Lest you think Realism and Liberalism are all there is to IR Theory, we’re going to shake things up with several additional schools of thought, starting with Constructivism and then exploring some Critical Theories of IR. 

Constructivism turns the shared assumptions of Realism and Liberalism on their heads, by asserting that the fundamental rules these schools take as given, like anarchy and sovereignty, are not objective and fixed, but social constructions! 

The Critical Theories combine a whole lot (and we are going to go through them very quickly- you could easily take a whole course in any of these topics!). Critical Theories share a common focus of being critical of the big 3- who is left out of Realism, Liberalism, and/or Constructivism? They can be differentiated by which specific group they focus most on. When it comes to international relations, Marxist theory challenges us to look not at states but at the interests of capital- what can this lens tell us about how and why things happen between countries?  Post-Colonialism reminds us that while some schools of international relations theory diregard the internal politics and histories of states as black boxes or billiard balls, that there are still consequential differences between formerly colonized states and formerly colonizing states that affect the way states interact decades after colonization.  There is no one Feminist IR Theory– rather, it is a collection of scholars and approaches who seek to examine and explain the gender side of events and interactions in international relations, which most theories ignore, despite there being evidence that ignoring half of the world’s population leads to inaccuracies and errors in theory and practice.  For example, why don’t measures of development or economic output measure unpaid work (such as caring for children), when the value of such unpaid work amounts to upwards of $10 trillion per year?  In addition to our assigned reading for this week, you may find this short news article about the women leaders who are handling COVID-19 extremely well interesting (the article is a bit old now, but is an interesting example nonetheless). 

Our slides are available to help you work through your reading, but they are not a substitute for your reading, which is available here (read the rest of Unit 1 before our zoom if you can!) 

By now, you should be able to start synthesizing what you’ve been reading in your blog posts.   These scholars do not write in isolation- they are in conversation with each other, so you can include that conversation in your writing about them.  More simply, what does each school explain well, and what does it not explain well?  Who or what is the focus of each theoretical perspective, and who or what does each perspective leave out?  One extremely useful exercise (which would make a great blog post!) is thinking about 3 different events, and then trying to explain them from at least 3 different theoretical perspectives (this would lead to 9 total explanations- 3 events X 3 theoretical perspectives).   

You might notice that there are two hilarious memes in the slides- these were actually created by previous students for the meme assignment.  You can see the detailed assignment sheet here, but the summary is, make a meme (don’t just take one that’s already made off of the internet) about a topic that relates to something we’ve covered in our reading, write an essay explaining it, and don’t forget your self-grading assessment.   

I know there are several religious holidays occurring currently and/or soon, so if you’re celebrating any, I hope that they are good ones for you and your loved ones. The flexibility built into this class is designed to cover all of the many different religious holidays that KCC students observe, but if I’ve missed something, or you need additional alterations, just let me know and we’ll take care of it. 

We are still waiting for a few folks to get started blogging- please try to sort it out asap, and remember I’m here to help if you need.  Also, make sure you DO NOT USE ANY AI TO DO YOUR WORK FOR THIS CLASS PLEASE AND THANK YOU. The messy challenging thinking and writing for your blogs is the best learning you will do all semester- don’t cheat yourself out of it!