Transforming World Politics

This book provides a critical understanding of contemporary world politics by arguing that the neoliberal approach to international relations seduces many of us into investing our lives in projects of power and alienation. These projects offer few options for emancipation; consequently, many feel they have little choice but to retaliate against violence with more violence. The authors of this pioneering work articulate worldism as an alternative approach to world politics. It intertwines non-Western and Western traditions by drawing on Marxist, postcolonial, feminist and critical security approaches with Greek and Chinese theories of politics, broadly defined. The authors contend that contemporary world politics cannot be understood outside the legacies of these multiple worlds, including axes of power configured by gender, race, class, and nationality, which are themselves linked to earlier histories of colonizations and their contemporary formations. With fiction and poetry as exploratory methods, the authors build on their ‘multiple worlds’ approach to consider different sites of world politics, arguing that a truly emancipatory understanding of world politics requires more than just a shift in ways of thinking; above all, it requires a shift in ways of being. Transforming World Politics will be of vital interest to students and scholars of International Relations, Political Science, Postcolonial Studies, Social Theory, Women's Studies, Asian Studies, European Union and Mediterranean Studies, and Security Studies.

Critiques neo-liberalism and provides an alternative understanding of contemporary world politics by arguing that the neo-liberal approach to international relations is deeply flawed, reproducing violence, instability, insecurity and marginalization.

This book develops an approach to both method and the socio-political implications of knowledge production that embraces our embeddedness in the world that we study. It seeks to enact the transformative potentials inherent in this relationship in how it engages readers. It presents a creative survey of some of the newest developments in critical research methods and critical pedagogy that together go beyond the aims of knowledge transfer that often structure our practices. Each contribution takes on a different shape, tone and orientation, and discusses a critical method or approach, teasing out the ways in which it can also work as a transformative practice. While the presentation of different methods is both rigorously practice-based and specific, contributors also offer reflections on the stakes of critical engagement and how it may play an important role in expanding and subverting existing regimes of intelligibility. Contributions variously address the following key questions: What makes your research method important? How can others work with it? How has research through this method and/or the way you ended up deploying it transformed you and/or your practice? How did it matter for thinking about community, (academic) collaboration, and sharing ‘knowledge’? This volume makes the case for re-politicizing the importance of research and the transformative potentials of research methods not only in ‘accessing’ the world as an object of study, but as ways of acting and being in the world. It will be of interest to students and scholars of international relations, critical theory, research methods and politics in general.

In this book, the authors set forth a new model of globalization that lays claims to supersede existing models, and then use this model to assess the way the processes of globalization have operated in different historic periods in respect to political organization, military globalization, trade, finance, corporate productivity, migration, culture, and the environment. Each of these topics is covered in a chapter which contrasts the contemporary nature of globalization with that of earlier epochs. In mapping the shape and political consequences of globalization, the authors concentrate on six states in advanced capitalist societies (SIACS): the United States, the United Kingdom, Sweden, France, Germany, and Japan. For comparative purposes, other states—particularly those with developing economics—are referred to and discussed where relevant. The book concludes by systematically describing and assessing contemporary globalization, and appraising the implications of globalization for the sovereignty and autonomy of SIACS. It also confronts directly the political fatalism that surrounds much discussion of globalization with a normative agenda that elaborates the possibilities for democratizing and civilizing the unfolding global transformation.

WORLD POLITICS: TREND AND TRANSFORMATION offers analysis of the most up-to-date data, research, and contemporary events from today’s international political stage. The book will help you understand what is happening today and why. This 2013-2014 UPDATE EDITION incorporates recent changes in leadership, the latest on the economic crisis, social media, and military technology, and new data from World Development Indicators and more. Our new partnership with the Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs provides more coverage of contemporary issues and resources to explore those issues than ever before. Co-author Shannon L. Blanton incorporates key concepts into the text from major theoretical perspectives to look at both historical and contemporary developments. This edition addresses topics such as war, terrorism, human rights, the environment, and international development while emphasizing an institutional approach to resolving international conflict. The authors present each issue in a thought-provoking way that encourages you to critically assess the problems, payoffs, pitfalls, and paradoxes of people’s choices about the global future and the probable impact those choices will have on your life in the future. Important Notice: Media content referenced within the product description or the product text may not be available in the ebook version.

We are witnessing turbulent times which inspire both anxiety and hope. Many global trends are sweeping across a transforming world. To make these movements and changes more understandable, Trends and Transformations in World Politics introduces the reader to the study of world politics in a period of rapid readjustment. This book also focuses on world-historical transformations as a general phenomenon, showing how the twenty-first century change in world politics fits into broader patterns of macro-historical change. To do that, the perspective of major international relations theories is utilized, and a discussion of transformation is grounded within a conceptual framework. This book will strengthen the reader’s understanding of the trends and transformations in world politics.