Astrid Nordin
Biographic Data
| ID | 3675134 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Astrid Nordin |
| GIVEN NAMES | Astrid |
| FAMILY NAME | Nordin |
| SIGNATURE | NORDIN A |
| AFFILIATIONS | Lancaster University |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-8665-2565 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 17 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 157 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 17 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2007 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2024 |
| H-INDEX | 8 |
Political healing in East Asian international relations: What, why and how
The opening article of this collection serves as an invitation to academics and practitioners of international relations to rethink and transform, not merely observe and contain, long-standing conflicts in East Asia and beyond. Traditionally such conflicts, and the violence that has emerged around them, have been understood through the lens of dichotomous frameworks associated with Westphalian modernity. We need alternative paradigms in East Asia…
Chinese Identity and Intersectionality in an Age of Anti-Asian Racism
‘Intersectionality’ is central to understanding Chinese identity in an age of anti-Asian Racism and #StopAsianHate. Using and explaining the term in a way that guards against ‘Oppression Olympics’ and that resonates with some Chinese traditions of thought, can help scholars and students understand and challenge anti-Asian hate in its manifold manifestations. It can help us in our efforts to adopt a critical approach to the term ‘Chinese’ in this …
China's “Politics of Harmony” and the Quest for Soft Power in International Politics
This article engages with China's “politics of harmony” to investigate the dangers and possibilities of soft power as a concept and practice. Chinese sources claim that China will be able to exercise soft power due to its tradition of thinking about harmony. Indeed, the concept of harmony looms large in Chinese soft power campaigns, which differentiate China's own harmonious soft power from the allegedly disharmonious hard power of other great po…
Relationality and rationality in Confucian and Western traditions of thought
This paper provides a theoretical sketch of relationality within the field of International Relations (IR). It argues, contrary to what many IR scholars hold, that representation is practice: academic representation reflects the background of a community of practice and highlights what is embodied therein. Therefore, different cultural communities have different practices and draw from different background knowledge. Rationality, which serves as …
On relations and relationality: A conversation with friends
Synopsis: Two professors engage in deep conversation about deep thoughts—unbordered thinking, epistemic compassion, inter‐ being, democratic learning, intellectual freedom and culinary cosmologies—until they encounter a third. He verifies yet upturns their worlds with an absurdist joke. The professors then realize that humour is sometimes more divine than love. Laughter, after all, affirms the humanity behind all relations and relationality. This…
Towards global relational theorizing: A dialogue between Sinophone and Anglophone scholarship on relationalism
What is ‘relational theorizing’ in International Relations and what can it offer? This article introduces a thematic section that responds to these questions by showing two things. First, relational theorizing is not a doctrine or a method, but a set of analyses that begin with relations rather than the putative essences of constitutively autonomous actors. Second, relational theorizing has emerged from different geo-linguistic traditions, and a …
Relating self and other in Chinese and Western thought
Recent debates in international relations seek to decolonize the discipline by focusing on relationality between self and other. This article examines the possibilities for preserving a particular type of otherness: ‘radical otherness’ or ‘alterity’. Such otherness can provide a bulwark against domination and colonialism: there is always something truly other which cannot be assimilated. However, two problems arise. First, if otherness is truly i…
Friendship and the new politics: Beyond community
What role can friendship play in contemporary politics? This article answers this question by showing how friendship supplements one of the central tropes of modern European thought: community. It argues that both the recent phenomenon of populism and more traditional political practice rely on this trope. This results in a politics which focuses on identity and difference, inclusion and exclusion. Ultimately this form of politics seeks an immane…
Reintroducing friendship to international relations: Relational ontologies from China to the West
Chinese government representatives and scholars have attempted to ameliorate fears about China’s rise by portraying China as a new and friendlier kind of great power. It is claimed that this represents a new way of relating which transcends problematic Western understandings of self-other relations and their tendency to slip into domination and enmity. This article takes such claims as a point of departure, and analyses them with focus on the exp…
Will Trump make China great again? The belt and road initiative and international order
Under President Xi Jinping's leadership, Chinese foreign relations have moved from keeping a low profile, to a more assertive bid for international leadership that is beginning to take form in the ‘belt and road initiative’ (BRI). This initiative focuses on connectivity in policy coordination, facilities, trade, finance and people-to-people relations, in order to connect China to key parts of Asia, the south Pacific, east Africa and Europe. Netwo…
Futures beyond ‘the West’? Autoimmunity in China’s harmonious world
It has become fashionable among International Relations scholars to draw on the concept of ‘autoimmunity’, which some call ‘the ultimate horizon in which contemporary politics inscribes itself’. To these scholars, most of whom draw on the thought of Jacques Derrida, such logics open systems up to a future to come. At the same time, they tend to identify such logics with Europe, America, Western modernity, and/or democracy. Implied, and sometimes …
A reply to Xu Changfu’s ‘Why do we need practical wisdom?’
This is a reply to:Xu Changfu. 2015. “Why do we need practical wisdom? A Chinese lesson in the process of globalisation.” Global Discourse 5 (4): 519–533. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/23269995.2014.968361
Targeting the Ontology of War: From Clausewitz to Baudrillard
Against a surprising level of agreement between Clausewitz, contemporary military doctrines and critical war studies on an ontology of war as fighting, we suggest that the study of contemporary warfare needs to focus more on war as processing. Through Jean Baudrillard we argue that at least some of what is referred to as ‘war’ is no longer characterised by encounters through fighting. We exemplify our argument by how the repetitive battle-rhythm …
Subverting official language and discourse in China? Type river crab for harmony
While the promotion of 'harmony' (和谐) in Chinese official discourse is widely regarded as a feature of state propaganda and censorship, scarce attention has been paid to the reception and redeployment of such language among Chinese citizens. The often creative and ironic reappropriation of official language in everyday speech practices, both on the Internet and in conversations with peers, is an important aspect of Chinese language/politics and d…
Taking Baudrillard to the Fair: Exhibiting China in the World at the Shanghai Expo
Scholars have recently paid increasing attention to China’s “mega events” as a form of image management striving to influence future world order. In this article, the author examines China’s recent world fair, Expo 2010 Shanghai China, and argues that we need to move beyond the reading of mega events as simple representation and ideology and read it also as simulation and simulacra. Reading the Chinese world fair as a simulacrum of world order ca…
Space for the future: Exhibiting China in the world at the Shanghai Expo
China's modernization and rise is commonly understood as a key factor that will shape future world order. This article examines narratives at Expo 2010 Shanghai China as an instance of the local constitution of this future world. Such imaginations of China and/in the world actively create the future, through assumptions about time and space that structure the possible imaginations of China, the World, and their interrelation. This article examine…
Gender Transformations in Higher Education
This paper offers a critical perspective on issues around gender and sexual transformation within the context of UK Higher Education. Drawing on qualitative data carried out by undergraduate and postgraduate students, the analysis explores some of the diverse and often challenging ways in which young/er women and men are thinking and talking about gender, sexuality and feminism, as well as their strategies for turning ideas into political action.…
Targeting the Ontology of War: From Clausewitz to Baudrillard
Against a surprising level of agreement between Clausewitz, contemporary military doctrines and critical war studies on an ontology of war as fighting, we suggest that the study of contemporary warfare needs to focus more on war as processing. Through Jean Baudrillard we argue that at least some of what is referred to as ‘war’ is no longer characterised by encounters through fighting. We exemplify our argument by how the repetitive battle-rhythm …
Subverting official language and discourse in China? Type river crab for harmony
While the promotion of 'harmony' (和谐) in Chinese official discourse is widely regarded as a feature of state propaganda and censorship, scarce attention has been paid to the reception and redeployment of such language among Chinese citizens. The often creative and ironic reappropriation of official language in everyday speech practices, both on the Internet and in conversations with peers, is an important aspect of Chinese language/politics and d…
Towards global relational theorizing: A dialogue between Sinophone and Anglophone scholarship on relationalism
What is ‘relational theorizing’ in International Relations and what can it offer? This article introduces a thematic section that responds to these questions by showing two things. First, relational theorizing is not a doctrine or a method, but a set of analyses that begin with relations rather than the putative essences of constitutively autonomous actors. Second, relational theorizing has emerged from different geo-linguistic traditions, and a …
Relationality and rationality in Confucian and Western traditions of thought
This paper provides a theoretical sketch of relationality within the field of International Relations (IR). It argues, contrary to what many IR scholars hold, that representation is practice: academic representation reflects the background of a community of practice and highlights what is embodied therein. Therefore, different cultural communities have different practices and draw from different background knowledge. Rationality, which serves as …
Will Trump make China great again? The belt and road initiative and international order
Under President Xi Jinping's leadership, Chinese foreign relations have moved from keeping a low profile, to a more assertive bid for international leadership that is beginning to take form in the ‘belt and road initiative’ (BRI). This initiative focuses on connectivity in policy coordination, facilities, trade, finance and people-to-people relations, in order to connect China to key parts of Asia, the south Pacific, east Africa and Europe. Netwo…
China's “Politics of Harmony” and the Quest for Soft Power in International Politics
This article engages with China's “politics of harmony” to investigate the dangers and possibilities of soft power as a concept and practice. Chinese sources claim that China will be able to exercise soft power due to its tradition of thinking about harmony. Indeed, the concept of harmony looms large in Chinese soft power campaigns, which differentiate China's own harmonious soft power from the allegedly disharmonious hard power of other great po…
Space for the future: Exhibiting China in the world at the Shanghai Expo
China's modernization and rise is commonly understood as a key factor that will shape future world order. This article examines narratives at Expo 2010 Shanghai China as an instance of the local constitution of this future world. Such imaginations of China and/in the world actively create the future, through assumptions about time and space that structure the possible imaginations of China, the World, and their interrelation. This article examine…
Relating self and other in Chinese and Western thought
Recent debates in international relations seek to decolonize the discipline by focusing on relationality between self and other. This article examines the possibilities for preserving a particular type of otherness: ‘radical otherness’ or ‘alterity’. Such otherness can provide a bulwark against domination and colonialism: there is always something truly other which cannot be assimilated. However, two problems arise. First, if otherness is truly i…
Reintroducing friendship to international relations: Relational ontologies from China to the West
Chinese government representatives and scholars have attempted to ameliorate fears about China’s rise by portraying China as a new and friendlier kind of great power. It is claimed that this represents a new way of relating which transcends problematic Western understandings of self-other relations and their tendency to slip into domination and enmity. This article takes such claims as a point of departure, and analyses them with focus on the exp…
Friendship and the new politics: Beyond community
What role can friendship play in contemporary politics? This article answers this question by showing how friendship supplements one of the central tropes of modern European thought: community. It argues that both the recent phenomenon of populism and more traditional political practice rely on this trope. This results in a politics which focuses on identity and difference, inclusion and exclusion. Ultimately this form of politics seeks an immane…
Futures beyond ‘the West’? Autoimmunity in China’s harmonious world
It has become fashionable among International Relations scholars to draw on the concept of ‘autoimmunity’, which some call ‘the ultimate horizon in which contemporary politics inscribes itself’. To these scholars, most of whom draw on the thought of Jacques Derrida, such logics open systems up to a future to come. At the same time, they tend to identify such logics with Europe, America, Western modernity, and/or democracy. Implied, and sometimes …
Taking Baudrillard to the Fair: Exhibiting China in the World at the Shanghai Expo
Scholars have recently paid increasing attention to China’s “mega events” as a form of image management striving to influence future world order. In this article, the author examines China’s recent world fair, Expo 2010 Shanghai China, and argues that we need to move beyond the reading of mega events as simple representation and ideology and read it also as simulation and simulacra. Reading the Chinese world fair as a simulacrum of world order ca…
On relations and relationality: A conversation with friends
Synopsis: Two professors engage in deep conversation about deep thoughts—unbordered thinking, epistemic compassion, inter‐ being, democratic learning, intellectual freedom and culinary cosmologies—until they encounter a third. He verifies yet upturns their worlds with an absurdist joke. The professors then realize that humour is sometimes more divine than love. Laughter, after all, affirms the humanity behind all relations and relationality. This…
Gender Transformations in Higher Education
This paper offers a critical perspective on issues around gender and sexual transformation within the context of UK Higher Education. Drawing on qualitative data carried out by undergraduate and postgraduate students, the analysis explores some of the diverse and often challenging ways in which young/er women and men are thinking and talking about gender, sexuality and feminism, as well as their strategies for turning ideas into political action.…
Taking Baudrillard to the Fair: Exhibiting China in the World at the Shanghai Expo
Scholars have recently paid increasing attention to China’s “mega events” as a form of image management striving to influence future world order. In this article, the author examines China’s recent world fair, Expo 2010 Shanghai China, and argues that we need to move beyond the reading of mega events as simple representation and ideology and read it also as simulation and simulacra. Reading the Chinese world fair as a simulacrum of world order ca…
Space for the future: Exhibiting China in the world at the Shanghai Expo
China's modernization and rise is commonly understood as a key factor that will shape future world order. This article examines narratives at Expo 2010 Shanghai China as an instance of the local constitution of this future world. Such imaginations of China and/in the world actively create the future, through assumptions about time and space that structure the possible imaginations of China, the World, and their interrelation. This article examine…
A reply to Xu Changfu’s ‘Why do we need practical wisdom?’
This is a reply to:Xu Changfu. 2015. “Why do we need practical wisdom? A Chinese lesson in the process of globalisation.” Global Discourse 5 (4): 519–533. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/23269995.2014.968361
Targeting the Ontology of War: From Clausewitz to Baudrillard
Against a surprising level of agreement between Clausewitz, contemporary military doctrines and critical war studies on an ontology of war as fighting, we suggest that the study of contemporary warfare needs to focus more on war as processing. Through Jean Baudrillard we argue that at least some of what is referred to as ‘war’ is no longer characterised by encounters through fighting. We exemplify our argument by how the repetitive battle-rhythm …
Subverting official language and discourse in China? Type river crab for harmony
While the promotion of 'harmony' (和谐) in Chinese official discourse is widely regarded as a feature of state propaganda and censorship, scarce attention has been paid to the reception and redeployment of such language among Chinese citizens. The often creative and ironic reappropriation of official language in everyday speech practices, both on the Internet and in conversations with peers, is an important aspect of Chinese language/politics and d…
Futures beyond ‘the West’? Autoimmunity in China’s harmonious world
It has become fashionable among International Relations scholars to draw on the concept of ‘autoimmunity’, which some call ‘the ultimate horizon in which contemporary politics inscribes itself’. To these scholars, most of whom draw on the thought of Jacques Derrida, such logics open systems up to a future to come. At the same time, they tend to identify such logics with Europe, America, Western modernity, and/or democracy. Implied, and sometimes …
Friendship and the new politics: Beyond community
What role can friendship play in contemporary politics? This article answers this question by showing how friendship supplements one of the central tropes of modern European thought: community. It argues that both the recent phenomenon of populism and more traditional political practice rely on this trope. This results in a politics which focuses on identity and difference, inclusion and exclusion. Ultimately this form of politics seeks an immane…
Reintroducing friendship to international relations: Relational ontologies from China to the West
Chinese government representatives and scholars have attempted to ameliorate fears about China’s rise by portraying China as a new and friendlier kind of great power. It is claimed that this represents a new way of relating which transcends problematic Western understandings of self-other relations and their tendency to slip into domination and enmity. This article takes such claims as a point of departure, and analyses them with focus on the exp…
Will Trump make China great again? The belt and road initiative and international order
Under President Xi Jinping's leadership, Chinese foreign relations have moved from keeping a low profile, to a more assertive bid for international leadership that is beginning to take form in the ‘belt and road initiative’ (BRI). This initiative focuses on connectivity in policy coordination, facilities, trade, finance and people-to-people relations, in order to connect China to key parts of Asia, the south Pacific, east Africa and Europe. Netwo…
China's “Politics of Harmony” and the Quest for Soft Power in International Politics
This article engages with China's “politics of harmony” to investigate the dangers and possibilities of soft power as a concept and practice. Chinese sources claim that China will be able to exercise soft power due to its tradition of thinking about harmony. Indeed, the concept of harmony looms large in Chinese soft power campaigns, which differentiate China's own harmonious soft power from the allegedly disharmonious hard power of other great po…
Relationality and rationality in Confucian and Western traditions of thought
This paper provides a theoretical sketch of relationality within the field of International Relations (IR). It argues, contrary to what many IR scholars hold, that representation is practice: academic representation reflects the background of a community of practice and highlights what is embodied therein. Therefore, different cultural communities have different practices and draw from different background knowledge. Rationality, which serves as …
On relations and relationality: A conversation with friends
Synopsis: Two professors engage in deep conversation about deep thoughts—unbordered thinking, epistemic compassion, inter‐ being, democratic learning, intellectual freedom and culinary cosmologies—until they encounter a third. He verifies yet upturns their worlds with an absurdist joke. The professors then realize that humour is sometimes more divine than love. Laughter, after all, affirms the humanity behind all relations and relationality. This…
Towards global relational theorizing: A dialogue between Sinophone and Anglophone scholarship on relationalism
What is ‘relational theorizing’ in International Relations and what can it offer? This article introduces a thematic section that responds to these questions by showing two things. First, relational theorizing is not a doctrine or a method, but a set of analyses that begin with relations rather than the putative essences of constitutively autonomous actors. Second, relational theorizing has emerged from different geo-linguistic traditions, and a …
Relating self and other in Chinese and Western thought
Recent debates in international relations seek to decolonize the discipline by focusing on relationality between self and other. This article examines the possibilities for preserving a particular type of otherness: ‘radical otherness’ or ‘alterity’. Such otherness can provide a bulwark against domination and colonialism: there is always something truly other which cannot be assimilated. However, two problems arise. First, if otherness is truly i…
Chinese Identity and Intersectionality in an Age of Anti-Asian Racism
‘Intersectionality’ is central to understanding Chinese identity in an age of anti-Asian Racism and #StopAsianHate. Using and explaining the term in a way that guards against ‘Oppression Olympics’ and that resonates with some Chinese traditions of thought, can help scholars and students understand and challenge anti-Asian hate in its manifold manifestations. It can help us in our efforts to adopt a critical approach to the term ‘Chinese’ in this …
Political healing in East Asian international relations: What, why and how
The opening article of this collection serves as an invitation to academics and practitioners of international relations to rethink and transform, not merely observe and contain, long-standing conflicts in East Asia and beyond. Traditionally such conflicts, and the violence that has emerged around them, have been understood through the lens of dichotomous frameworks associated with Westphalian modernity. We need alternative paradigms in East Asia…
Political science (17 works) · Law (16 works) · Sociology (16 works) · Law (14 works) · Philosophy (13 works) · Politics (13 works) · Philosophy (12 works) · Epistemology (9 works) · International Relations and Foreign Policy (8 works) · Aesthetics (7 works)