Introduction: Interrogating the 'everyday' politics of emotions in international relations

The focus on the everyday in this Special Issue reveals different kinds of emotional practices, their political effects and their political contestation within both micro- and macro-politics in international relations. The articles in this Special Issue address the everyday negotiation of emotions, shifting between the reproduction of hegemonic structures of feelings and emancipation from them. In other words, the everyday politics of emotions allows an exploration of who gets to express emotions, what emotions are perceived as (il)legitimate or (un)desirable, how emotions are circulated and under what circumstances. Consequently, we identify two thematic strands which emerge as central to an interrogation of ‘everyday’ emotions in international relations and which run through each of the contributions: first, an exploration of the relationship between individual and collective emotions and, second, a focus on the role of embodiment within emotions research and its relationship with the dynamics and structures of power

The securitisation of Islam in the US post-9/11 : indirect speech acts, "everyday" security and the logic of remoteness

The thesis critically examines the processes by which Islam has been securitised in the US post-9/11. I begin by asking how this securitisation succeeded, given that two of the most powerful actors in the world, G.W Bush and Obama, have repeatedly avoided using the language of existential threat when speaking about Islam. I argue that different layers of language need to be peeled away within a sociological approach to securitisation. The linguistic approach adopted in this work challenges the conventional view of securitisation by moving back and forth between the knowledge-world of intersubjectivity and a broader field of practices, and the knowledge-world of mental states. I contend that Islam and the Muslim population have been securitised directly in the context of “the everyday,” indirectly in the context of “the exceptional” and that security practitioners in both exceptional and everyday fields of security securitise Islam by following the logic of remoteness. In the former, actors such as the police use everyday police tactics to monitor the Muslim population. In the latter, securitising actors such as G.W. Bush and Obama, or in other words, actors with “symbolic power,” securitise indirectly by using indirect speech acts and euphemisms. The indirect securitisation provides the most innovative contribution of the thesis by developing the idea that the discursive strategy of “exceptional” securitising actors relies on indirectness to convey a securitising message, which enables them to “save face” if the securitisation fails. Indirect speech acts are thus strategic securitising devices, which should be grasped by the securitisation literature. The logic of remoteness operates through a consequentialist framework, which I seek to contest by providing a critical contribution to the securitisation of Islam in the US and by opening to the role of emotions in critical securitisation studies

Constructing and contesting victimhood in global politics

No abstract available

Introduction: feminist policymaking in turbulent times: critical perspectives

This introductory chapter maps the international feminist institutional landscape, outlines the contributions of the book to the gender-policy nexus, and presents a thematic reading guide. On the one hand, the institutionalisation of gender has generated substantial critique for de-politicising feminist struggles and reflecting (neo)liberal and white feminist perspectives that may reproduce structural forms of injustice. On the other hand, the rapid and global growth of anti-gender and anti-feminist standpoints has raised the stakes for feminist policymaking and possibly reaffirms the urgency of incorporating gender into policy frameworks. Situating the edited volume within this tension and carving out new research questions at this political junction, this Introduction homes in on four dimensions of ‘feminist policymaking’: (1) methods, metrics, and impact of feminist policies; (2) opening the ‘black box’ of feminist foreign policy; (3) the role of the international; and (4) alternative imaginings of feminist policymaking.<br/

Emotions

This chapter demonstrates how emotions allow us to see, think and interpret political events ‘otherwise’ by exposing the political nature of emotions and their ability to resist and contest hegemonic stories about world politics. Acknowledging the significance of emotions in the social and political world, this chapter examines how emotions contribute important insights into the production of knowledge and dynamics of power at both the micro and macro level of global politics. First, we situate emotions research in the discipline of International Relations and illustrate how the inclusion of emotions in IR can transform our interpretation of global political events such as the European refugee ‘crisis’. Second, the chapter highlights key theoretical, empirical, and methodological debates in emotions research and shows how emotions are social, political and cultural. Lastly, drawing on the response to violence against Indigenous women in Canada in the #nomorestolensisters campaign, the chapter examines ways in which emotions research can challenge the Western-centric nature of world politics and raises the possibility for it to be central to decolonial scholarship and politics

The remote securitisation of Islam in the US post-9/11: euphemisation, metaphors and the “logic of expected consequences” in counter-radicalisation discourse

© 2015 Taylor & Francis. This article critically analyses the securitisation of Islam post-9/11 in the US and argues that this securitisation is a remote securitisation whereby the securitisers – the security practitioners – are placed at a distance from the securitisees – the Muslim community. This is achieved through two processes of security practice: linguistically by euphemising language and using metaphors, and analytically by understanding radicalisation through a rationalist perspective, which follows the “logic of expected consequences”. This article further problematises the rationalist view of radicalisation in the counterterrorism sector in the US and concludes by introducing a Bourdieusan concept of relationality to critical counter-radicalisation studies