Pop Goes IR? Researching the Popular Culture—World Politics Continuum

Abstract

In this article we offer a potential research agenda for the study of popular culture in IR and outline how this research agenda could be advanced. If the incorporation of popular culture into IR is going to be fruitful, there must be a willingness to go beyond an engagement with illustrations of world politics. Doing so will get us closer to what is at stake in the mutual implication of popular culture and world politics.

Introduction: the politics of sport – community, mobility, identity

“…Political studies often stands accused of limiting the tools of research, marginalizing normative concerns as 'unscientific' and isolating politics from the broader human sciences. 23 In this regard, the essays gathered together in this volume emerged from an attempt to bridge this sense of isolation, to foster greater dialogue, and to move towards a pluralistic model of political studies in which sport is no longer, to paraphrase Whannel, epiphenomenal or 'out of place'. In all cases the papers were received from attendees of the inaugural UK Political Studies Association Sport and Politics specialist study group annual conference, held at Greynogg, Wales, in February 2007.…”

‘A handful of nothin’’: reading Studies in Trans-disciplinary Method through Cool Hand Luke

“…The idea that aesthetic subjects are representations of global politics, that they can both (re)produce and challenge particular ways of seeing/being in the world, is not new; the discipline of IR has, begrudgingly, partially, slowly, begun to accept an elision between 'real time' and 'reel time' (Weber 2006, 3), between popular culture and world politics (see Grayson, Davies, and Philpott 2009). The difference in this book is that Shapiro does not situate his contribution in relation to disciplinary IR.…”

Representing Romani Gypsies and Travelers: Performing Identity from Early Photography to Reality Television

“…The impact of these stereotypes, and the representation practices behind them, on Roma politics is undeniable. While IR is slowly developing a framework to understand this impact through analyses of photography and film (Sylvester 2001;Bleiker 2009;Lisle 2011) and the relationship between popular culture and world politics (Grayson et al 2009;Dixit 2012), a rich existing literature in critical visual studies 5 could provide further inspiration to move beyond overly simplified discourses of "negative" visibility bad, "positive" visibility good, or "metaphoric" stereotypical depictions of Gypsies bad, "real" depictions of Gypsies good, on which much of today's Roma rights discourse seems to rely. 6 As the recent proliferation of an increasing number of Roma films and documentaries (Bradeanu 2008) and its coexistence with a noticeable rise in discrimination across Eastern (Ahmari 2012) and Western Europe (Barbulescu 2012) shows, "realistic" portrayals are not the problem or the solution here.…”