Course level: Master
Since 2012
Sciences Po Bordeaux
This 18 hour course explores the critical approaches to international relations. Several labels or adjectives have been proposed in order to describe this constellation of works: post-positivist, feminist, post-colonial, neo-Marxist, radical… In spite of their differences, these approaches share a critical stance on the positivist pretention to produce value-free scholarship, and the hope that new perspectives may help to disclose the current relations of domination that structure world politics.
The course does not purport to exhaust the numerous varieties of critical international relations theories. Such an ambition would appear all the more overweening as critical thinking on international relations has not only emerged in the field of international relations but also found some stimulating formulations in other disciplines such as history, law, anthropology, linguistics, and philosophy… Rather, this course introduces to some works produced in these fields with a particular focus on four critical approaches to international relations: the (neo)-Marxist, the postcolonial, the feminist, and the “post-structuralist” approaches (those which try to bridge the gap between the three others).
Syllabus:
Course syllabus
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