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A combination of heightened economic competition and an extreme concentration of power in geopolitics globalizes insecurity in the form of hyperconflict: a reorganization of political violence, a growing climate of fear, and increasing instability at a world level.
This book is an introduction to critical approaches to terrorism studies. While there is a growing body of Critical Terrorism Studies (CTS) literature devoted to empirical examples and conceptual development, very little has been written about how to systematically carry out this kind of research. Critical Terrorism Studies fills this gap by addressing three key themes: The position of terrorism studies and critical terrorism studies in the discipline of International Relations (IR) Theoretical and methodological elaborations of critical approaches to the study of terrorism Empirical illustrations of those approaches. Drawing upon a range of engaging material, the volume reviews a series of non-variable based methodological approaches. It then goes on to provide empirical examples that illustrate how these approaches have been and can be utilized by students, teachers, and postgraduate researchers alike to critically and rigorously study terrorism. This textbook will be of much interest to students of terrorism studies, sociology, critical security studies, and IR in general.
This book shows how to use a range of critical approaches to conduct research on terrorism. Featuring the work of researchers who have already utilized these methods to study terrorism, it includes a diverse range of critical methodological approaches – including discourse analysis, feminist, postcolonial, ethnographic, critical theory, and visual analysis of terrorism. The main objectives of the book are to assist researchers in adopting and applying various critical approaches to the study of terrorism. This goal is achieved by bringing together a number of different scholars working on the topic of terrorism from a range of non-variables-based approaches. Their individual chapters discu...
This book challenges the conventional wisdom that civil war inevitably stymies economic development and that ‘civil war represents development in reverse’. While some civil wars may have adverse economic effects, Civil War and Uncivil Development posits that not all conflicts have negative economic consequences and, under certain conditions, civil war violence can bolster processes of economic development. Using Colombia as a case study, this book provides evidence that violence perpetrated by key actors of the conflict – the public armed forces and paramilitaries – has facilitated economic growth and processes of economic globalisation in Colombia (namely, international trade and foreign direct investment), with profoundly negative consequences for large swathes of civilians. The analysis also discusses the ‘development in reverse’ logic in the context of other conflicts across the globe. This book will be an invaluable resource for scholars, practitioners and students in the fields of security and development, civil war studies, peace studies, the political economy of conflict and international relations.
In a radio broadcast in 1939 Winston Churchill defined Russia in a famous quip as ‘a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma.’ The chain of metaphors in Churchill’s famous maxim was to point the difficulty of making sense of the great political transformation Russia had gone through. Though perplexed, Churchill had a key to solve the Russian riddle: the national interest or more precisely ‘historic-life interests.’ The ‘new Middle East’ is also a riddle inside an enigma rolled up in a puzzle mat. The former is difficult to grasp even with metaphors. The national interest is not a ‘key’ either, for it appears more of a political ploy than an analytical edifice that can hardly be applicable to the haplessly artificial regional states. The enigma of the ‘Arab Spring,’ the mystery of the ISIL, the riddle of Russian intervention in Syria and the puzzle of Turkish national interests in the Middle East are few items in the long list of explanandum.
In order to understand positionality as it relates to research, it is important to learn how to identify and reflect on how knowledge is produced and reproduced. Research across Borders introduces key concepts and methods to understand and critically analyze research in academic books and journals, as well as in media, government reports, and anywhere else information is found. This book addresses the opportunities and challenges of undertaking research in international, cross-border, and cross-cultural contexts. Specifically designed for students studying interdisciplinary or international programs on topics such as human rights, conflict studies, international relations, global development, and migration, Research across Borders provides the methodological, ethical, and epistemological foundations for understanding research across different disciplines. Whether students are gathering information from secondary sources or conducting primary research, Research across Borders aims to help readers become better researchers.
Few authors have sought to explain the links among development, global governance, and globalization, Contesting Global Order traces dominant values and patterns on a world level over the last half century. Including a framing introduction written for the volume, this book brings together for the first time James H. Mittelman’s most influential works, offering cross-regional analysis, and including fieldwork in nine countries in Africa and Asia.
Many actors—from the president and members of Congress to interest groups, NGOs, and the media—compete to shape U.S. foreign policy. The new fifth edition captures this strategic interplay using 15 real-world cases, of which four are brand new: the death of Osama bin Laden and the use of targeted assassinations, nonproliferation policy and the U.S.–India nuclear agreement, the U.S. reaction to Egypt’s collision with the Arab Spring, and the surprise asylum request of blind Chinese dissident Chen Guangcheng. Fully updated to cover the Obama administration, all cases have been revised to reflect recent developments. Whether grappling with use-of-force questions, the international financial crisis, legal and human rights, trade issues, multilateral approaches to the nuclear programs of North Korea and Iran, or climate change, Carter’s engaging case study approach encourages students to question motives, consider alternatives, and analyze outcomes.
One of the seminal voices of twentieth-century political thought, Michael Oakeshott's work has often fallen prey to the ideological labels applied to it by his interpreters and commentators. In this book, Luke Philip Plotica argues that we stand to learn more by embracing Oakeshott's own understanding of his work as contributions to an ever-evolving conversation of humanity. Building from Oakeshott's concept of conversation as an engagement among a plurality of voices "without symposiarch or arbiter" to dictate its course, Plotica explores several fundamental and recurring themes of Oakeshott's philosophical and political writings: individual agency, tradition, the state, and democracy. When...
This book explores how terrorists have been portrayed in the Western media, and the wider ideological and social functions of those representations. Developing a theory of scapegoating related to narrative closure, as well as an integrated, genealogical method of intervisuality, the book proposes a new way of thinking about how political images achieve power and influence the public. By connecting modern portrayals of terrorists (post-9/11) with historical and fictional images of villains from Western cultural history, the book argues that the portrayal and punishment of terrorists in the Western media implicitly perpetuates neo-Orientalist attitudes. It also explains that by repeating these narrative patterns through a ritual of scapegoating, Western media coverage of terrorists partakes in a social process that uses punishment, dehumanization and colonialist ideas to purge the iconic ‘villain’, so as to build national unity and sustain hegemonic power following crisis.