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The 'Critical Turn'
Marxism, Feminism, Postmodernism and Theories…
- The 'Critical Turn'
Marxism, Feminism, Postmodernism and Theories of Global Justice
Class Struggle and Human History
Like realists, early Marxists were interested in the way that material concerns shaped political outcomes with class conflict acting as the motor of human history.
Marxism:
- Critique of capitalism for generating unequal social relations leading to domination, exploitation and oppression
- Explanation of class conflict between those who own the means of production (bourgeoisie) and those who don't (prolatariat)
- Critique of liberalism as an ideology that legitimises capitalism
- Recognition of the emancipatory potential of modernity
- Exploration of potential sources of social and political change
Class Struggle and the State System
For Marxists international relations are structured by capitalism and the competition between classes that this produces. The modern state is the means by which the bourgeoisie imposes its interests upon the proletariat
Gramsci and Hegemony
Hegemony is the preponderance of power and influence held by a state. it is more than just power as it rests on persuasion and consent, fostered via ideology and transmitted via culture.
'Through his notion of hegemony Gramsci redirected Marxist theory to the role of culture and ideology in reproducing the state and capitalism
The 'Critical Turn'
Any set of theories that seeks to understand the social world, guided by a suspicion towards traditional methods of understanding and interested in forms of human emancipation.
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Justice and Emancipation
Theories of global justice abandon any pretense to objectivity and seek to understand and alter international relations normatively by posing moral questions of actors, structures and processes on the basis of ethic and moral grounds
Ways of Understanding the World
Although intellectually descended from the critical analysis of Marxism, critical theories reject 'positivism', the idea that nature - and human society - is bound by fixed laws that can be determined through an application of the scientific method.
Feminism
Feminism - a theory that sees gender relations and patriarchy as the primary forces shaping society, politics and international relations - examines that way that women have been historically marginalised in the public sphere and that way gender stereotypes shape attitudes towards international relations seeking to emancipate women from gendered structures of power that disadvantage them.
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Where are the women?
Kate Lee Koo argues that a 'hegemonic masculinity' pervades the discipline of IR and that '... much feminist international relations scholarship is directed towards uncovering the experience of people [not just women] who are hidden by this masculine bias' meaning that we can seek evidence of IR beyond the realm of states.
Feminisms
Within a feminist critique, there are a variety of different approaches that range from 'adding sex empirically' to 'analysing gender critically' within IR which is 'not a sub-set of the discipline but something that is intrinsic to every aspect of it'
Post-Colonialism
Examining the racialised basis of international relations, post-colonialism has attempted to give a voice to the 'subaltern' (the junior or weaker partner in a relationship) at the expense of great powers thus adding to the diversity of perspectives in contemporary international relations and IR, emancipating the global poor from (continuing) domination by the rich
Postmodernism
Following on from the 'death of God', postmodernists suggest that there are likely to be as many 'truths' as there are perspectives on a given political or moral issue. 'Deconstructing' the power relationships that underpin claims to truth help us understand whose interests are being served in the international system.
Knowledge and Power
Following on from the work of Michel Foucault, postmodernists argue that representation is not reality and that what we see represented is a product of power that masks political interests
CONCLUSIONS
So called 'critical theories' rest on different methodological and epistemological foundations (how we know what we know) to so-called 'problem-solving theories'
They are intellectually related to Marxism's 'historical materialism' but depart from Marxism's 'grand narrative'
They share with Marxism a belief that the purpose of international relations and IR is to unlock the emancipatory potential held down by material and ideological interests