At a Crossroads — and Other Reasons to be Cheerful: The Future of International Relations

Abstract

Viewed from the perspective of 2006, possibly no other area within the British university system appears so vibrant as that of International Affairs, International Studies or International Relations. Whenever the label of 'international' is attached to a teaching programme, students wish to study it. This is the case at both undergraduate and postgraduate level. It is also true in a rather broader sense. Research centres and institutes are fl ourishing and expanding, and the number of journals, books and articles that deal with international issues are increasing at a similar rate.There are, of course, many reasons for this beyond the (obvious) charisma of those of us who teach and study the 'international'. 9/11, 7/7, the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, as well as the 'long war on terror' have evoked a vast amount of commentary. The preoccupation with and anxieties over the Bush Administration and its foreign policy have added to the fascination many scholars have found in trying to make sense of our world, and indeed the worlds of humankind spread across the globe. The challenges posed by environmental degradation, natural disasters and wars (and the ethical dilemmas associated with all of these issues) provoke and make us ponder the really huge questions of how it is that so few live in comfort, and so many live on the brink, if not of extinction then of poverty and insecurity. These are the issues that students want to study -and they want to understand these questions because they see that they are real and important, and that they do and will make a difference to their own lives, and to the lives of everyone on the planet. Even if the study of politics, traditionally understood in terms of government systems and public policy, is also popular with students, it cannot or perhaps should not be studied without some understanding of how the domestic connects to the international and back again. The stuff of international politics is therefore alive and well within the university sector and, I would argue, within the civic life of certainly the United Kingdom and Western Europe. The public protests against the politics of the G8 in Scotland in the summer of 2005, and the massive march against the war in Iraq in London in 2003, are surely testimony to a consciousness outside the so-called ivory towers that people understand the importance of how states behave in the international arena, and that actions taken in seemingly faraway places such as Iraq do have consequences on the streets of London.Yet some colleagues have a problem in seeing the translation of this enthusiasm and these anxieties into the so-called discipline of International Relations. Are we not, they ask, simply translating that enthusiasm and concern into a narrowly defi ned set of methodological assumptions governed by a largely North American fetish for quantitative methods and so-called theoretical rigour? In the rush to gain alleged International Relations

The Intellectual Perils of Broad Human Security: Deepening the Critique of International Relations

“…It seems that the greater the difference between the identities of the civilians dying avoidably and those classifying security, the less likely IR will be to recognise and accommodate the problem as being within its remit. Indeed, such critiques are gathering momentum, as IR fails to manage the broad spectrum of post‐bipolar world problems (Booth, 2007; Brown, 2007; Coward, 2006; Kennedy‐Pipe, 2007). The causes of human insecurity posited here reveal an alternative and unpalatable ontology behind global lethal human agency.…”

Debating Uneven and Combined Development/Debating International Relations: A Forum

“…For some, IR is best understood as a crossroads for other disciplines. 79 And Catarina Kinnvall captures a currently popular concern about IR's disciplinarity: 'at a time when we are concerned with decentring IR, recognising that there may be many IRs rather than one (. .…”

IR has not, is not and will not take place

“…IR, she convincingly argues, is not a discipline; it is 'a crossroads where disciplines meet'. 9 At this point, it may be worth asking if being called a discipline or a field matters intellectually -as Helen Louise Turton claims in this Forum. Yet, it is not as if there is a need to defend the subject: IR's many simulations ranging from video games, blogs and textbooks continue to increase in number.…”