Torsten Michel
Biographic Data
| ID | 4085572 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Torsten Michel |
| GIVEN NAMES | Torsten |
| FAMILY NAME | Michel |
| SIGNATURE | MICHEL T |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Bristol |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-8582-8699 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 11 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 25 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 11 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2007 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2024 |
| H-INDEX | 3 |
Moral status – human status? Interrogating the connection between morality and dehumanisation during mass violence
Beginning with early studies in the 1970s, dehumanisation has become a key feature in attempts to grasp the fundamental dynamics and conditions under which mass atrocities emerge. One of the most long-standing, prominent and widely accepted conceptions sees the loss of moral status as a key constitutive component of processes of dehumanisation, suggesting that the victims’ exclusion from the moral universe of obligation breaks down moral barriers…
Assaulting ‘diversity as such’
Dehumanisation is one of the most invoked factors in analyses of mass atrocities with many scholars focusing on its crucial role in enabling perpetrators to inflict violence on their victims. However, while its application is widespread, its relevance is often assumed a priori , with claims regarding its empirical relevance often asserted rather than argued for. Not only does its meaning, nature, and function remain amorphous, current scholarship…
Of Particles and Humans
Drawing on quantum theory, Alexander Wendt’s Quantum Mind and Social Science sug- gests a thought-provoking reorientation of the social sciences. Addressing some of the key assumptions in Wendt’s account, this article argues that despite a quite elaborate and eloquent development of a monist ontological position, conceptual discussions remain solely focused on the nature of beings and neglect wider implications for the nature of being, particular…
Trust, Rationality and Vulnerability in International Relations
Vulnerability abounds in international politics. In fact, in one sense one could say that International Relations (IR) as an academic field is the study of vulnerability and its effects in the public sphere. Be it the classic approaches of realism and liberalism or the newly emerging critical scholarship, all deal on one level and in particular ways with the challenges that derive from the general openness of individuals and societies to various …
Time to get emotional
This article will engage with the growing literature on the subject of trust in international politics by pointing out remaining problems and contradictions in recent critiques against the rationalist mainstream. Although it finds itself in agreement with these critiques it will argue that despite its more nuanced appreciation of trust, this critical scholarship does not quite succeed in either leaving the rationalist conceptions behind or in ach…
When One World Is Not Enough
This article evaluates Patrick Jackson’s recent book The Conduct of Inquiry in International Relations. Jackson delivers a thoughtful and timely contribution to meta-theoretical debates in International Relations by highlighting the diverse landscape of incompatible philosophico-ontological positions. Specifically discussing the practical pay-offs of Jackson’s taxonomy, the article, though generally sympathetic to Jackson’s account, argues that h…
In Heidegger's shadow
The field of International Relations (IR) although in many quarters still immersed in the epistemological trenches surrounding the fourth debate between positivism and post-positivism saw the emergence of a renewed interest and debate about the state and rigour of ‘our’ ontological assumptions. One currently very prominent contribution to this emerging or re-emerging interest in ontological questions can be found in the Critical Realist (CR) appr…
Intentionality and the Publicness of Mind
Despite an unprecedented widening of the theoretical and methodological scope in IR over the last 25 years, research explicitly informed by phenomenology is rare. Rejecting the idea of phenomenology as “rigorous science” and instead understanding phenomenology as an interpretive and hermeneutic undertaking (Gadamer 1979; Heidegger 1982, 2008), this contribution offers an alternative phenomenological reading on the problem of theorizing the intert…
False dawns or new horizons? Further issues and challenges for Critical Terrorism Studies
While welcoming Critical Terrorism Studies (CTS) as an interesting and valuable addition to the discourse on terrorism studies, this article argues that CTS has some serious shortcomings, particularly in those accounts that draw explicitly on a Frankfurt School approach. The article will mainly engage with three areas: the notion and conceptualisation of ‘critique’, the role of emancipation, and the overstatement of the novelty of CTS. It will ar…
Pigs can't fly, or can they? Ontology, scientific realism and the metaphysics of presence in international relations
In recent debates in IR theory a specific trend has evolved which advocates a renewed focus on matters of ontology as a way to overcome or at least to reconceptualise the divides within the field of IR that we encounter especially after the considerable widening of scope after the end of the Cold War. Responding to these claims the article sets out to provide a closer look at the different arguments presented for a renewed concern with ontology a…
Terrorism and Western Modernity
False dawns or new horizons? Further issues and challenges for Critical Terrorism Studies
While welcoming Critical Terrorism Studies (CTS) as an interesting and valuable addition to the discourse on terrorism studies, this article argues that CTS has some serious shortcomings, particularly in those accounts that draw explicitly on a Frankfurt School approach. The article will mainly engage with three areas: the notion and conceptualisation of ‘critique’, the role of emancipation, and the overstatement of the novelty of CTS. It will ar…
Time to get emotional
This article will engage with the growing literature on the subject of trust in international politics by pointing out remaining problems and contradictions in recent critiques against the rationalist mainstream. Although it finds itself in agreement with these critiques it will argue that despite its more nuanced appreciation of trust, this critical scholarship does not quite succeed in either leaving the rationalist conceptions behind or in ach…
When One World Is Not Enough
This article evaluates Patrick Jackson’s recent book The Conduct of Inquiry in International Relations. Jackson delivers a thoughtful and timely contribution to meta-theoretical debates in International Relations by highlighting the diverse landscape of incompatible philosophico-ontological positions. Specifically discussing the practical pay-offs of Jackson’s taxonomy, the article, though generally sympathetic to Jackson’s account, argues that h…
In Heidegger's shadow
The field of International Relations (IR) although in many quarters still immersed in the epistemological trenches surrounding the fourth debate between positivism and post-positivism saw the emergence of a renewed interest and debate about the state and rigour of ‘our’ ontological assumptions. One currently very prominent contribution to this emerging or re-emerging interest in ontological questions can be found in the Critical Realist (CR) appr…
Assaulting ‘diversity as such’
Dehumanisation is one of the most invoked factors in analyses of mass atrocities with many scholars focusing on its crucial role in enabling perpetrators to inflict violence on their victims. However, while its application is widespread, its relevance is often assumed a priori , with claims regarding its empirical relevance often asserted rather than argued for. Not only does its meaning, nature, and function remain amorphous, current scholarship…
Intentionality and the Publicness of Mind
Despite an unprecedented widening of the theoretical and methodological scope in IR over the last 25 years, research explicitly informed by phenomenology is rare. Rejecting the idea of phenomenology as “rigorous science” and instead understanding phenomenology as an interpretive and hermeneutic undertaking (Gadamer 1979; Heidegger 1982, 2008), this contribution offers an alternative phenomenological reading on the problem of theorizing the intert…
Terrorism and Western Modernity
False dawns or new horizons? Further issues and challenges for Critical Terrorism Studies
While welcoming Critical Terrorism Studies (CTS) as an interesting and valuable addition to the discourse on terrorism studies, this article argues that CTS has some serious shortcomings, particularly in those accounts that draw explicitly on a Frankfurt School approach. The article will mainly engage with three areas: the notion and conceptualisation of ‘critique’, the role of emancipation, and the overstatement of the novelty of CTS. It will ar…
Pigs can't fly, or can they? Ontology, scientific realism and the metaphysics of presence in international relations
In recent debates in IR theory a specific trend has evolved which advocates a renewed focus on matters of ontology as a way to overcome or at least to reconceptualise the divides within the field of IR that we encounter especially after the considerable widening of scope after the end of the Cold War. Responding to these claims the article sets out to provide a closer look at the different arguments presented for a renewed concern with ontology a…
Intentionality and the Publicness of Mind
Despite an unprecedented widening of the theoretical and methodological scope in IR over the last 25 years, research explicitly informed by phenomenology is rare. Rejecting the idea of phenomenology as “rigorous science” and instead understanding phenomenology as an interpretive and hermeneutic undertaking (Gadamer 1979; Heidegger 1982, 2008), this contribution offers an alternative phenomenological reading on the problem of theorizing the intert…
When One World Is Not Enough
This article evaluates Patrick Jackson’s recent book The Conduct of Inquiry in International Relations. Jackson delivers a thoughtful and timely contribution to meta-theoretical debates in International Relations by highlighting the diverse landscape of incompatible philosophico-ontological positions. Specifically discussing the practical pay-offs of Jackson’s taxonomy, the article, though generally sympathetic to Jackson’s account, argues that h…
In Heidegger's shadow
The field of International Relations (IR) although in many quarters still immersed in the epistemological trenches surrounding the fourth debate between positivism and post-positivism saw the emergence of a renewed interest and debate about the state and rigour of ‘our’ ontological assumptions. One currently very prominent contribution to this emerging or re-emerging interest in ontological questions can be found in the Critical Realist (CR) appr…
Trust, Rationality and Vulnerability in International Relations
Vulnerability abounds in international politics. In fact, in one sense one could say that International Relations (IR) as an academic field is the study of vulnerability and its effects in the public sphere. Be it the classic approaches of realism and liberalism or the newly emerging critical scholarship, all deal on one level and in particular ways with the challenges that derive from the general openness of individuals and societies to various …
Time to get emotional
This article will engage with the growing literature on the subject of trust in international politics by pointing out remaining problems and contradictions in recent critiques against the rationalist mainstream. Although it finds itself in agreement with these critiques it will argue that despite its more nuanced appreciation of trust, this critical scholarship does not quite succeed in either leaving the rationalist conceptions behind or in ach…
Of Particles and Humans
Drawing on quantum theory, Alexander Wendt’s Quantum Mind and Social Science sug- gests a thought-provoking reorientation of the social sciences. Addressing some of the key assumptions in Wendt’s account, this article argues that despite a quite elaborate and eloquent development of a monist ontological position, conceptual discussions remain solely focused on the nature of beings and neglect wider implications for the nature of being, particular…
Assaulting ‘diversity as such’
Dehumanisation is one of the most invoked factors in analyses of mass atrocities with many scholars focusing on its crucial role in enabling perpetrators to inflict violence on their victims. However, while its application is widespread, its relevance is often assumed a priori , with claims regarding its empirical relevance often asserted rather than argued for. Not only does its meaning, nature, and function remain amorphous, current scholarship…
Moral status – human status? Interrogating the connection between morality and dehumanisation during mass violence
Beginning with early studies in the 1970s, dehumanisation has become a key feature in attempts to grasp the fundamental dynamics and conditions under which mass atrocities emerge. One of the most long-standing, prominent and widely accepted conceptions sees the loss of moral status as a key constitutive component of processes of dehumanisation, suggesting that the victims’ exclusion from the moral universe of obligation breaks down moral barriers…
Epistemology (10 works) · Philosophy (10 works) · Sociology (10 works) · Law (8 works) · Political science (8 works) · Philosophy (6 works) · International Relations and Foreign Policy (4 works) · Law (4 works) · Politics (4 works) · Psychology (4 works)