The Dialectic of the Concrete: Reconsidering Dialectic for IR and Foreign Policy Analysis

A Marxist Theory of International Relations

“…Regardless, Teschke and Cemgil ( 2014 ) have rightly focused on how to integrate FPA into a materialist framework. The raison d’etre of their approach is a rejection of other Marxist approaches guilty of reducing foreign policy to the ‘epiphenomenal,’ that is ‘to capitalist imperatives or other overriding sociopolitical determinations in structural-functionalist terms’ ( 2014 , 607). Indeed, in this critique they included classical Marxist theories of imperialism and those of neo-Leninists, neo-Kautskyians, neo-Gramscians, post-leninists, and neo-trotskyists—approaches covered in this chapter.…”

“…Indeed, in this critique they included classical Marxist theories of imperialism and those of neo-Leninists, neo-Kautskyians, neo-Gramscians, post-leninists, and neo-trotskyists—approaches covered in this chapter. To them, they all failed to treat foreign policy as an ‘object of analysis in its own right—the active drawing together and purposive re-articulation of multiple influences from the domestic and the foreign.’ Indeed, in each of these approaches foreign policy remains a ‘derivative phenomenon, deduced from deeper social forces, if it is not declared aprioristically as un-theorisable.’ Simply put, for Teschke and Cemgil there is no IR in their Marxist theories of International Relations ( 2014 , 608).…”

“…Teschke and Cemgil’s contribution to this debate is as cleverly argued as others, offering a ‘particular understanding’ of dialectics, according to which ‘all social categories, including capitalism, the state, and foreign policies, remain historically open and subject to change, rather than theoretically closed and fixed’ ( 2014 , 608). Consistent with the assumptions of Political Marxism, their argument is based on the belief that capitalism originates from ‘inter-subjective conflicts’ and in ‘relation to other macro-phenomena (state, inter-state system, foreign policy) as an ongoing social construction—and not as a self-reproducing totality or system’ ( 2014 , 615). More to the point, they use dialectics as ‘an epistemological procedure that re-converts social phenomena as abstractions into their inter-subjectively constructed concretions’ ( 2014 , 615).…”

Strateji Kavramını Çalışmak

“…Yapıların etkinliği sadece öznesel etkinlik sonucunda ortaya çıkmakta ve öncesinde tam olarak bilgisine ulaşılamamaktadır. 64 Bunun nedeni yapıların görünmeyeni de (unobservables) barındırmalarından kaynaklanmaktadır. "Zaman/mekân-bağımlı" olmaları, öznenin eyleme geçtiği mekân ve zamanda yapının farklı etkilerinin olacağını, yeknesak ve doğrusal nedensel güçlerinin olmadığını, bu nedenle de değişkenlik gösterdiğini anlatmaktadır.…”

The (un)making of the Pax Turca in the Middle East: understanding the social-historical roots of foreign policy

“…These do not simply reflect dominant forms of social property relations (see Teschke 2003), nor are they exclusively geopolitical 'strategies of spatialization' (Teschke and Lacher 2007). Reproductive strategies of states include, along with their foreign policy strategies, all state policies, and they must be understood as policy manifestations of temporary institutional results of the interplay of contradictory strategies of reproduction of a variety of social actors (Teschke and Cemgil 2014). While these involve political, economic, geopolitical and social policies, the concrete content of strategies of reproduction cannot be exhausted by exclusive geopolitical, political-economic or foreign policy analyses.…”