Description:
Covering a broad range of approaches within critical theory including Marxism and post-Marxism, the Frankfurt School, hermeneutics, phenomenology, postcolonialism, feminism, queer theory, poststructuralism, pragmatism, scientific realism, deconstruction and psychoanalysis, this book provides students with a comprehensive and accessible introduction to 32 key critical theorists whose work has been influential in the field of international relations.
Review Quotes:
Edkins and Vaughan-Williams have produced a very helpful collection of introductions to the thinking of a wide variety of writers who have been influential in the critical analysis of international relations. This comprehensive set of accessible introductions helps the reader understand the core contributions of writers who have been seminal in the development of a critical account of international relations.
Professor Steve Smith
Vice-Chancellor, University of Exeter
As one who usually resists teaching IR courses, I welcome Jenny Edkins' and Nick Vaughan-Williams' Critical Theorists and International Relations. I can finally see myself as an occasional IR instructor in a book that provides the critical perspectives lacking in most IR texts, is organized to facilitate pedagogy, and is consistently excellent, chapter by chapter.
Michael J. Shapiro
University of Hawai'i
"Global politics has provided an important context of critical theory. Yet its growing complexity has also called attention to the ongoing task of articulating and reflecting upon the roles of identity, power, order, and resistance in International Relations.Critical Theorists and International Relations is a splendid and much-needed volume that addresses and fills, in a truly original manner, this important niche. Providing comprehensive and authoritative analyses of the key critical theorists, this edited volume will continue to remind us of the ever-present need to wrestle harder with the contextual and overlapping meanings of critical theory in International Relations."
Steven C. Roach, Editor of Critical Theory and International Relations: A Reader
A deceptively simple idea outstandingly executed. This is a collection of diverse scholarship exploring the wide parameters of critical international theory. No stodgy hagiography, the contributors offer an accessible but critical collection of (often-personal) reflections on some of the most important thinkers in IR. Students of international politics from a wide range of methodological persuasions will find this book an invaluable starting point.
Stuart Shields, University of Manchester