Reflexivity And International Relations

Reflexivity has become a common term in IR scholarship with a variety of uses and meanings. Yet for such an important concept and referent, understandings of reflexivity have been more assumed rather than developed by those who use it, from realists and constructivists to feminists and post-structuralists. This volume seeks to provide the first overview of reflexivity in international relations theory, offering students and scholars a text that : provides a comprehensive and systematic overview of the current reflexivity literature develops important insights into how reflexivity can play a broader role in IR theory pushes reflexivity in new, productive directions, and offers more nuanced and concrete specifications of reflexivity moves reflexivity beyond the scholar and the scholarly field to political practice Formulates practices of reflexivity. Drawing together the work of many of the key scholars in the field into one volume, this work will be essential reading for all students of international relations theory.

Reflexivity has become a common term in IR scholarship with a variety of uses and meanings. Yet for such an important concept and referent, understandings of reflexivity have been more assumed rather than developed by those who use it, from realists and constructivists to feminists and post-structuralists. This volume seeks to provide the first overview of reflexivity in international relations theory, offering students and scholars a text that : provides a comprehensive and systematic overview of the current reflexivity literature develops important insights into how reflexivity can play a broader role in IR theory pushes reflexivity in new, productive directions, and offers more nuanced and concrete specifications of reflexivity moves reflexivity beyond the scholar and the scholarly field to political practice Formulates practices of reflexivity. Drawing together the work of many of the key scholars in the field into one volume, this work will be essential reading for all students of international relations theory.

Promise Unfulfilled? : Reflexivity as Agency and Ethics / Jack L. Amoureux -- Narrative Engagement and the Creative Practices of International Relations / Elizabeth Dauphinee -- Whistle Interruption : Reflexivity and Documentary Provocation / Brent J. Steele -- Zooming in, Zooming Out: Reflexive Engagements / Piki Ish-Shalom -- Between "Late Style" and Sustainable Critique : Said, Adorno and the Israel-Palestine Conflict / Daniel J. Levine -- Reflexivity and Research : Feminist Interventions and Their Practical Implications / Andrea L. Dottolo and Sarah M. Tillery -- Reflexivity@Disney-U : 11 Theses on Living in IR / Mauro J. Caraccioli and Aida A. Hozic -- Exile as Reflexive Engagemen : IR as Everyday Practice / Amanda Beattie -- Reflexivity, Critique, and the Jewish Diaspora / Ilan Zvi-Baron -- Human Terrain Systems and Reflexivity / Evgenia Ileva -- Reflexive Diplomacy / Huss Banai -- When the fix Isn't in : Toward a Reflexive Pragmatism / Wesley Widmaier -- A Reflexive Practice of Prudence / Harry Gould -- Reflexivity beyond Subjectivism : From Descartes to Dewey / Mark E. Button -- Conclusion / Iver B. Neumann

In the past decades, translation studies have increasingly focused on the ethical dimension of translational activity, with an emphasis on reflexivity to assert the role of the researcher in highlighting issues of visibility, creativity and ethics. In Reflexive Translation Studies, Silvia Kadiu investigates the viability of theories that seek to empower translation by making visible its transformative dimension; for example, by championing the visibility of the translating subject, the translator’s right to creativity, the supremacy of human translation or an autonomous study of translation. Inspired by Derrida’s deconstructive thinking, Kadiu presents practical ways of challenging theories that argue reflexivity is the only way of developing an ethical translation. She questions the capacity of reflexivity to counteract the power relations at play in translation (between minor and dominant languages, for example) and problematises affirmative claims about (self-)knowledge by using translation itself as a process of critical reflection. In exploring the interaction between form and content, Reflexive Translation Studies promotes the need for an experimental, multi-sensory and intuitive practice, which invites students, scholars and practitioners alike to engage with theory productively and creatively through translation.

What kind of ethics in world politics is possible if there is no foundation for moral knowledge or global reality is at least complex and contingent? Furthermore, how can an ethics grapple with difference, a persistent and confounding feature for global politics? This book responds to the call for a bold and creative approach to ethics that avoids assuming or aspiring to universality, and instead prioritizes difference, complexity and uncertainty by turning to reflexivity, not as method or methodology, but as a practice of ethics for politics. This practice, ‘ethical reflexivity’, offers individuals, organizations and communities tools to recognize, interrogate and potentially change the stories they tell about politics—about constraints, notions of responsibility and visions of desirability. The benefits and limits of ethical reflexivity are investigated by the author, who engages writing on critique, rhetoric, affect and relationality, and carefully considers dominant and alternative framings of difficult issues in International Relations (IR)—the 1994 genocide in Rwanda, and the US policies of ‘enhanced interrogation’ and drone strikes. This path-breaking study provokes new possibilities for agency and action and contributes to a growing literature in IR on reflexivity by uniquely elaborating its promise as an ethics for politics, and by drawing on thinkers less utilized in discussions of reflexivity such as Hannah Arendt, Michel Foucault and Aristotle. This book will appeal to scholars and upper-level graduates in several sub-fields of IR, including international/global ethics, IR theory, global governance, international organizations, non-governmental organizations, foreign policy analysis and US foreign policy.

Arguing for a theory of international politics committed to human emancipation, this text suggests that international relations theory must move in a nonpositivist direction. It explores recent developments in the discipline, including critical, Gramscian, postmodernist, feminist and normative approaches.

This volume ws the winner of The International Studies Association Theory Section Book Award 2013, presented by the International Studies Association and The Yale H. Ferguson Award 2012, presented by International Studies Association-Northeast. There are many different scientifically valid ways to produce knowledge. The field of International Relations should pay closer attention to these methodological differences, and to their implications for concrete research on world politics. The Conduct of Inquiry in International Relations provides an introduction to the philosophy of science issues and their implications for the study of global politics. The author draws attention to the problems caused by the misleading notion of a single unified scientific method, and proposes a framework that clarifies the variety of ways that IR scholars establish the authority and validity of their empirical claims. Jackson connects philosophical considerations with concrete issues of research design within neopositivist, critical realist, analyticist, and reflexive approaches to the study of world politics. Envisioning a pluralist science for a global IR field, this volume organizes the significant differences between methodological stances so as to promote internal consistency, public discussion, and worldly insight as the hallmarks of any scientific study of world politics. This important volume will be essential reading for all students and scholars of International Relations, Political Science and Philosophy of Science.

Reflexivity and Critical Pedagogy is concerned with understanding the complex political, cultural and psycho-social dynamics that define knowledge and that constitute the contexts in which learning takes place. Reflexivity is key to achieving truly useful approaches to knowledge creation and dissemination.