1st Edition

Dialectics in World Politics

Edited By Shannon Brincat Copyright 2015
    216 Pages
    by Routledge

    216 Pages
    by Routledge

    This volume explores the conceptual, methodological and praxeological aspects of dialectical analysis in world politics. As dialectics has remained an under-theorised analytical tool in international relations, this volume provides a critical resource for those seeking to deploy dialectics in their own research by showcasing its effectiveness for understanding and transforming world politics. Contributions demonstrate a number of innovative ways in which dialectical thinking can be of benefit to the study of world politics by covering three thematic concerns: (i) conceptual or meta-theoretical dimensions of dialectics; (ii) methodological features and general principles of dialectical approaches; and (iii) applications and/or case studies that deploy a dialectical approach to world politics. Canvassing a diverse range of dialectical approaches on key issues in world politics – from global security to postcolonial resistances, from the theoretical problems of reification and complexity, to the study of the global futures and the intercultural historical expressions of dialectics – Dialectics and World Politics offers key insights into the social forces and contradictions that are generative of transformation in world politics and yet routinely downplayed in orthodox approaches to international relations. Each chapter demonstrates how dialectics can be utilized more broadly in the discipline and deployed in a critical fashion as part of an emancipatory project.

    This book was originally published as a special issue of Globalizations.

    Preface: Dialectics and World Politics Bertell Ollman

    Introduction Shannon Brincat

    1. Dialectics and World Politics: The Story So Far . . . Shannon Brincat

    2. The Dialectic of the Concrete: Reconsidering Dialectic for IR and Foreign Policy Analysis Benno Teschke and Can Cemgil

    3. Analysing Change: Complex Rather than Dialectical? Erika Cudworth and Stephen Hobden

    4. The Apocalyptic Sting and the Rise of Israeli Unrealism: Toward a Negative-Dialectical Critique Daniel J. Levine

    5. Dialectics for IR: Hegel and the Dao Shannon Brincat and L. H. M. Ling

    6. Fanon on Decolonization and Revolution: Bodies and Dialectics Anna M. Agathangelou

    7. Dialectics in the Longer Durée: The IIPEC Model of Inter-imperial Economy and Culture Laura Doyle

    8. Dialectical Reflections on Transformations of Global Security during the Long Twentieth Century Thomas Biersteker

    9. On the Dialectics of Global Governance in the Twenty-first Century: A Polanyian Double Movement? Heikki Patomäki

    Biography

    Shannon Brincat is a Research Fellow in the School of Government and International Relations at Griffith University, Brisbane, Australia. He has been the editor of a number of collections, most recently Recognition, Conflict and the Problems of Ethical Community (Routledge, 2014) and the three volume series Communism in the 21st Century (2014). He is also the co-founder and co-editor of the journal Global Discourse. His current research focuses on recognition theory and cosmopolitanism; dialectics; tyrannicide; climate change justice; and Critical Theory. He has articles published in the European Journal of International Relations, Review of International Studies and Constellations, amongst others.