CONTENTS
Page
Summary of Content:
Educational Aims:
Learning Outcomes:
Module Evaluation:
Seminar Titles:
Week 1. No seminar
Week 2. Introduction 28/09
Week 3. Niccolo Machiavelli – The Prince 05/10
Week 4. E.H. Carr – The Twenty Years Crisis: 1919-1939 12/10
Week 5. Edward Said – Orientalism 19/10
Week. 6 Carl von Clausewitz – On War 26/10
Week 7. Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels – The Communist Manifesto 02/11
Week 8. Joseph Conrad – Heart of Darkness 09/11
Week 9. Alexander Wendt, Social Theory of International Politics 16/11
Week 10. Stanley Hoffmann, Duties Beyond Borders 23/11
Week 11. Jürgen Habermas, The Postnational Constellation 30/11
Week 12. Revision 07/12
Method and Frequency of Class:
Method of Assessment:
Reading Information:
Coursework Support:
Guidance to Essay Writing:
Assessed Essay Titles:
Summary of Content:
A study of the following books:
Niccolo Machiavelli – The Prince
E.H. Carr – The Twenty Years Crisis: 1919-1939
Edward Said – Orientalism
Carl von Clausewitz – On War
Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels – The Communist Manifesto
Joseph Conrad – Heart of Darkness
Alexander Wendt – Social Theory of International Politics
Stanley Hoffmann – Duties Beyond Borders
Jürgen Habermas, The Postnational Constellation
Educational Aims:
This module aims to give students:
This module gives students the unique opportunity to study a selected range of fundamental texts, which have a crucial and seminal influence on the development of International Relations, and on the study of war and peace, culture and strategy.
Using these texts, the aim is both to analyse the growth of the discipline of International Relations, and assess how these texts reflect and inform key themes and debates, such as: the creation of a world society, the different interpretations of power and national interest, the concepts of ethics and intervention, human security, racism and emancipation, motives underlying conflicts, genocide, and conditions necessary for peace.
We will conduct in-depth discussions on the values of these texts, and be critical in our analyses. In particular, we will: 1) evaluate how these texts reflect the wide range of perspectives studied by International Relations scholars; 2) compare how different concepts are analysed by the authors; and 3) examine how these works are informed by their historical context, but also how they help us understand contemporary problems.
This is the only module which concentrates exclusively on the study of books. It will give you fundamental knowledge and understanding, which you will be able to use in your other modules, and in your future professional life. You will become experts in primary sources, and critical analysts of textbooks and newspaper articles which use terms such as realpolitik, prestige, norms and racism without really defining or understanding them.
Learning Outcomes:
These will be:
i)Knowledge and understanding:
It is intended that the module will allow for students to read and study all the books on the reading list in depth. Students will also gain a greater understanding of how to discriminate between theoretical approaches and apply this effectively in their own research. Students will also be introduced to key themes in International Relations and shown how they are dealt with by different authors. The critical reading and writing skills of students shall also be developed through independent study and research. Presentation skills shall be developed and the ability to contribute to seminar discussions.
ii)Intellectual skills:
-Synthesis of information, evaluation of competing explanations, applying theory to policy, formulation of one’s own reasoned argument
-Research on primary and secondary literature
iii)Professional/Practical skills:
-Research skills
-Capacity to carry out independent and team work
-Capacity to produce written work and to give effective oral presentations
iv)Transferable & Key skills:
-Read primary and secondary sources on a regular basis
-Capacity to analyse critically in writing
-Capacity to respect deadlines
-Capacity to present work with notes
v)IT skills:
-Word
-Use of databases on secondary literature
Module Evaluation:
Evaluation and feedback are crucial to the success of any module. The School wants students to have their say on Politics modules. Therefore modules are formally evaluated on a biennial basis, so please use this opportunity to have your say. If you have any other comments or queries regarding this module, please contact the Module Convenor.
Seminar Titles:
The weekly lecture/seminar titles are as follows:
Week 1.No seminar
Week 2. Introduction28/09
Seminar questions
What makes a book a modern classic of International Relations?
To what extent do International Relations theory and practice reflect each other?
Indicative Reading List
Bartelson, Jens, ‘Short circuits: society and tradition in international relations theory’, Review of International Studies, Vol. 22, No. 4, pp.339-360, 1996.
Brown, C. Nardin T, and Rengger N., International Relations in Political Thought, Cambridge: CUP 2002.
Cox, Michael, Dunne, Tim and Booth, Ken, ‘Empires, systems and states: great transformations in international politics’, Review of International Studies, Vol. 27, Special Issue, pp. 1-15, 2001.
Dunne, T., ‘Mythology or Methodology: Traditions in International Theory,’ Review of International Studies, Vol. 19, n. 3, 1993.
Holden, Gerard, ‘Who contextualizes the contextualizers? Disciplinary history and the discourse of IR discourse.’ Review of International Studies, Vol. 28, No. 2, pp. 253-270, 2002.
Olsen, William C. and A. J. R. Groom, International Relations Theory Then and Now: Origins and Trends in Interpretation, London: Harper Collins, 1991.
Schmidt, Brian C., ‘The Historiography of Academic International Relations’, Review of International Studies, Vol. 28, No. 2, 2002.
Walt, M., ‘International Relations: One World Many Theories’, Foreign Policy, Spring, pp. 29-47, 1998.
Week 3. Niccolo Machiavelli – The Prince05/10
Key text: Machiavelli Niccolò, The Prince, London Penguin Books, 2003.
Few politicians admit to reading Machiavelli’s Prince, nevertheless Machiavelli remains a byword in international politics.
Seminar questions:
Why does Machiavelli’s 500 year old treatise seem so modern?
What is the place of morality in International Relations? Why is Machiavelli sceptical about morality in International Relations?
Why does Machiavelli’s work seem so accessible as compared to many more recent international relations texts?
How do the individual, the domestic, and the international levels interact in Machiavelli’s Prince?
‘Machiavelli’s treatise has an emancipatory dimension, notwithstanding his focus on a leader’s exercise of power.’ Discuss.
What lessons does Machiavelli have for contemporary international politics and IR theories?
To what extent does the practice of international relations reflect the idea that is better to be feared than loved?
What guidance might Machiavelli offer to the West in Darfur?
Further reading
Berlin, I., ‘The Originality of Machiavelli’, in Against the Current (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1981).
Berridge, G. R., 'Machiavelli: human nature, good faith, and diplomacy', Review of International Studies, 27, 4 (October 2001).
Fischer, M. ‘Machiavelli’s Theory of Foreign Politics’ in B. Frankel (ed) The Roots of Realism (London: Frank Cass, 1996).
Frankel, B. (ed.), Realism: Restatements and Renewal (London: Frank Cass, 1996), chs. I and V.
Haslam, J., No Virtue like Necessity: Realist Thought in IR since Machiavelli (New Haven: York University Press, 2002).
Holmes, S., Passions and Constraint (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1995), chs. 3 and 4.
Meinecke, F., Machiavellism (New Jersey: Transaction Publishers, 1998).
Paret, P. (ed.), Makers of Modern Strategy from Machiavelli to the Nuclear Age(1986).
Rosenberg, J., ‘What’s the Matter with Realism?’ Review of International Studies (October 1990).
Skinner, Q., Machiavelli (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1981).
Skinner, Q., The Foundations of Modern Political Thought, 2 vols. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1978).
Sobek, D. ‘Machiavelli’s Legacy: Domestic Politics and International Conflict’ International Studies Quarterly, 49 (2) 2005: 179-204.
Tilly, C., The Formation of National States in Western Europe (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1975).
Walker, R.B.J., ‘Realism, Change, and International Political Theory’, International Studies Quarterly, 31 (1987).
Walker, R. B. J. (1992) Inside/outside: International Relations as Political Theory. Cambridge: CUP.
Wight, M., Power Politics (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1979).
Week 4. E.H. Carr – The Twenty Years Crisis: 1919-193912/10
Key text: Carr, E. H., The Twenty Years Crisis, 1919-1939: An Introduction to the Study of International Relations: With a New Introduction by Michael Cox. New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2001 [1939].
Seminar Questions
What is the ‘crisis’ in The Twenty Years Crisis? How effectively does Carr answer his own question?
Is Carr really a realist? How does his argument differ from realpolitik?
How does Carr define the national interest?
Why does Carr argue that international morality is the morality of the Great Powers?
Further Reading
Carr, E. H., Conditions of Peace (London: Macmillan, 1942).
Claude, I. Power and International Relations (New York: Random House, 1962).
Cox, M. (ed.), E.H. Carr: A Critical Reappraisal (London: Palgrave, 2000).
Cox, M., ‘Will the real E. H. Carr please stand up?’, International Affairs, Vol. 75, No. 3, pp. 643-53, 1999.
Deutscher, Tamara, ‘E. H. Carr – a personal memoir’, New Left Review, No. 137, pp. 78-86, Jan/Feb 1983.
Donnelly, Jack, Realism and International Relations (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000.
Falk, Richard, ‘The Critical Realist Tradition and the Demystification of Inter-State Power: E. H. Carr, Hedley Bull and Robert Cox’, in Gill, Stephen and Mittleman, James, Innovation and Transformation in International Studies, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997.
Fox, T. R. ‘E. H. Carr and Political Realism: Vision and revision’, Review of International Studies, No. 11, 1985.
Gellner, Ernest, ‘Nationalism reconsidered and E. H. Carr’, Review of International Studies, Vol. 18, pp. 285-93, Oct. 1992.
Goldfischer, David, ‘E. H. Carr: a “historical realist” approach for the globalisation era’, Review of International Studies, Vol. 28, No. 4, pp. 697- 717, 2002.
Holsti, K., ‘Scholarship in an Era of Anxiety: the study of international politics during the Cold War’, Review of International Studies, 24 Special Issue, pp. 17-46, Dec. 1998.
Howe, P., 'The Utopian Realism of E. H. Carr', Review of International Studies, 20, 3 (1994).
Jones, C., E. H. Carr and International Relations: The Duty to Lie (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998).
Jones, Charles, ‘Carr, Mannheim and a post-positivist science of international relations’, Political Studies, Vol. 45, No. 2, pp. 232-46, 1997.
James, A., 'The Realism of Realism: The State and the Study of International Relations', Review of International Studies 15, 3 (1989).
Lebow, R. N. ‘Classical Realism’ in Dunne, Kurki & Smith (eds) International Relations Theories: discipline and diversity.
Linklater, Andrew, ‘The Transformation of Political Community: E. H. Carr, Critical Theory and International Relations’, Review of International Studies, Vol. 23, pp. 321-38, 1997.
Molloy, Sean The Hidden History of Realism (New York: Palgrave, 2006)
Morgenthau, H., 'The Political Science of E. H. Carr', World Politics, 1, 1 (1948-49).
Niebuhr, R., Moral Man and Immoral Society: A Study in Ethics and Politics (Hew York: Scribner, 1932).
Rosenberg, J., 'What's the Matter with Realism?', Review of International Studies, 16, 4 (1990).
Smith, M. J., Realist Thought from Weber to Kissinger (Baton Rouge: Louisiana University Press, 1986.
Taylor, T., 'Power Politics', in T. Taylor (ed.), Approaches and Theory in International Relations (London: Longmans, 1978).
Vasquez, John, The Power of Power Politics: A Critique (London: Pinter, 1979).
Wight, M., Power Politics, eds. H. Bull and C. Holbraad (Leicester: Leicester University Press, 1978).
Wight, M., International Theory: The Three Traditions, eds. G. Wight and B. Porter (Leicester: Leicester University Press, 1991).
Wilson, P., 'Carr and his Critics: Responses to The Twenty Years' Crisis', in M. Cox (ed.), E. H. Carr: A Critical Reappraisal (London: Macmillan, 2000).
Wilson, P., 'E. H. Carr: The Revolutionist's Realist', theglobalsite.ac.uk, December 2000.
Wilson, P., 'Radicalism for a Conservative Purpose: The Peculiar Realism of E. H. Carr', Millennium: Journal of International Studies, 30, 1 (2001).
Wolfers, A., Discord and Collaboration: Essays on International Politics (Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 1962).
Week 5. Edward Said – Orientalism 19/10
Key Text: Said Edward, Orientalism, London: Penguin, 1978.
Seminar Questions
What does Edward Said mean by orientalism? And by understanding the Orient as “almost a European invention”?
To what does the concept of orientalism overlap with Samuel Huntington’s clash of civilizations thesis?
Explain Cannadine’s concept of ornamentalism. How does Cannadine question Said’s concept of orientalism?
How has Said’s concept of orientalism been taken up in East European studies? See e.g. Todorova’s Imagining the Balkans.
Further reading
Cannadine, David (2001) Ornamentalism: How the British saw their Empire. London: Allen Lane.
Heartfield, James (2002) The Death of the Subject Explained. Sheffield: Sheffield Hallam University. a) Chapter Six Algeria and the defeat of French Humanism available at b) And further section: Hegel Dispirited: the reification of the Other in Kojève, DeBeauvoir and Sartre, available at
Huntington, Samuel (1997) The Clash of Civilisations and the Remaking of World Order. London: Simon & Schuster. Chap1 especially – at
Little, Douglas (200) American Orientalism: the United States and the Middle East Since 1945. London: I. B. Tauris.
Macfie, A. (2000) (ed.) Orientalism: A Reader. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.
New Left Review (2003) ‘Remembering Edward Said 1935-2003’, (24), p. 59+, Nov-Dec.
Said, Edward (1985) Orientalism Reconsidered, Photocopy SLC.
Todorova, Maria (1997) Imagining the Balkans. New York :Oxford University Press.
Tuasted, D (2003) ‘Neo-orientalism and the new barbarism thesis: aspects of symbolic violence in the Middle East conflict(s), Third World Quarterly, Vol. 24, No. 4, pp. 591-599.
Week. 6Carl von Clausewitz – On War 26/10
Key text: Clausewitz, On War, abridged by Beatrice Heuser (Oxford World’s Classics, 2007).
Students should read all of this abridged version. The introduction and notes are clear and helpful. On War was written between 1815 and 1830. It was first published posthumously (in German) in 1832-34. Beatrice Heuser’s edition is an abridgement of the standard English edition:
Clausewitz, On War, edited and translated by Michael Howard and Peter Paret (Princeton University Press, 1976).
The editors’ introductions to this edition are very good.
Seminar questions:
1. Who was Clausewitz?
2. What was he trying to do in this book?
3. What are his big ideas?
4. Which of them seems most striking or profound?
5. Can Clausewitz be categorized according to the conventional categories of realist, idealist, etc?
6. Why has On War achieved classic status? Put differently, how is that a long, unfinished treatise on such a specialist subject, written nearly two centuries ago, is still widely read?
7. What is his relevance now – what is he read for?
8. How can Clausewitzian thinking be applied to the so-called war on terror, and in particular the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan?
Further reading:
Aron, R., Clausewitz (Routledge, 1976).
Bassford, C., Clausewitz in English (Oxford University Press, 1994).
Cimbala, S. J., Clausewitz and Escalation (Cass, 1991).
Cimbala, S.J., Clausewitz and Chaos (Praeger, 2000).
Freedman, L. (ed.), War (Oxford University Press, 1994).
Gat, A., The Origins of Military Thought (Clarendon Press, 1989).
Handel, M., Clausewitz and Modern Strategy (Cass, 1986).
Handel, M., Masters of War (Cass, 2001).
Heuser, B., Reading Clausewitz (Pimlico, 2002).
Howard, M., Clausewitz (Oxford Past Masters, 1983).
Lebow, R. N., The Tragic Vision of Politics (Cambridge University Press, 2003), ch 5.
Paret, P., Clausewitz and the State (Clarendon Press, 1976).
Paret, P., Understanding War (Princeton University Press, 1992).
Smith, H., On Clausewitz (Palgrave, 2005).
Smith, R., The Utility of Force (Penguin, 2006).
Strachan, H., Clausewitz’s On War (Atlantic, 2007).
Week 7. Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels – The Communist Manifesto02/11
Key text: The Communist Manifesto, either in Penguin Classics, with an introduction by Gareth Stedman Jones, or in Oxford World’s Classics, with an introduction by David McLellan.
Students should read the whole work – the Manifesto itself, which is comparatively short, and the introductory matter.
The Manifesto was first published (in German) in 1848. The standard English editions use Samuel Moore’s translation of 1888.
Seminar questions:
1. What kind of work is the CM? Why was it written?
2. What is Communist about it?
3. It has been called ‘the first great modernist work of art’. What is artistic about it?
4. How does it speak to its time (1848)?
5. How does it speak to us now – what extent is it timeless?
6. Who were Marx and Engels?
7. Were they an odd couple? What was the nature of the partnership?
8. How does the CM relate to Marx’s other works, or to Marxism more generally?
Further reading:
Other editions of the CM, e.g., with an introduction by A. J. P. Taylor (Penguin, 1967).
Berman, M., All That Is Solid Melts Into Air (Verso, 1983).
Cowling, M. (ed.), The CM: New Interpretations (Edinburgh University Press, 1998).
Hunt, T., Marx’s General [Engels] (Metropolitan, 2009).
McLellan, D., Capital: A New Abridgement (Oxford World’s Classics, 2004).
Puchner, M., Poetry of the Revolution (Princeton University Press, 2006), ch 1-4.
Runciman, W. G., Great Books, Bad Arguments (Princeton University Press, 2010).
Wheen, F., Karl Marx (Fourth Estate, 1999).
Wheen, F., Marx’s Das Kapital (Atlantic, 2006).
Week 8. Joseph Conrad – Heart of Darkness09/11
Key text: Heart of Darkness, either in Oxford World’s Classics, edited by Cedric Watts, or in Penguin Classics, edited by Robert Hampson.
Students should read all of Heart of Darkness and if possible some more of Conrad’s work – for example, two of the greatest political novels in the language: Nostromo and The Secret Agent.
Heart of Darkness was first published in 1899.
Seminar questions:
1. Who was Joseph Conrad?
2. To what extent is HoD based on his own experiences? Or on historical events?
3. What did he mean by ‘the heart of darkness’?
4. What is the book about?
5. It has been constantly interpreted and reinterpreted. Why is that?
6. Conrad was once called ‘a bloody racist’. Why, and with what justification?
7. Why does this work still seem so powerful and compelling?
8. HoD is a work of fiction. Does that matter, for our purposes?
9. What is the relationship between HoD and Francis Ford Coppola’s film, Apocalypse Now (1979)?
10. To what extent can HoD be transposed, or applied, to other times and places and contexts – to the Anglo-American presence in Iraq and Afghanistan, for example?
Further reading:
There is a mountain of biographical and critical writing on Conrad. These works focus on HoD:
Achebe, C., Hopes and Impediments (Heinemann, 1988).
Adams, R., Joseph Conrad Heart of Darkness (Penguin, 1991).
Bloom, H., Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness (Chelsea House, 1987).
Burden, R., Heart of Darkness (Macmillan, 1991).
Dryden, L., Joseph Conrad and the Imperial Romance (St Martin’s Press, 2000).
Fothergill, A., Heart of Darkness (Open University Press, 1989).
Kiernan, V. G., The Lords of Humankind (Century Hutchinson, 1988).
Kimbrough, R., Heart of Darkness (Norton, 1988).