Download or read book Battlestar Galactica and International Relations written by Nicholas J. Kiersey and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2013-02-15 with total page 238 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Looking at a television franchise like Battlestar Galactica (BSG) is no longer news within the discipline of International Relations. A growing number of scholars in and out of IR are studying the importance of cultural artifacts – popular or otherwise – for the phenomena that make up the core of our discipline. The genre of science fiction offers the analyst an opportunity that cannot be matched by more mimetic genres, namely the chance to look at how sets of widely-circulating expectations of the social serve to constrain authors as they work to introduce as yet unexplored problematiques, the fantasy aspect in much of science fiction storytelling is premised simply on a material difference. As such, while the physical setting of a science fiction tale might appear novel, its imaginative life world will likely retain many elements of the world we already live in and which we can readily recognize as similar to our own. For Critical IR scholarship then, BSG presents an opportunity to examine how these purported homologies or elements of redundancy between the fantastic and the real have been drawn and perhaps to consider, too, whether the show can teach us things about world politics, its various logics and structures, which we might not otherwise be sensitive to. Tackling some of the key contemporary issues in IR, the writers of BSG have taken on a range of important political themes and issues, including the legitimacy of military government, the tactical utility of genocide, and even the philosophical implications of artificial intelligence technologies for the very category of what it means to be 'human'. The contributors in this book explore in depth the argument that one of the most important aspects of popular culture is to naturalize or normalise a certain social order by further entrenching the expectations of social behaviour upon which our mentalities of rule are founded. This work will be of interest to student and scholars of international relations, popular culture and security studies.
Download or read book Otherworldly Politics written by Stephen Benedict Dyson and published by JHU Press. This book was released on 2015-06-30 with total page 177 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: To help students think critically about international relations and politics, Stephen Benedict Dyson examines the fictional but deeply political realities of three television shows:Star Trek, Game of Thrones, and Battlestar Galactica. Deeply familiar with the events, themes, characters, and plot lines of these popular shows, students can easily draw parallels from fictive worlds to contemporary international relations and political scenarios. In Dyson's experience, this engagement is frequently powerful enough to push classroom conversations out into the hallways and onto online discussion boards. In Otherworldly Politics, Dyson explains how these shows are plotted to offer alternative histories and future possibilities for humanity. Fascinated by politics and history, science fiction and fantasy screenwriters and showrunners suffuse their scripts with real-world ideas of empire, war, civilization, and culture, lending episodes a compelling intricacy and contemporary resonance. Dyson argues that science fiction and fantasy television creators share a fundamental kinship with great minds in international relations. Creators like Gene Roddenberry, George R. R. Martin, and Ronald D. Moore are world-builders of no lesser creativity, Dyson argues, than theorists such as Woodrow Wilson, Kenneth Waltz, and Alexander Wendt. Each of these thinkers imagines a realm, specifies the rules of its operation, and by so doing seeks to teach us something about ourselves and how we interact with one another. A vital spur to creative thinking for scholars and an accessible introduction for students, this book will also appeal to fans of these three influential shows.
Download or read book Securing Outer Space written by Natalie Bormann and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2009-01-30 with total page 472 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The challenges that space poses for political theory are profound. Yet until now, the exploration and utilization of space has generally reflected – but not challenged – the political patterns and impulses which characterized twentieth-century politics and International Relations. This edited volume analyses a number of controversial policies, and contentious strategies which have promoted space activities under the rubric of exploration and innovation, militarization and weaponization, colonization and commercialization. It places these policies and strategies in broader theoretical perspective in two key ways. Firstly, it engages in a reading of the discourses of space activities: exposing their meaning-producing practices; uncovering the narratives which convey certain space strategies as desirable, inevitable and seamless. Secondly, the essays suggest ways of understanding, and critically engaging with, the effects of particular space policies. The essays here seek to ‘bring back space’ into the realm of International Relations discourse, from which it has been largely removed, marginalized and silenced. The various chapters do this by highlighting how activities in outer space are always connected to earth-bound practices and performances of the every day. Securing Outer Space will be of great interest to students of space power, critical security studies and IR theory.
Download or read book The Final Frontier written by Joel R. Campbell and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2019-03-08 with total page 259 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The proposed book uses the Star Trek television/movie and Star Wars movie series to explain key international relations (IR) concepts and theories. It begins with an overview of the importance of science fiction in literature and film/television. It then presents the development of the Star Trek and Star Wars franchises, and discusses how their progression through time has illustrated key IR theories and concepts. As a bonus, it compares the two franchises to another recent science fiction franchise used to teach IR (Battlestar Galactica).
Download or read book Otherworldly Politics written by Stephen Benedict Dyson and published by JHU Press. This book was released on 2015-06-30 with total page 177 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A compelling look at the analogous political worlds of science fiction, fantasy, and international relations. In Otherworldly Politics, Stephen Benedict Dyson examines the fictional but deeply political realities of three television shows: Star Trek, Game of Thrones, and Battlestar Galactica. Dyson explains how these shows offer alternative histories and future possibilities for humanity. Fascinated by politics and history, science fiction and fantasy screenwriters and showrunners suffuse their scripts with real-world ideas of empire, war, civilization, and culture, lending episodes a compelling intricacy and contemporary resonance. Dyson argues that science fiction and fantasy television creators share a fundamental kinship with great minds in international relations. Screenwriters like Gene Roddenberry, George R. R. Martin, and Ronald D. Moore are world-builders of no lesser creativity, Dyson argues, than theorists such as Woodrow Wilson, Kenneth Waltz, and Alexander Wendt. Each of these thinkers imagines a realm, specifies the rules of its operation, and by so doing shows us something about ourselves and how we interact with one another. Combining intellectual and real-world history with lucid theoretical analysis, the book is a vital challenge to scholars and a spur to creative thinking for fans of these three influential shows.
Download or read book Max Weber and International Relations written by Richard Ned Lebow and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2017-10-05 with total page 213 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book offers new readings of the epistemology, methods and politics of Max Weber, a foundation thinker of modern social science and international relations theory.
Download or read book International Relations written by Bilal Karabulut and published by Lexington Books. This book was released on 2024-03-29 with total page 345 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: International Relations: Theories, Concepts, and Organizations analyzes the changing dynamics of world politics on a rational scale. It presents the conceptual and theoretical codes of International Relations (IR) to academics, journalists, politicians, and thinkers. In addition to concepts and theories, intergovernmental and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) that have an important place in IR are examined. Under the influence of the globalization process, radical changes are taking place in world politics. Increasingly complex, world politics is transforming into a multi-layered structure. This book has been prepared to make IR understandable and accessible clearly.
Download or read book Methodology and Emotion in International Relations written by Eric Van Rythoven and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2019-06-20 with total page 448 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume offers a state-of-the-art study of the diverse methodological approaches and issues in the study of emotions in international relations research. While interest in emotion and affect in IR has grown in recent years, there remains an absence of sustained engagement with questions of methodology and method. Although much of the field holds the ‘emotions turn’ as laudable, it is commonly seen as facing serious, even prohibitive, methodological challenges. Using a common framework for making discussions of methodology and emotion mutually intelligible, this work seeks to address this lacuna and will be of interest to students and scholars of international relations, research methods and IR theory.
Download or read book Technologies of International Relations written by Carolin Kaltofen and published by Springer. This book was released on 2018-11-04 with total page 136 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book examines the role of technology in the core voices for International Relations theory and how this has shaped the contemporary thinking of ‘IR’ across some of the discipline’s major texts. Through an interview format between different generations of IR scholars, the conversations of the book analyse the relationship between technology and concepts like power, security and global order. They explore to what extent ideas about the role and implications of technology help to understand the way IR has been framed and world politics are conceived of today. This innovative text will appeal to scholars in Politics and International Relations as well as STS, Human Geography and Anthropology.
Download or read book Technology and International Relations written by Giampiero Giacomello and published by Edward Elgar Publishing. This book was released on 2021-04-30 with total page 224 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Exploring how changes in advanced technology deeply affect international politics, this book theoretically engages with the overriding relevance of investments in technological research, and the ways in which they directly foster a country’s economic and military standing. Scholars and practitioners present important insights on the technical and social issues at the core of technology competition.
Download or read book International Relations Theory written by Oliver Daddow and published by SAGE. This book was released on 2017-03-27 with total page 429 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: With chapters on all the major theories of international relations, accompanied by contemporary examples from popular culture, film and literature, this Third Edition is the ideal introduction to the key perspectives in the field. Key features: 30% new content, with all chapters revised and updated Useful learning features including further reading, ′questions to ponder′, ′common pitfalls′ and ′taking it further′ boxes, to help you extend your thinking beyond the classroom Invaluable chapters on getting the best out of your knowledge of International Relations Theory in essays and exams, including real life examples of best practice.
Download or read book Theories of International Politics and Zombies written by Daniel W. Drezner and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2022-07-19 with total page 192 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How international relations theory can be applied to a zombie invasion What would happen to international politics if the dead rose from the grave and started to eat the living? Daniel Drezner’s groundbreaking book answers the question that other international relations scholars have been too scared to ask. Addressing timely issues with analytical bite, Drezner looks at how well-known theories from international relations might be applied to a war with zombies. Exploring the plots of popular zombie films, songs, and books, Theories of International Politics and Zombies predicts realistic scenarios for the political stage in the face of a zombie threat and considers how valid—or how rotten—such scenarios might be. With worldwide calamity feeling ever closer, this new apocalyptic edition includes updates throughout as well as a new chapter on postcolonial perspectives.
Download or read book International Studies written by Scott Straus and published by CQ Press. This book was released on 2018-09-10 with total page 474 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The challenge of teaching international studies is to help you think coherently about the multiple causes and effects of global problems. In International Studies: Global Forces, Interactions, and Tensions, award-winning scholars Scott Straus and Barry Driscoll give you a clear framework that pinpoints how key factors—forces, interactions, and tensions—contribute to world events, with both global and local consequences. The authors first show you how to look for common patterns in global issues by introducing four world-shaping forces: global markets, shifting centers of power, information and communications technologies, and global governance. They systematically trace how these forces prompt interactions among world actors and thus give rise to a set of tensions that spur key challenges. The framework enables you to ask and answer for yourself—Who is interacting? Where did such interactions develop? What policies or institutions govern them? Why are they getting certain global and local reactions? You are then apply the framework to the global problems that matter most to you: human rights abuses, economic inequality, terrorism, forced migration, pandemics and global health responses, climate change, food security, and more. International Studies raises the bar for the Introduction to IS course, moving beyond interdisciplinary, and into the realm of critical analysis to increase student relevancy and motivation.
Download or read book Critical Security Methods written by Claudia Aradau and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2014-08-13 with total page 231 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: New approach to research methods and methodology in critical security studies Helps fill the gap in methodology literarture in critical security studies Well-established authors Will be of much interest to students of critical security studies, research methods, politics and IR
Download or read book Battlestar Galactica and Philosophy written by Jason T. Eberl and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2011-08-31 with total page 290 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: PHILOSOPHY/POP CULTURE “The contributors to Battlestar Galactica and Philosophy strive to make things relevant to fans of the show, and they put their information out in a way that is accessible to folks who wouldn't know Heidegger from Heineken.” Green Man Review, Spring 2009 "The writers are well versed in their subjects...The book is most effective at making the reader rethink what they thought they knew." Neo-opsis What’s the point of living after your world has been destroyed? This is one of many questions raised by the Sci-Fi Channel’s critically acclaimed series Battlestar Galactica. More than just an action-packed “space opera,” each episode offers a dramatic character study of the human survivors and their Cylon pursuers as they confront existential, moral, metaphysical, theological, and political crises. This volume addresses some of the key questions to which the Colonials won’t find easy answers, even when they reach Earth: Are Cylons persons? Is Baltar’s scientific worldview superior to Six’s religious faith? Can Starbuck be free if she has a special destiny? Is it ethical to cut one’s losses and leave people behind? Is collaboration with the enemy ever the right move? Is humanity a “flawed creation?” Should we share the Cylon goal of “transhumanism?” Is it really a big deal that Starbuck’s a woman?
Download or read book Cultural Resistance 9 11 and the War on Terror written by Jenifer Chao and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2017-09-01 with total page 273 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Cultural Resistance, 9/11, and the War on Terror: Sensible Interventions offers a fresh account of the enduring cultural legacies of the September 11, 2001 terror attacks and the global war on terror through the critical lens of cultural resistance. It assesses the intersecting ways that popular culture has been deployed as oppositional practice in the post-9/11 context by documenting a collection of media texts, including a political hip hop album, a TV sitcom, a best-selling novel and studio photographs. Deviating from the conventional discursive and representative axis of mourning, nationalism and commemoration, this multimedia assemblage contests and rearticulates the political meanings, affects and visualizations of the war on terror and its global consequences. Drawing on the theoretical work of Jacques Rancière, the book also argues that these cultural artefacts are extending cultural resistance by shifting the scenes and methods of opposition to the realm of the sensible, or sensorial experiences. Never celebratory, the book encapsulates the potential of cultural practices against restricted post-9/11 regimes of visibility and audibility in the public sphere, but it also remains attentive to their blind spots, contradictions and constraints. This book offers a new angle to consider the events of 9/11, the war on terror and their continual effects, one that blurs established visions of patriotism and grief.
Download or read book Playing with the Guys written by Marc A. Ouellette and published by McFarland. This book was released on 2021-05-28 with total page 250 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A lot of work has been done talking about what masculinity is and what it does within video games, but less has been given to considering how and why this happens, and the processes involved. This book considers the array of daily relationships involved in producing masculinity and how those actions and relationships translate to video games. Moreover, it examines the ways the actual play of the games maps onto the stories to create contradictory moments that show that, while toxic masculinity certainly exists, it is far from inevitable. Topics covered include the nature of masculine apprenticeship and nurturing, labor, fatherhood, the scapegoating of women, and reckoning with mortality, among many others.
