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The final lecturelet for SIS-301; this one’s about Naeem Inayatullah and David Blaney’s book International Relations and the Problem of Difference.

Naeem and David actually have spoken about their approach at a workshop I organized, and a recording of those remarks is available here.

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Almost the end of the series! Here’s lecturelet 12, which is somewhat about feminism and somewhat about the broader critical-theoretical tradition that it is part of, at least or especially in IR.

My subjective perception was that I talked a bit fast on a couple of these slides. Fortunately, QuickTime has options that you can use to slow down playback, if that’s necessary.

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Based on some class and post-class comments, I decided to whip up a quick supplemental lecturelet on motivational versus intentional explanations. This kind of issue always comes up when one starts delving into constructivist theory, but I don’t think that the explanation I gave in class was sufficient . . . so here’s another attempt.

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Still hovering around 50 minutes. Here’s the eleventh installment in the series; this lecture(let) focuses on realist constructivism, and extends/complements last week’s thoughts on liberal constructivism.

One clarification: the “social construction” / “not social construction” fractal is not a replacement for the 2×2 that arranges realism, liberalism, liberal constructivism, and realist constructivism as ideal-typical combinations of commitments; that said, the fractal might be the analytical engine driving the debates. You decide.

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Looks like I am stuck on the 48-49 minute length for the moment. Here’s lecture(let) 10, on constructivism, particualrly the more liberal variety. In this lecturelet and the next one I aim to give some sense of how the constructivist turn has interacted with realist and liberal approaches; this week I spend more time on constructivism in general so that we all get the basic logic down, and next week I will talk more in detail about what I see as the realist/liberal contrast within constructivism.

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Okay, so maybe 49 minutes is not quite a lecturelet. But it’s shorter than the previous few so-called lecturelets, so that has to count for something. Liberalism is our topic this week: both IR liberalism and the broader liberal tradition from which it (sometimes implicitly) derives.

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Someone commented that these were less lecturelets and mroe lectures; I am not sure how much longer they will continue to run to this size, but these past couple of weeks there seems to have been a lot to say. Maybe this is a temporary bulge; we’ll see.

In any event: here’s lecture(let) 8, on IR realism.

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Here’s the seventh installment in the ongoing, thrilling series “Some Short Lecturelets On International Relations Theory,” or something like that. Anyway, here’s the latest set of slides and my commentary for SIS-301; this time the topic is Hegel, and the rationality of History.

Yes, I know it’s almost an hour long. Enlightenment philosophy is complicated stuff.

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Here’s a little supplemental lecturelet I whipped up for SIS-301. This is based on some diagrams I sketched on the board one day after class; not everyone could stay for that, and some people found them helpful, so I’m making them publicly available in this form. What I’ve done here is to briefly sketch the ruler/ruled relationship according to Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau, and Kant, as I see it. Enjoy!

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Here’s the sixth lecturelet for SIS-301 — this one’s on Kant. I also took the opportunity to talk a bit about “the international” and the connection between politcal theory and international relations, so this one is a bit longer than usual.

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