What would international relations look like if our theories and analyses began with individuals, families, and communities instead of executives, nation-states, and militaries? After all, it is people who make up cities, states, and corporations, and it is their beliefs and behaviors that explain why some parts of the world seem so peaceful while others appear so violent, why some societies are so rich while others are so poor. Now in a fully updated and revised edition, this unique text on contemporary global politics begins with people, treating them as "social individuals" with free will and human agency even as they are limited and disciplined by rules and rulers. Offering a fresh approach to global politics, this dynamic author team trades perspectives with each other and with such eminent social theorists as Michel Foucault and Hannah Arendt to develop their resonant theme. Using practical examples as well as theory, the authors show students how they can take charge of their lives and the politics that affect them, even in the context of a vast global economy and impersonal international forces that sometimes seem out of control. Filled with idealism, yet firmly grounded in current realities, Global Politics as if People Mattered is a fresh take on the proper place and potential of individuals in world politics—front and center, actively engaged in a way of life that is as politically personal as it is politically powerful. This distinctive text, a perfect reading for lower-division politics courses, helps students to carve out their own political space in the contemporary global order.

Fully revised and updated, this second edition of Gender Matters in Global Politics is a comprehensive textbook for advanced undergraduates studying feminism & international relations, gender and global politics and similar courses. It provides students with an accessible but in-depth account of the most significant theories, methodologies, debates and issues. This textbook is written by an international line-up of established and emerging scholars from a range of theoretical perspectives, and brings together cutting-edge feminist scholarship in a variety of issue areas. Key features and benefits of the book: Introduces students to the wide variety of feminist and gender theory and explains the relevance to contemporary global politics Explains the insights of feminist theory for a range of other disciplines including international relations, international political economy and security studies Addresses a large number of key contemporary issues such as human rights, trafficking, rape as a tool of war, peacekeeping and state-building, terrorism and environmental politics Features detailed pedagogical tools and resources – seminar exercises, text boxes, photographs, suggestions for further reading, web resources and a glossary of key terms New chapters on - Environmental politics and ecology; War; Terrorism and political violence; Land, food and water; International legal institutions; Peacebuilding institutions and post-conflict reconstruction; Citizenship; Art, aesthetics and emotionality; and New social media and global resistance. This text enables students to develop a sophisticated understanding of the work that gender does in policies and practices of global politics.

This book explores the instability of the African postcolonial state and demonstrates that such a fundamental crisis can be solved only through discourses and practices that are designed beyond the Westphalian model of the modern state and out of the neo-patrimonialistic system of African governance. The challenge of instability will not be overcome by rebuilding the African nation-state undermined by social contradictions and complex emergencies; rather stability will be achieved by opening a public space of agonistic democracy that is supported mainly by an overlapping consensus on justice. The author argues that by reading critically, the African philosophy of solidarity is contradicted by structural violence and inequality. The political instrumentalization of kinship provokes the exclusion of minorities, the marginalization of masses, and the instability of the entire society. Governance is reduced to mere conflict management. The solution of legitimate violence becomes another version of the problem of institutional incapacity. The author's contention is people are the ultimate and permanent agents of stability, and the ground of stability must not be a strong state, but the politics of reciprocity and union among people that implies a sense of justice in the power sharing and in the decision making process.

Asks how, why and to what ends humans appear in international relations theories and how this makes us interpret world politics.

This book observes a growing humanisation of global politics relating to the appearance of individual human beings in discourses of global politics. It identifies a mismatch concerning International Relations theory and International Law and the study of the humanisation of global politics. To overcome this mismatch, Sassan Gholiagha proposes a novel theoretical framework based on feminist and constructivist International Relations theory and non-statist theories of International Law scholarship. The book applies this interdisciplinary framework together with an interpretative analytical framework to three cases: the discourse on prosecution, studying international criminal law and the work of the International Criminal Court; the discourse on protection, focusing on the Responsibility to Protect; and the use of drones in targeted killing operations. Drawing on these case studies and the frameworks, the book identifies how individual human beings as participants in global politics position themselves and are positioned by others in these various discourses.

An increasing number of scholars have begun to see science and technology as relevant issues in International Relations (IR), acknowledging the impact of material elements, technical instruments, and scientific practices on international security, statehood, and global governance. This two-volume collection brings the debate about science and technology to the center of International Relations. It shows how integrating science and technology translates into novel analytical frameworks, conceptual approaches and empirical puzzles, and thereby offers a state-of-the-art review of various methodological and theoretical ways in which sciences and technologies matter for the study of international affairs and world politics. The authors not only offer a set of practical examples of research frameworks for experts and students alike, but also propose a conceptual space for interdisciplinary learning in order to improve our understanding of the global politics of science and technology. This first volume summarizes various time-tested approaches for studying the global politics of science and technology from an IR perspective. It also provides empirical, theoretical, and conceptual interventions from geography, history, innovation studies, and science and technology studies that indicate ways to enhance and rearticulate IR approaches. In addition, several interviews advance possibilities of multi-disciplinary collaboration.

This book demonstrates the integral nature of gendered issues and feminist frameworks for a comprehensive understanding of contemporary IR bringing together the work of feminist scholars, teachers and activists into a coherent and accessible collection.

This book examines everyday artefacts of world politics: the things that everyday people make that tell stories about how the world works. The author argues that people engage in a unique form of multimodal storytelling about the world, their place in the world, and the world they want to live in through the artefacts that they make. Introducing a novel approach to artefactual analysis, the book explores textiles, jewellery, and pottery, and urges scholars of global politics to take these artefacts seriously. Based on original research, this book is inherently interdisciplinary, drawing on concepts and approaches from across the humanities and social sciences, including archaeology, history, sociology, world politics, anthropology, and material studies. It will therefore be of interest to a wide range of readers.

This comprehensive guide captures important trends in international relations (IR) pedagogy, paying particular attention to innovations in active learning and student engagement for the contemporary International Relations IR classroom.

Global Gender Issues in the New Millennium argues that the power of gender works to help keep gender, race, class, sexual, and national divisions in place despite increasing attention to gender issues in the study and practice of world politics. Accessible and student-friendly for both undergraduate and graduate courses, authors Anne Sisson Runyan and V. Spike Peterson analyze gendered divisions of power and resources that contribute to the worldwide crises of representation, violence, and sustainability. They emphasize how hard-won attention to gender equality in world affairs can be co-opted when gender is used to justify or mystify unjust forms of global governance, international security, and global political economy.In the new and updated fourth edition, Runyan and Peterson examine the challenges of forging transnational solidarities to de-gender world politics, scholarship, and practice through renewed politics for greater representation and redistribution. Yet they see promise in coalitional struggles to re-radicalize feminist world political demands to change the downward conditions of women, men, children, and the planet. Updated to include framing questions at the opening of each chapter, discussion questions and exercises at the end of each chapter, and updated data on gender statistics and policymaking. Chapters One and Two have also been revised to provide more support to readers with less of a background in gender politics. Case studies and web resources are now also provided.