Identity in International Relations

Dados Bibliográficos

ID23249151
AutoresFelix Berenskoetter (University of London, autor correspondente)
Ano2017
Data de publicação2017-12-22
Peer ReviewedSim
Open AccessNão
TipoCHAPTER
PeriódicoComparative Immigration Policy (SOURCE_BOOK)
EditoraOxford University PressNew York, NY (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1093/acrefore/9780190846626.013.218
OpenAlexW1522701528
ISBN9780190846626
IdiomaEN
Citações recebidas21
Referências citadas7

The identity perspective first emerged in the international relations (IR) literature in the late 1980s and early 1990s as a result of two overlapping trends. First, the postmodern Zeitgeist encouraged the questioning of accepted and “naturalized” categories associated with modernity. Embracing diversity and committed to an agenda of emancipation, postmodern thinking was to bring about the “death of meta-narratives” and to unravel assumptions which had come to be taken for granted and justified with, for instance, the need for parsimony. In IR, this meant “fracturing and destabilizing the rationalist/positivist hegemony,” including its ontology of the international system, to establish a new perspective on world politics. The readiness to do so was aided, second, by the end of the Cold War and changing structures of governance. The dissolution of seemingly stable political entities such as the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia raised questions about the volatility of borders, loyalties, nationalism(s), and the ability to manipulate them. Simultaneously, the phenomenon of “globalization” and processes of European integration undermined the conception of the Westphalian state as the fixed/dominant entity in world politics. Against this backdrop, many IR scholars searching for new conceptual vocabulary turned to “identity” to highlight the socially constructed nature of the state and its interests, and to explain the causes of war and the conditions for peace.

Aesthetics · Emancipation · Epistemology · Eurocentrism · Globalization · Hegemony · Identity (music) · International relations · Modernity · Narrative · Political economy · Political science · Politics · Positivism · Postmodernism · Reification (Marxism) · Social science · Sociology · International Relations and Foreign Policy · Law · Philosophy