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.

Tracing constructivist work on culture, identity and norms within the historical, geographical and professional contexts of world politics, this book makes the case for new constructivist approaches to international relations scholarship.

SAGE Course Companions provide students with an insider's guide into how to make the most of their undergraduate courses and extend their understanding of the key concepts covered. Ideal for anyone new to the study of international relations or looking for a refresher, this Course Companion includes a comprehensive introduction to the competing theories at the heart of the discipline as well as hints and tips on how to apply them when tackling coursework or examinations. Written in a straightforward and clear style, it is designed to augment, rather than replace, existing textbooks for the course and provides: o pointers to success in course exams and written assessment exercises; o easy access to the key theories in international relations; o guidance on the essential study skills required to pass the course; o help with developing critical thinking; o 'taking it further' sections that suggest how readers can extend their thinking beyond the received wisdom.

Ecological crises have never been higher on the international political agenda. However, ecological thought and international relations theory have developed as separate disciplines. This ground-breaking study looks at the relationship between ecological thought and international relations theory arguing that there are shared concerns: peace, co-operation and security. The authors ask what ecological crisis can teach IR theorists as well as what ecological perspectives have been adopted by governments and international NGOs.

A philosophical hermeneutic study of the problem of cultural diversity and international morality.

Now in its second edition, Fifty Key Thinkers in International Relations has been thoroughly updated with several new entries and a new preface to reflect the latest developments. There are new sections on Constructivism, International Political Theory, and English School, as well as a range of new thinkers. They include: Samuel Huntington Christine Sylvester Jürgen Habermas John Rawls Barry Buzan Fully cross-referenced throughout, this book has everything for students of politics and international relations or indeed anyone who wants to gain an understanding of how nations can work together successfully.

Whether inspired by the Frankfurt School or Antonio Gramsci, the impact of critical theory on the study of international relations has grown considerably since its advent in the early 1980s. This book offers the first intellectual history of critical international theory. Richard Devetak approaches this history by locating its emergence in the rising prestige of theory and the theoretical persona. As theory's prestige rose in the discipline of international relations it opened the way for normative and metatheoretical reconsiderations of the discipline and the world. The book traces the lines of intellectual inheritance through the Frankfurt School to the Enlightenment, German idealism, and historical materialism, to reveal the construction of a particular kind of intellectual persona: the critical international theorist who has mastered reflexive, dialectical forms of social philosophy. . In addition to the extensive treatment of critical theory's reception and development in international relations, the book recovers a rival form of theory that originates outside the usual inheritance of critical international theory in Renaissance humanism and the civil Enlightenment. This historical mode of theorising was intended to combat metaphysical encroachments on politics and international relations and to prioritise the mundane demands of civil government over the self-reflective demands of dialectical social philosophies. By proposing contextualist intellectual history as a form of critical theory, Critical International Theory defends a mode of historical critique that refuses the normative temptations to project present conceptions onto an alien past, and to abstract from the offices of civil government.

Recent scholarship in International Relations (IR) has started to study the meaning and implications of a non-Western world. With this comes the need for a new paradigm of IR theory that is more global, open, inclusive, and able to capture the voices and experiences of both Western and non-Western worlds. This book investigates why Africa has been marginalised in IR discipline and theory and how this issue can be addressed in the context of the emerging Global IR paradigm. To have relevance for Africa, a new IR theory needs to be more inclusive, intellectually negotiated and holistically steeped in the African context. In this innovative volume, each author takes a critical look at existing IR paradigms and offers a unique perspective based on the African experience. Following on from Amitav Acharya and Barry Buzan’s work, Non-Western International Relations Theory, it develops and advances non-Western IR theory and the idea of Global IR. This volume will be of key interest to scholars and students of African politics, international relations, IR theory and comparative politics.

This volume on international studies pedagogy helps us think purposefully about the worlds we teach to our students and it shows us why engaging in reflective practice about how and what we teach matters. The Handbook also provides strategies to engage students in a variety of ways to reflect on and engage with the complexities of the world in which we live.

Recovering International Relations bridges two key divides in contemporary IR: between 'value-free' and normative theory, and between reflective, philosophically inflected explorations of ethics in scholarship and close, empirical studies of practical problems in world politics. Featuring a novel, provocative and detailed survey of IR's development over the second half of the twentieth century, the work draws on early Frankfurt School social theory to suggest a new ethical and methodological foundation for the study of world politics-sustainable critique-which draws these disparate approaches together in light of their common aims, and redacts them in the face of their particular limitations. Understanding the discipline as a vocation as well as a series of academic and methodological practices, sustainable critique aims to balance the insights of normative and empirical theory against each other. Each must be brought to bear if scholarship is to meaningfully, and responsibly, address an increasingly dense, heavily armed, and persistently diverse world.