International Relations (IR) is taking a stronger interest in visual practices and representations both as popular imaginaries that shape how we understand and act in the world and as vehicles for teaching empirical events and abstract concepts. The genre of documentary film has, however, received virtually no attention, which is striking given the last decade's explosion of widely circulated documentaries revolving around questions of central importance to IR. In this article we argue that IR needs to take documentary film‐making seriously as a separate and significant medium of representation that—moving smoothly between fact and fiction, education and entertainment—directly intervenes in international politics by laying claim to (parts of) truth and reality. To this end, we introduce an analytical framework based on the idea of arrangements of perceptibility, a term that refers to the creative arrangement of sensorial perceptions (saying and showing) in documentary film. We distinguish between three such arrangements, each characterized by a specific theoretical modality (reality, truth, doubt), educational model (instruction, facilitation, problematization), and political efficacy (exposition, disclosure, destabilization). This framework enables a critical analysis of the politics of documentary film, which we demonstrate through a reading of recent documentary films about global politics.
This article is concerned with the historical trajectory and legacy of British liberal internationalist ideas in the opening three decades of the twentieth century. Despite this body of ideas being a major force behind the establishment of International Relations (IR) in Britain following the Great War, only scant attention is paid to its pre-war configuration. The article attempts to remedy this gap by focusing on internationalist thought prior to and during the war. It is argued that internationalist ideas during the Great War accelerated a drift towards institutional arguments, which are herein distinguished from moral arguments, and that the concept of anarchy played a major role in this shift in internationalist ideas. While the transformation of liberal internationalist ideas during the war constitutes a central backdrop to the early practices of British IR, it should not overshadow the powerful, underlying continuity in ethico-political convictions entertained by internationalists before and after the Great War.
This article questions two interrelated myths pertaining to the interwar internationalism of the British Labour Party and the theories of so‐called idealists in the academic discipline of International Relations (IR). In IR, interwar “idealists” are (in)famous for a detached and utopian approach to international politics. Conventional historiographical verdicts on the international policy of the Labour Party in the interwar period suggest that the party was the practical mirror of this naïve international outlook. In fact, the two themes are connected, most notably through Labour's Advisory Committee on International Questions. This article brings the study of Labour's internationalism and the international theories of purported idealists together by focusing on debates on the League of Nations and the use of force. The analysis reveals that conventional historiographical narratives are inadequate and too simplistic for grasping the diversity of Labour's internationalism and interwar progressivist ideas about international politics in general.
The relationship between pluralism and internationalism is an interesting historical theme on the borderline between international relations and political theory. Intuitively the two ideologies seem to enjoy a close relationship, and at an abstract level they were both concerned with achieving political order with a minimum of central authority. However, the historical and theoretical interconnections between pluralism and (liberal) internationalism in Britain remain largely unexplored. This article attempts to fi ll this lacuna in intellectual history. Although both took shape within the confines of the same progressive intellectual agenda, the article strikes a cautious note about establishing too close a link between pluralism and internationalism, especially in the years following the Great War. This sceptical conclusion reflects not only the different preoccupations and changing nature of both pluralism and internationalism in the opening decades of the twentieth century, but also their complex theoretical relationship.
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