annet enn å sette seg ned og være eftertenksom, argumenteres det også for at en intellektuell som velger å fylle kommentatrollen i mediene, simpelthen velger å være del av en annen diskurs enn en intellektuell som deltar i det vitenskapelige ordskiftet. Endelig gjøres poenget at politiske realister og poststrukturslister deler en maktrealisme de har fra Nietzsche, men at de skiller lag i sin forståelse av hva makt er. ; The article begins by thanking the other contributors to the symposium. It then argues that intellectual interventions will be more effective in situations where the world is seen as changing rapidly, for in such situations people are more willing to listen to new readings of the social than when things are experienced as being more stable. With reference to Heideggerian understandings of what it is like to think on the hoof versus what it is like to think after the fact, it is also argued that a public intellectual who acts as a pundit is simply engaged in a different language game, regulated by different rules, than an intellectual who is acting as a scientist, within the confines of academic discourse. In conclusion, it is argued that realists in International Relations and poststructuralists both share Nietzsche's power realism, but that they disagree about how to define power. ; publishedVersion

The materiality of discourse

The promise held out by discourse analysis is to integrate the study of social meaning, institutions and the stuff the world is made of, all in one sweeping catch. In order to fulfil this promise, the major task confronting the discourse analyst is how to engage the question of materiality. It may well be that everything is discourse and that there are detrimental effects emanating from attempts to delineate materiality from non-materiality. However, inas-much as this way of framing an answer seems to bracket the question of materiality, it does not move the discourse on discourse any further, which may be an even greater loss. The article begins to operationalise the question by drawing some distinctions between the materiality of the text and the materiality of the dis-course, and between materiality understood as formalis-ed patterns of interaction and physical infra-structure. The bulk of the argument tries to demonstrate by means of examples how it is easier to include a study of materiality into the analysis if one begins with an object of study such as a process, a subject position or a specific institution, rather than with a text or a corpus of texts. In conclusion, a model first put forward by Janice Bially is presented, where discourse appears as a circle of three interdependent concepts: values, institutions and reality.

Concepts of International Relations, for Students and Other Smarties is not a stereotypical textbook, but an instructive, entertaining and motivating introduction to the field of International Relations (IR). Rather than relying on figures or tables, Concepts of International Relations, for Students and Other Smarties piques the reader's interest with a pithy narrative that presents apposite nutshell examples, stresses historical breaks and throws in the odd pun to get the big picture across. While there are other brief, introductory IR titles, Iver Neumann's book remains fully within the academic genre, and is comparatively long on history. It is based on his repeatedly offered introductory lectures to first-year IR students and students from other disciplines looking for an overview course at the LSE. With a relaxed lecturing style, this textbook introduces the long-term historical emergence of concepts such as state (European), state (global), empire, non-state agents, foreign policy, state system, nationalism, globalization, security, international society, great powers, diplomacy, war and peace, balance of power, international law, power and sovereignty, intervention, gender and class. It demonstrates how such phenomena have been understood in very different ways. First, the reader is alerted to how the use of concepts is an integrated part of politics. Secondly, the reader is sensitized to how social change has worked in the past, and is working now. Thirdly, the book demonstrates how historical and social context matters in ongoing international relations.

"The end of the Soviet system and the transition to the market in Russia, coupled with the inexorable rise of nationalism, brought to the fore the centuries-old debate about Russia's relationship with Europe. In this revised and updated second edition of Russia and the Idea of Europe, Iver Neumann discusses whether the tensions between self-referencing romantic nationalist views and Europe-orientated liberal views can ever be resolved. Drawing on a wide range of Russian sources, this volume retains the broad historical focus of the previous edition and picks up from where the first edition left off in the early 1990's and brings the discussion fully up to date. Discussing theoretical and political developments it relates the existing story of Russian identity formation to new foreign policy analysis and the developments in the study of nationalism. The book also offers an additional focus on post-Cold War developments. In particular it examines the year 2000, when Putin substituted Yeltsin as president, and 2014, when Russian foreign policy turned from cooperation to confrontation. Bringing to life the various debates surrounding this complicated relationship in an accessible and clear manner, this book continues to be a unique and vital resource for both students and scholars of international relations"--Provided by publisher.

"The end of the Soviet system and the transition to the market in Russia, coupled with the inexorable rise of nationalism, brought to the fore the centuries-old debate about Russia's relationship with Europe. In this revised and updated second edition of Russia and the Idea of Europe, Iver Neumann discusses whether the tensions between self-referencing romantic nationalist views and Europe-orientated liberal views can ever be resolved. Drawing on a wide range of Russian sources, this volume retains the broad historical focus of the previous edition and picks up from where the first edition left off in the early 1990's and brings the discussion fully up to date. Discussing theoretical and political developments it relates the existing story of Russian identity formation to new foreign policy analysis and the developments in the study of nationalism. The book also offers an additional focus on post-Cold War developments. In particular it examines the year 2000, when Putin substituted Yeltsin as president, and 2014, when Russian foreign policy turned from cooperation to confrontation. Bringing to life the various debates surrounding this complicated relationship in an accessible and clear manner, this book continues to be a unique and vital resource for both students and scholars of international relations"--Provided by publisher

Increasing globalisation and the rise of new powers like India and China is putting conventional Eurocentric forms of diplomacy under pressure. This book investigates the resulting transformations by looking at changes in and around diplomatic sites such as the dinner table, via the civil war interstices where third parties try to mediate conflicts, to grand diplomatic showpieces and representations of diplomacy in popular culture

The 2010 WikiLeaks release of 250,000 U.S. diplomatic cables has made it eminently clear that there is a vast gulf between the public face of diplomacy and the opinions and actions that take place behind embassy doors. In At Home with the Diplomats, Iver B. Neumann offers unprecedented access to the inner workings of a foreign ministry. Neumann worked for several years at the Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, where he had an up-close view of how diplomats conduct their business and how they perceive their own practices. In this book he shows us how diplomacy is conducted on a day-to-day basis. Approaching contemporary diplomacy from an anthropological perspective, Neumann examines the various aspects of diplomatic work and practice, including immunity, permanent representation, diplomatic sociability, accreditation, and issues of gender equality. Neumann shows that the diplomat working abroad and the diplomat at home are engaged in two different modes of knowledge production. Diplomats in the field focus primarily on gathering and processing information. In contrast, the diplomat based in his or her home capital is caught up in the seemingly endless production of texts: reports, speeches, position papers, and the like. Neumann leaves the reader with a keen sense of the practices of diplomacy: relations with foreign ministries, mediating between other people's positions while integrating personal and professional into a cohesive whole, adherence to compulsory routines and agendas, and, above all, the generation of knowledge. Yet even as they come to master such quotidian tasks, diplomats are regularly called upon to do exceptional things, such as negotiating peace. -- Publisher description