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1. Quo Vadis, Historical International Relations? Geopolitical Marxism and the Promise of Radical Historicism

Author:
Lauri Von Pfaler and Benno Teschke
Publication Date:
06-2024
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Uluslararasi Iliskiler
Institution:
International Relations Council of Turkey (UİK-IRCT)
Abstract:
John Maclean’s 1988 call “Marxism and IR: A Strange Case of Mutual Neglect” has generated a rich bounty of Marxist studies and paradigms in International Relations (IR). This cross-pollination merged in the 1990s with the “historical turn” and shaped the sub-fields of International Historical Sociology and International Political Economy. But has it left its mark on how IR is practised today? We argue that while Marxism has spoken significantly to the discipline, mainstream IR, even Historical IR, has been largely impervious to Marxist arguments, drawing the standard charge of economism and structuralism. Rectifying these critiques, we suggest that conventional historical studies of “the international” remain methodologically and substantively impoverished. We exemplify this by showing how leading Historical IR studies of “systems change” fail to explain the inside/outside and public/private differentiations constitutive of the modern international order and to integrate the “levels of analysis” they presuppose. We further argue that this rejection has been facilitated by influential Marxist IR paradigms, which ultimately privilege structuralism over historicism: While Neo-Gramscians initially mobilised “historicism” to dissolve claims about the “sameness” of international relations across time and space, the approach became identified with the reified master-category of “hegemony”. Uneven and Combined Development, in turn, has gravitated towards matching Neo-realism’s claim to theoretical universality by insisting on transhistorical model-building and nomological “grand theory”. Both approaches remain over-sociologised and fail to address international politics. Drawing on radically historicist Political Marxism, this article shows how its substantive socio-political premises explain the historical formation of the contemporary international order and re-unite the “levels of analysis” theoretically to provide a framework for non-reductionist and non-economistic accounts of historical international relations. This requires an answer to the agentic challenge of Neo-Classical Realism by reincorporating grand strategy, diplomacy, and international politics into a reformulated perspective of Geopolitical Marxism to track the full historicity of the making of international orders.
Topic:
International Relations, History, Socialism/Marxism, Sociology, Methods, Agency, Geopolicy, and Historicity
Political Geography:
Global Focus

2. Promoting Voice and Agency Among Forcibly Displaced Children and Adolescents: Participatory Approaches to Practice in Conflict-Affected Settings

Author:
Michael Wessells
Publication Date:
11-2021
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Journal on Migration and Human Security
Institution:
Center for Migration Studies of New York
Abstract:
Globally, large numbers of children and adolescents are displaced by armed conflict, which poses significant threats to their mental health, psychosocial well-being, and protection. Although humanitarian work to support mental health, psychosocial well-being, and protection has done considerable good, this paper analyzes how humanitarian action is limited by excessive reliance on a top-down approach. Although the focus is on settings of armed conflict, the analysis offered in this paper applies also to the wider array of humanitarian settings that spawn increasing numbers of refugees globally. Top-down approaches, which are driven by outside experts and practitioner agencies such as NGOs, do too little to support children’s and adolescents’ cultural identity, voice, and agency. Since top-down approaches privilege outsider conceptualizations of the problems and the indicated interventions, they tend to marginalize or weaken indigenous cultural understandings of the problems facing children and adolescents and of cultural practices that could support them. This leads to poorly contextualized programs that quietly undermine children’s and adolescents’ cultural identity and dignity. Also, the adults who lead top-down approaches do too little to learn from the voices and lived experiences of children and adolescents. Although top-down approaches frequently encourage “child participation”, they tend to do so in a manner that is limited or even tokenistic, as children and adolescents are implementing partners rather than agents who have significant power and could help to make contextually relevant decisions about program priorities and approaches. Humanitarian work to support children’s and adolescents’ mental health, psychosocial well-being, and protection would be strengthened by complementing top-down approaches with more grounded, bottom-up approaches that feature children and adolescents’ cultural identity, voice, and agency. The paper outlines diverse, evidence-based methods and approaches for doing this, and calls attention to four priorities: cultural humility and reflexive practice; learning from the voices and lived experiences of children and adolescents; enabling the agency of and collective action by children and adolescents; and localizing aid by sharing greater power and funding with local stakeholders, including children and adolescents.
Topic:
Children, Displacement, Conflict, and Agency
Political Geography:
Global Focus