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31. People out of place: allochthony and autochthony in the Netherlands' identity discourse - metaphors and categories in action

Author:
Dvora Yanow and Marleen van der Haar
Publication Date:
04-2013
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Journal of International Relations and Development
Institution:
Central and East European International Studies Association
Abstract:
As with much of Europe, the Netherlands has no explicit 'race' discourse; however, the state, through its public policy and administrative practices, does categorise its population along 'ethnic' lines, using birthplace - one's own or one's (grand-) parent's - as the surrogate determining factor. The contemporary operative taxonomy has until recently been binary: autochtoon (of Dutch heritage) and allochtoon (of foreign birth). Used earlier at the provincial level in respect of internal migration, the taxonomy was expanded in 1999 to demarcate between 'Western' allochtoon and 'non-Western' allochtoon, with the latter being further subdivided into first and second generation. Informed by a 'generative metaphor' approach (Schon 1979) that links cognition to action, this article subjects the allochtoon/autochtoon binary to metaphor analysis and the Western/non-Western taxonomy to category analysis. The work done by 'birthplace' in the term pair suggests that they are, in their everyday usage, surrogates for a race discourse, carrying the same (ancient) assumptions about individual identity and the earth-air-sun-water of the spot on which one was born that underlies definitions-in-use of 'race'. Their meaning in contemporary policy discourse derives from the interaction of metaphoric and category structures, with implications for policy implementation.
Political Geography:
Europe and Netherlands

32. How are language constructions constitutive? Strategic uses of conventional discourses about immigration

Author:
Claudia Strauss
Publication Date:
04-2013
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Journal of International Relations and Development
Institution:
Central and East European International Studies Association
Abstract:
Metaphor theorists often state that metaphors are constitutive of thought and action. This article asks how language constructions are constitutive of policy, using the example of immigration policies in the United States. First, the claims of some metaphor analysts are scrutinised. Then a different approach is proposed, one that focuses on formulaic, oft-repeated schemas, or conventional discourses. Conventional discourses are not the same as Foucauldian discursive frameworks. Instead, they are stock rhetorical-interpretive frameworks. For policymakers they serve as mental shortcuts and political identity signals. Political speeches are constructed from multiple conventional discourses; 18 conventional discourses about immigration were drawn upon in just one Congressional debate. Their variety and numbers indicate the possibilities for differing policy emphases. Such constructions, including the formulaic metaphors that are typical of a particular conventional discourse, are constitutive in only a limited sense; they are suggestive without being determinative. Skilful politicians can creatively combine conventional discourses with rhetorical strategies of concession, springboarding, and co-optation to align with multiple constituencies, including ones on opposing sides of an issue. These points are illustrated with the example of U.S. Congressional debate about HR 4437, the Border Protection, Antiterrorism, and Illegal Immigration Control Act of 2005.
Topic:
Politics and Immigration
Political Geography:
United States

33. Bringing concepts from cognitive linguistics into the analysis of policies and the political

Author:
Alan Cienki
Publication Date:
04-2013
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Journal of International Relations and Development
Institution:
Central and East European International Studies Association
Abstract:
The articles in this special issue all seek to highlight the ways in which concepts from linguistics can enlighten analyses of policies and the political. In this commentary, I seek to situate some of the central concepts that have been employed in terms of their treatment in cognitive linguistics. The first part of this commentary focuses on metaphor - a construct that receives explicit analysis in these works as it is a fundamental tool we use for thinking about and expressing abstract concepts. The discussion then turns to a topic underpinning all of these studies, even while remaining implicit in them, namely metonymy: the mention of a part to stand for a whole, a whole for a part, and other relations of association. This section considers the important role of metonymy in providing a compact means for politicians, policy-makers, and/or average citizens to make reference to, and reason about, complex topics. At the same time, metonymy also carries the risk of reflecting, or inducing, unwarranted logical inferences. The third topic taken up here is categories; key issues considered are the variety of structures that categories can manifest and how these structures are pertinent in different ways in differing contexts, including classical categories that metaphorically function like containers, vs prototype categories with fuzzy boundaries. Employing these approaches in the analysis of policies and the political therefore involves not only a linguistic turn, but also a cognitive one.
Topic:
Politics

34. The importance of the Eurasian steppe to the study of international relations

Author:
Einar Wigen and Iver B Neumann
Publication Date:
07-2013
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Journal of International Relations and Development
Institution:
Central and East European International Studies Association
Abstract:
This article is a call for making the Eurasian steppe an object of study within International Relations. The first section argues that the neglect of the steppe is due to 19th-century prejudice against non-sedentary polities as being barbarian. This is hardly a scholarly reason to neglect them. The second section is a nutshell overview of literature on the steppe from other fields. On the strength of these literatures, we postulate the existence of what we call an almost three thousand year long steppe tradition of ordering politics. The third section of the article suggests that the steppe tradition has hybridised sundry polity-building projects, from early polity-building in the European the Middle Ages via the Ottoman and Russian empires to contemporary Central Asian state-building. We conclude this exploratory piece by speculating whether a focus on the steppe tradition may have the potential to change our accounts of the emergence of European international relations at large.
Topic:
International Relations and Politics
Political Geography:
Russia, Europe, Central Asia, and Eurasia

35. Decaf empowerment? Post-Washington Consensus development policy, fair trade and Kenya's coffee industry

Author:
Zoë Pflaeger
Publication Date:
07-2013
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Journal of International Relations and Development
Institution:
Central and East European International Studies Association
Abstract:
There has been much debate surrounding the shift in development policy towards the Post-Washington Consensus and its associated Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers. This article seeks to engage critically with and further this literature by considering the concept of empowerment and its role within this consensus through an examination of development policy aimed at farmer empowerment in Kenya. This is investigated with a focus upon coffee producers in the context of Kenya's coffee reforms and the restructuring of the global coffee industry. While acknowledging the limitations of the dominant approach, exacerbated in the African context due to a problematic interpretation of the African state, it is argued that analyses of empowerment should also consider the opportunities for its re-politicisation. Drawing upon Gramscian thought, this article suggests that fair trade initiatives have the potential to offer an alternative approach to farmer empowerment more capable of challenging the concentration of power among roasters and buyers that has taken place within the coffee industry.
Topic:
Development
Political Geography:
Kenya, Africa, and Washington

36. Securing energy or energising security: the impact of Russia's energy policy on Turkey's accession to the European Union

Author:
Burak Bilgehan Özpek
Publication Date:
07-2013
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Journal of International Relations and Development
Institution:
Central and East European International Studies Association
Abstract:
The emergence of an energy security crisis between Russia and European countries has cast doubt on the argument that commercial ties lead to peaceful political relations between states as the energy trade between Russia and Europe has been inclined to generate conflict rather than cooperation. Nevertheless, the crisis has showed that military security issues no longer dominate the agenda and that issues produce different degrees of cooperation and conflict between governments. Furthermore, governments cannot use military force in order to resolve issues in an era of interdependence. Therefore, the European Union (EU), which suffers from an asymmetric dependence on energy resources imported from or via Russia, has adopted a diversification policy. This policy not only affects energy security but also the EU's enlargement process. Accordingly, a diversification policy requires embracing alternative energy sources, such as Turkey's involvement in oil and gas pipeline projects bypassing Russia. Thus, Turkey's contribution to European energy security creates an interdependence, which could affect Turkey's relations with the EU.
Topic:
Security, Energy Policy, and Government
Political Geography:
Russia, Europe, and Turkey

37. Designing the Financial Stability Board: a theoretical investigation of mandate, discretion, and membership

Author:
Manuela Moschella
Publication Date:
07-2013
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Journal of International Relations and Development
Institution:
Central and East European International Studies Association
Abstract:
This paper investigates the factors that help explain certain aspects of the new institutional design of the Financial Stability Board (FSB), namely its mandate, discretion, and membership. In doing so, the paper tests the hypotheses suggested by principal-agent (PA) theory, according to which institutional characteristics are consciously intended by state-principals with the aim to overcome cooperation problems. Empirical evidence lends support to PA hypotheses, according to which the functions assigned to the FSB help minimise the transaction costs related to the specific area of financial cooperation. Nevertheless, PA hypotheses have difficulty explaining the degree of discretion and the size of the FSB membership, thereby calling for exploring alternative theoretical explanations.

38. (Babylonian) Lions, (Asian) Tigers, and (Russian) Bears: a statistical test of three rivalrous paths to conflict

Author:
Paul A Kowert and Cameron G Thies
Publication Date:
07-2013
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Journal of International Relations and Development
Institution:
Central and East European International Studies Association
Abstract:
Structural theories of international relations anticipate no meaningful differences of kind, as opposed to capabilities, among states. Empirical investigations of enduring and strategic rivalries hint at a distinction, however, between states that see themselves as potential rivals and those that do not. Constructivists go further, suggesting that the roles adopted by states during their interactions are the result of varying underlying images of threat. This paper develops the theoretical claim that three different images of threat may produce distinct kinds of rivalry and thereby three paths to militarised interstate conflict. Each image of threat is rooted in a different normative context: strategic threats are associated with violations of the enforcement of Hobbesian cooperative security arrangements; competitive threats are associated with violations of fairness or reasonableness standards in Lockean exchange relationships; and institutional threats are associated with violations of the basis for commitment to Kantian communities of peace. A logistic regression analysis of Correlates of War data, combined with other data relevant to the three threat images, provide empirical support for each of these rivalrous paths to conflict.
Political Geography:
Russia and Asia

39. 'Human nature', science and international political theory

Author:
Chris Brown
Publication Date:
10-2013
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Journal of International Relations and Development
Institution:
Central and East European International Studies Association
Abstract:
The Post-War rise in importance of the individual in international political theory, as evidenced by the development of the international human rights regime, International Criminal Law and theories of global justice, has, paradoxically, been accompanied by an highly critical approach to the concept of human nature. Criticisms of human nature largely rest on the association of the concept of with social Darwinism, racism, sexism and eugenics, but, understood properly and at the right level of generality, the concept of human nature need not attract such undesirable, pseudo-scientific bedfellows. The modern science of evolutionary psychology is in the process of changing our understanding of the social implications of our genetic inheritance, and social and political theorists ought not to resist this change, and international relations scholars should not leave the field to realist scholars. Premature generalisations based on the findings of evolutionary psychology should certainly be resisted, but so should blanket rejections of the new knowledge. The task for international political theorists is to find a way of integrating the findings of the new human sciences into a humane understanding of the human animal.
Topic:
Human Rights

40. International relations in the making of political Islam: interrogating Khomeini's 'Islamic government'

Author:
Kamran Matin
Publication Date:
10-2013
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Journal of International Relations and Development
Institution:
Central and East European International Studies Association
Abstract:
Eurocentric approaches to political Islam tend to deploy an internalist methodology that theoretically obscures the generative and constitutive role of international relations. This article addresses this problem through a critical application of Leon Trotsky's idea of 'uneven and combined development' to Ayatollah Khomeini's invention of the concept of 'Islamic government'. It argues that this concept was international in its socio-political stimulus and intellectual content, and, crucially, reflected, influenced, and mobilised an emergent liminal sociality that combined Western and Islamic socio-cultural forms. This heterogeneous character of Iran's experience of modernity is, the article argues, theoretically inaccessible to Eurocentric approaches' homogeneous and unilinear conceptions of history, which, as a result, generate exceptionalist modes of explanations.
Topic:
International Relations and Government
Political Geography:
Iran