Discourse, genealogy and methods of text selection in international relations

Tatum, Dillon Stone

doi:10.1080/09557571.2018.1518971

Cited by 10 publications

(3 citation statements)

References 54 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…Within IR, there is extensive discussion about and engagement with discourse analysis (DA). 54 What also stands out is the diverseness of IR's 'encounters' 55 with, and approaches to thinking about/doing, DA. 56 Hence, this type of analysis can be described as encompassing 'a highly varied collection of conceptual frameworks and analytical lenses' .…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Resilience as a ‘concept at work’ in the war in Ukraine: Exploring its international and domestic significance

Clark

2024

Rev. Int. Stud.

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

In the context of the ongoing war in Ukraine, it is striking that there have been many references to resilience, including by Western and Ukrainian leaders. This article is precisely about their use of resilience discourse, and it makes two important contributions to existing scholarship on resilience in conflict settings. First, drawing on Ish-Shalom’s idea of ‘concepts at work’ and analysing a selection of speeches and policy statements (by Western leaders and President Volodymyr Zelensky) that specifically refer to resilience, it demonstrates that resilience is a significant ‘concept at work’ in the war, making certain forms of international and domestic politics possible. Second, while research on resilience frequently discusses different ways that the concept has been defined and approached in fields such as engineering, ecology, and psychology, this article highlights that diverse framings of resilience have become entangled as the concept is ‘at work’ in the war in Ukraine. More specifically, its analysis makes prominent the fusion of different resiliences at different levels – from the individual to the systemic – discursively working together for particular political ends. In this way, it offers a novel way of thinking multi-systemically about resilience and, by extension, about resilience and complexity.

show abstract

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Resilience as a ‘concept at work’ in the war in Ukraine: Exploring its international and domestic significance

Clark

2024

Rev. Int. Stud.

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Discourse herein refers to the broad system in which individuals make sense of things, interact with others, and which gives meaning to actions [Tatum 2018: 3]. Identifying this discourse, and interpreting its influence, and its genealogy [Tatum 2018: 3] helps us to appreciate the force of ideas and their impact upon policy. The discourse about Russia has been shaped over time within the foreign policy community.…”

Section: Russophobia In the Foreign Policy Discoursementioning

confidence: 99%

Russophobia in the Obama Era Foreign Policy Discourse (2009-2017)

Roberts

2020

Vestn. Ross. univ. družby nar., Ser. Meždunar. otnoš.

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Anti-Russian sentiment - what some call “Russophobia” - is subtle, but visible in the American foreign policy discourse since the end of the Cold War. Most recently, it can be found in the Obama-era discourse about Russia, despite the positive bump in relations after the so-called “reset” of 2009. This paper contends that, among the many irritants in Russia - U.S. relations, anti-Russian sentiment among the American foreign policy leadership is an understudied phenomenon. Russophobia matters because it is present even at times of promise in the relationship; it impedes striking a “normal” relationship with Russia, and it influences policy decisions. This paper conceptualizes Russophobia, considers the source of its persistence in the American foreign policy discourse, and identifies examples of anti-Russian sentiment among key members of Barack Obama’s foreign policy team through an examination of memoirs and personal reflections about Russia. The paper asserts that anti-Russian attitudes in the American foreign policy discourse throughout the post-Cold War era must be identified and understood in order to gain a better understanding of why forging stronger, mutually beneficial relations with Russia continues to evade American policy makers. Anti-Russian sentiment undermined the Obama - Medvedev reset and, while it is certainly not alone responsible for deteriorating relations with Russia, it helped to perpetuate the downturn in relations and must be identified and better understood. The arguments made in this paper and in the selected citations herein, are based upon non-partisan scholarly inquiry and are not a consequence of the author’s personal or political views.

show abstract

“…Such charges have particularly forcefully been voiced in relation to Poststructuralist approaches to Discourse Analysis (PDA), such as those inspired by the works of Foucault, Derrida, Laclau and Mouffe (Herschinger, 2016; Lewis, 2017). Compared to other methods PDA has no clearly regulated procedure for the selection of sources, and, lacking a methodological blueprint, has been criticized for the subjective interpretation of data and issues concerning replicability and generalizability (Malmvig, 2006; Tatum 2018; Aydın-Düzgit and Rumelili 2019).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Studying Problematizations: The Value of Carol Bacchi’s ‘What’s the Problem Represented to be?’ (WPR) Methodology for IR

Riemann

2023

Alternatives: Global, Local, Political

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Critical approaches to IR have often been criticized for lacking methodological rigour. Especially, authors informed by the works of Michel Foucault have faced challenges to justify their methodology, given that Foucault did not provide scholars with a methodological blueprint. This article argues that Carol Bacchi’s ‘What’s the problem represented to be?’ (WPR) approach provides a robust critical methodology for policy analysis. WPR is a method that facilitates the critical examination of public policies to analyse ‘how the “problem” is represented within them and to subject this problem representation to critical scrutiny’ (Bacchi, 2012b). This way of questioning differs from other forms of policy analysis in that it shifts the focus of analysis from policy as a ‘problem-solving’ exercise towards seeing policy as an act which is constructive of ‘problems’. Policies are therefore not analysed from a problem-solving perspective, but from a problem-questioning perspective. By making the ‘problem’ itself the focus of analysis, it becomes possible to uncover the political, epistemological and historical contexts which are constitutive of the problem representation. I demonstrate the value of this approach by subjecting the Cure Violence Global NGO to a WPR analysis.

show abstract

Discourse, genealogy and methods of text selection in international relations

Cited by 10 publications

References 54 publications

Resilience as a ‘concept at work’ in the war in Ukraine: Exploring its international and domestic significance

Resilience as a ‘concept at work’ in the war in Ukraine: Exploring its international and domestic significance

Russophobia in the Obama Era Foreign Policy Discourse (2009-2017)

Studying Problematizations: The Value of Carol Bacchi’s ‘What’s the Problem Represented to be?’ (WPR) Methodology for IR

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About