Language matters in international relations. Constructivists have contributed the insight that global politics is shaped by the way agents narrate history and produce discourses about themselves and about the world. This insight has induced a profound reexamination of assumptions in the study of international relations. The contributors to this volume examine (Part I) the critical linguistic/discursive techniques of postmodernists and constructivists, and apply them (Part II) to international relations.

Language matters in international relations. Constructivists have contributed the insight that global politics is shaped by the way agents narrate history and produce discourses about themselves and about the world. This insight has induced a profound reexamination of assumptions in the study of international relations. The contributors to this volume examine (Part I) the critical linguistic/discursive techniques of postmodernists and constructivists, and apply them (Part II) to international relations.

This handbook examines the regional and international dynamics of the Middle East. It challenges the state society dichotomy to make sense of decision-making and behavior by ruling regimes. The 33 chapter authors include the world’s leading scholars of the Middle East and International Relations (IR) in order to make sense of the region. This synthesis of area studies expertise and IR theory provides a unique and rigorous account of the region’s current dynamics, which have reached a crisis point since the beginning of the Arab Spring. The Middle East has been characterized by volatility for more than a century. Although the region attracts significant scholarly interest, IR theory has rarely been used as a tool to understand events. The constructivist approach in IR highlights the significance of state identity, shaped by history and culture, in making sense of international relations. The authors of this volume consider how IR theory can elucidate the patterns and principles that shape the region, in order to provide a rigorous account of the contemporary challenges of the Middle East. The Routledge Handbook of International Relations in the Middle East provides comprehensive coverage of International Relations issues in the region. Thus, it offers key resources for researchers and students interested in International Relations and the Middle East.

This book develops a discourse theory of crisis and change in global politics. Crisis is conceptualized as structural dislocation, resting on difference and incompleteness. Change is seen as the continuous but ultimately futile effort to gain a full identity. The incompleteness and contingent character of the social represents the most important condition for democratic politics to become possible and for a theory of crisis and change to become conceivable. In this new understanding, crisis loses its everyday meaning of a periodically occurring event. Instead, crisis becomes an omnipresent feature of the social fabric. It represents the absence of ground, of social foundation, and it rests within the subject as well as within the social whole.

Although the academic study of development is well established, as is also its policy implementation, less considered are the broader, more popular understandings of development that often shape agendas and priorities, particularly in representative democracies. Through its accessible and provocative chapters, Popular Representations of Development introduces the idea that while the issue of ‘development’ – defined broadly as problems of poverty and social deprivation, and the various agencies and processes seeking to address these – is normally one that is discussed by social scientists and policy makers, it also has a wider ‘popular’ dimension. Development is something that can be understood through studying literature, films, and other non-conventional forms of representation. It is also a public issue, one that has historically been associated with musical movements such as Live Aid and increasingly features in newer media such as blogs and social networking. The book connects the effort to build a more holistic understanding of development issues with an exploration of the diverse public sphere in which popular engagement with development takes place. This book gives students of development studies, media studies and geography as well as students in the humanities engaging with global development issues a variety of perspectives from different disciplines to open up this new field for discussion.

How do states sustain international order during crises? Drawing on the political philosophy of Lyotard and through an empirical examination of the Anglo-American international order during the 1956 Suez Crisis, Bially Mattern demonstrates that states can (and do) use representational force--a forceful but non-physical form of power exercised through language--to stabilize international identity and in turn international order.

This book critiques the conceptualization of security found in mainstream and critical theoretical debates, and applies this to the empirical case of the 2003 Iraq War. The Iraq War represents one of the most puzzling, complex, and controversial events in the post-Cold War era. The manner in which the Bush administration finally decided to hold Saddam Hussein accountable through military intervention provoked a worldwide outcry due to the narratives they constructed to justify the "pre-emptive use of force" and "enhanced interrogation techniques." Responding to constructivist and post-structuralist scholars' calls for a turn to discourse, and aligning its argument with critical security studies, particularly the Copenhagen School (CS), this book conceptualizes language as a pivotal mechanism of power. Adopting a Wittgensteinian approach, it moves away from thinking about the nexus between security and language from a single action, or speech act, to a series of actions or interactions. To illustrate this new approach, the author examines two cases in particular: the UN inspectors' finding that there was no credible evidence that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction (WMD) in early 2003 and the Abu Ghraib scandal in 2004. Both events show that the boundaries and relations between securitized rules and environments are not pre-given but produced in a particular language game. This book will be of much interest to students of critical security studies, US foreign policy, and IR in general.