The Vulnerable Subject - by A Beattie & K Schick (Hardcover)

About the Book

"International Relations scholarship has typically engaged with vulnerability as a problem to be solved through 'rational' attempts to craft a global order marked by universality, predictability and stability. By recovering an awareness of the persistently vulnerable human subject, this book argues that we can re-engage with issues of emotion, relationality, community and history that are often excluded from the study of global politics. This collection proposes an agonistic approach to international ethics and politics, eschewing a rationalism that radically privileges white Western conceptions of the world and that actively oppresses alternative voices. The Vulnerable Subject addresses issues such as trust, judgement, climate change, identity, and post-colonial relations, allowing for a profound rethinking of one of the core driving assumptions at the heart of international politics"--

Book Synopsis

This book develops a concept of vulnerability in International Relations that allows for a profound rethinking of a core concept of international politics: means-ends rationality. It explores traditions that proffer a more complex and relational account of vulnerability.

Review Quotes

'The Vulnerable Subject is a wonderful book. The volume's editors have assembled a

collection of essays that collectively take the reader beyond now-familiar critiques

not only of mainstream 'explanatory' IR theory, but also of rationalist normative

theory. Eschewing well-worn oppositions and dichotomies, the authors challenge us

to consider the implications of 'the vulnerable subject' in a wide range of theoretical

and empirical positions related to global politics. If you teach or research in international

relations or moral and political philosophy, this book may change the way

you think about ethics, politics, your 'subject' and your self.'

Fiona Robinson, Professor of Political Science, Carleton University, Canada

About the Author

EARL GAMMON Lecturer in Politics and International Relations in the School of Political, Social and International Studies at the University of East Anglia, UK KIMBERLY HUTCHINGS Professor of International Relations at the London School of Economics, UK TORSTEN MICHEL Lecturer in International Politics in the School of Sociology, Politics and International Studies (SPAIS) at the University of Bristol, UK RYOKO NAKANO Assistant Professor in the Department of Japanese Studies at the National University of Singapore ROBBIE SHILLIAM Senior Lecturer in International Relations at Queen Mary, University of London, UK BRENT J. STEELE Associate Professor at the Department of Political Science, University of Kansas, USA