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.

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.

This book draws on Daoist yin/yang dialectics to move world politics from the current stasis of hegemony, hierarchy, and violence to a more balanced engagement with parity, fluidity, and ethics. The author theorizes that we may develop a richer, more representative approach towards sustainable and democratic governance by offering a non-Western alternative to hegemonic debates in IR. The book presents the story of world politics by integrating folk tales and popular culture with policy analysis. It does not exclude current models of liberal internationalism but rather brackets them for another day, another purpose. The deconstruction of IR as a singular unifying school of thought through the lens of a non-Westphalian analytic shows a unique perspective on the forces that drive and shape world politics. This book suggests new ways to articulate and act so that global politics is more inclusive and less coercive. Only then, the book claims, could IR realize what the dao has always stood for: a world of compassion and care. The Dao of World Politics bridges the humanities and social sciences, and will be of interest to scholars and students of the global/international, as well as policymakers and activists of the local/domestic.

This book explores and details the actuality (Aktualität) of Hegel’s social and political philosophy--its relevance, topicality, and contemporary validity. It asserts--against the assumptions of those in a wide range of traditions--that Hegel’s thought not only remains relevant to debates in current social and political theory, but is capable of productively enhancing and enriching those debates. The book is divided into three main sections. Part 1 considers the actuality of Hegel’s social and political thought in the context of a constructed dialogues with later social and political theorists, including Marx, Adorno, Habermas, and Rawls. Part 2 explores Hegel’s internal criticism of Enlightenment rationality as well as the unique manner in which his thought reaffirms both the classical tradition of politics and the Christian conception of freedom in order to deepen and further develop our understanding of modernity and modern secularity. Part 3 considers Hegel’s contribution to current theorizing about globalization.

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.

Dialectics and Contemporary Politics develops a full theory of dialectics in order to reset the terms of dialectical critique and affirm its ability to produce radical insights about contemporary society. Dialectical thought has been the subject of sustained criticism since the 1960s, when competing approaches such as structuralism, genealogy, deconstruction and post-Marxism took political theorizing in new directions.

First published in 1988, this books argues with received accounts to reclaim Brecht’s emphasis on his self-described ‘dialectical theatre’, re-examining firstly the concepts of Gestus and Verfremdung and their realisation in Brecht’s poetry in terms of his attempt to consciously apply the methods of dialectical materialism to art and cultural practice. The author also takes issue with the customary view of Brecht’s career and politics which sees him as compromising either with Communist party dogma or bourgeois aesthetics, to find developing parallels between Brecht’s political and artistic though and the critical dialectics of Marx, Lenin and Mao. This development is examined in later chapters in relation to the early and late plays, The Measures Taken and Days of the Commune as well as in relation to Brecht’s changed circumstances in the years of war-time exile and in post-war East Germany.

The SAGE Handbook of Frankfurt School Critical Theory expounds the development of critical theory from its founding thinkers to its contemporary formulations in an interdisciplinary setting. It maps the terrain of a critical social theory, expounding its distinctive character vis-a-vis alternative theoretical perspectives, exploring its theoretical foundations and developments, conceptualising its subject matters both past and present, and signalling its possible future in a time of great uncertainty. Taking a distinctively theoretical, interdisciplinary, international and contemporary perspective on the topic, this wide-ranging collection of chapters is arranged thematically over three volumes: Volume I: Key Texts and Contributions to a Critical Theory of Society Volume II: Themes Volume III: Contexts This Handbook is essential reading for scholars and students in the field, showcasing the scholarly rigor, intellectual acuteness and negative force of critical social theory, past and present.

This book restores social production and classes back at the centre of Marxist theory by providing what E. V. Ilyenkov calls the development of a "fully logical and really historical" dialectical examination of human social production.