Contents
Notes on contributors
Teaching with Global Politics: A New Introduction
1 Introduction
Jenny Edkins, Maja Zehfuss and Thomas Gregory
the question
What does this introduction to global politics do?
illustrative example
How do we use illustrative examples?
general responses
What sorts of responses might there be?
broader issues
What assumptions do we start from?
conclusion
2 How do we begin to think about the world?
Lucy Taylor
the question
Thinking and positionality
illustrative example
Indigenous experience in Patagonia
general responses
Thinking about land
broader issues
The politics of academic practice
conclusion
3 Why do some people think they know what is good for others?
Naeem Inayatullah
the question
Giving and receiving
illustrative example
God’s purpose: early Christian incursions
general responses
History’s progress: contemporary interventions
broader issues
Diagnosing the need for exclusive knowledge
conclusion
4 When do we think global politics began?
Brieg Powel
the question
Thinking about origins
illustrative example
Understanding Mesopotamia
general responses
Ways of thinking about the past
broader issues
Limits to knowing beginnings
conclusion
5 What happens if we don’t take nature for granted?
Stefanie Fishel
the question
From humans to the more-than-human
illustrative example
Why are forests important?
general responses
How can we protect forests?
broader issues
Indigenous knowledges and multispecies justice
conclusion
6 Can we save the planet?
Carl Death
the question
Environmental politics and social movements
illustrative example
The fossil fuel divestment movement
general responses
Can protest movements really change anything?
broader issues
Individualisation, governmentality and counter-conduct
conclusion
7 Who do we think we are?
Annick T. R. Wibben
the question
Narratives and politics
illustrative example
Feminist movements in the U.S.
general responses
How can we conceptualise identity?
broader issues
How does group identification shape (global) politics?
conclusion
8 How do religious beliefs affect politics?
Peter Mandaville
the question
The role of religion today
illustrative example
Islamic states and movements
general responses
Do religion and politics mix?
broader issues
Culture and religious identities
conclusion
9 Why do we obey?
Jenny Edkins
the question
Obedience, resistance and force
illustrative example
The revolutions of 1989
general responses
Authority and legitimacy
broader issues
Thinking about power
conclusion
10 How do we find out what’s going on in the world?
Debbie Lisle
the question
The mediation of information
illustrative example
Changing news representations of war
general responses
The media, power and democracy
broader issues
How to read the media
conclusion
11 What does AI do to politics?
Louise Amoore
the question
Politics and the rise of artificial intelligence
illustrative example
UNHCR and AI humanitarianism
general responses
Debating the politics of AI
broader issues
AI knowledge as world-making
conclusion
12 Why is people’s movement restricted?
Somdeep Sen
the question
Anti-migration policies and practices
illustrative example
Refugee ‘crises’: then and now
general responses
The nation, the state and the politics of border control
broader issues
A racialized global order
conclusion
13 Where do we think we are from?
Elena Barabantseva
the question
National affiliations
illustrative example
The margins of the Chinese nation
general responses
Nationalism studies
broader issues
Transnationalism and hybridity
conclusion
14 Does the nation-state work?
Michael J. Shapiro
the question
States, nations and allegiance
illustrative example
Worlds of unease within the nation-state
general responses
Stories of coherent nationhood
broader issues
An alternative political imaginary
conclusion
15 How is the world organized economically?
Maria Tanyag
the question
Competing visions of the good life
illustrative example
Healthcare workers during the Covid-19 pandemic
general responses
Problematising versus normalising crises
broader issues
How to change the economy for people and planet
conclusion
16 How does colonialism work?
Sankaran Krishna
the question
Colonialism and underdevelopment
illustrative example
India and Britain
general responses
What is modern colonialism?
broader issues
The psychology of colonialism
conclusion
17 Do colonialism and slavery belong to the past?
Kate Manzo
the question
Slavery: abolition and continuation
illustrative example
Colonialism and capitalist development in Côte d’Ivoire
general responses
The effects of adjustment: deproletarianisation and modern slavery
broader issues
Is today’s world postcolonial or neo-colonial?
conclusion
18 How does finance affect the politics of everyday life?
Matt Davies
the question
Politics and everyday life
illustrative example
Finance and the financial crisis
general responses
The politics of the financial crisis
broader issues
Re-politicizing finance, re-politicizing everyday life
conclusion
19 How can we end poverty?
Mustapha Kamal Pasha
the question
The global poor and campaigns to end poverty
illustrative example
Modernization and microfinance in South Asia
general responses
From the developmental state to biopolitics
broader issues
Alternative visions of modernity
conclusion
20 Why does politics turn to violence?
Joanna Bourke
the question
Mass killing as a cultural phenomenon
illustrative example
Killing in wartime
general responses
Belligerent states
broader issues
Language and memory
conclusion
21 What makes the world dangerous?
Thomas Gregory
the question
Perceptions of danger
illustrative example
Drones in Daykundi
general responses
Debating drones
broader issues
Discourses of danger
conclusion
22 Can we move beyond conflict?
Roland Bleiker and David Shim
the question
Dealing with seemingly intractable conflicts
illustrative example
The conflict in Korea
general responses
Confrontation and engagement: two approaches to conflict
broader issues
Dealing with antagonism
conclusion
23 Who has rights?
Giorgio Shani
the question
Whose rights?
illustrative example
The French headscarf ban and Je (ne) suis (pas) Charlie!
general responses
Rights and religion in France
broader issues
Bare life, rights and sovereign power
conclusion
24 Conclusion: What can we do to change the world?
Maja Zehfuss
the question
Changing what’s wrong with the world
illustrative example
The Iraq War
general responses
No right way forward
broader issues
Change and complicity
conclusion
Acknowledgements
List of figures
List of boxes
Permissions
Index of names
General index
Contributors
Louise Amoore is Professor of Political Geography at Durham University, UK. Her research and teaching focuses on aspects of geopolitics, technology and security. She is particularly interested in how contemporary forms of data and algorithmic analysis are changing the pursuit of state security and the idea of society. Her most recent book, Cloud Ethics: Algorithms and the Attributes of Ourselves and Others, was published by Duke University Press in Spring 2020. Among her other published works on technology, biometrics, security, and society, her book, The Politics of Possibility: Risk and Security Beyond Probability (2013), examines the governance of low probability, high consequence events, and its far-reaching implications for society and democracy.
Elena Barabantseva is a Senior Lecturer in Chinese International Relations at The University of Manchester. Her research focuses on the questions of nationalism, borders and citizenship in the context of globalising China. She is a member of British Academy global convening programme ‘Chinese Global Orders’ (2023-2026) and the ESRC Network Plus ‘Shifting Global Polarities: Russia, China, and Eurasia in Transition’ (2024-2028). Her most recent research is forthcoming as a book Marriage, Migration and Race across China-Russia Border (Cambridge University Press). She is the author of Overseas Chinese, Ethnic Minorities and Nationalism: De-Centering China (Routledge 2010), co-editor (with Claire Sutherland) of Citizenship and Diaspora (Routledge 2011) and co-editor (with William A. Callahan) of and contributor to China Orders the World: Normative Soft Power and Foreign Policy (Woodrow Wilson Center Press with Johns Hopkins University Press 2012). She is a fellow of the Higher Education Academy.
Roland Bleiker is Professor of International Relations at the University of Queensland, where he coordinates an interdisciplinary research programme on Visual Politics. From 1986 to 1988 he worked in the Korean Demilitarized Zone as Chief of Office of the Swiss Delegation to the Neutral Nations Supervisory Commission. His most recent books are Divided Korea: Toward a Culture of Reconciliation (University of Minnesota Press 2005/2008), Aesthetics and World Politics (Palgrave 2009/2012) and, as editor, Visual Global Politics (Routledge 2018).
Joanna Bourke is Professor of History at Birkbeck, University of London. She has published books in British, Irish, and American, as well as global history. Her research interests include violence, modern warfare, gender and ‘the body’, the history of psychological thought, the emotions, sexual violence, and the human/animal divide. Her most recent book is Disgrace: Global Reflections on Sexual Violence (Reaktion Book, 2023). Her books have been translated into Chinese, Italian, Portuguese, Spanish, Catalan, Russian, Greek, Finnish and Turkish. An Intimate History of Killing: Face-to-Face Killing in Twentieth Century Warfare (Granta 1999) won the Fraenkel Prize in Contemporary History for 1998 and the Wolfson History Prize for 2000.
Matt Davies is Reader in International Political Economy in the School of Geography, Politics and Sociology at Newcastle University and at the International Relations Institute of the Pontifícia Universidade Católica do Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. He has also held positions in the Political Science Department, of Pennsylvania State University–Erie, York University (Toronto) and Wabash College, Crawfordsville, Indiana. He teaches on international political economy, the politics of culture and the politics of Latin America, and he is on the editorial board for Third World Quarterly. His books include Poverty and the Production of World Politics: Unprotected Workers in the Global Political Economy (with Magnus Ryner, Palgrave Macmillan 2006) and International Political Economy and Mass Communication in Chile: National Intellectuals and Transnational Hegemony (Palgrave Macmillan 1999).
Carl Death is Senior Lecturer in International Political Economy at The University of Manchester. His books include The Green State in Africa (Yale University Press 2016), Global Justice: The Basics with Huw L. Williams (Routledge 2017), the edited collection Critical Environmental Politics (Routledge 2014) and Governing Sustainable Development: Partnerships, Protests and Power at the World Summit (Routledge 2010). His research is located at the intersection of African politics and development (particularly post-apartheid South Africa), environmental politics and sustainable development discourse, and Foucauldian theory.
Jenny Edkins is Honorary Professor in the Politics department at The University of Manchester. She taught previously at Aberystwyth University and the Open University. Her most recent books are two co-edited volumes with contributions from practitioners, poets and artists as well as academics: When this is over: Reflections on an unequal pandemic (2023) and After Grenfell: Violence, resistance and response (2019). She has published six monographs including Change and the Politics of Certainty (2019), Face Politics (2015), Missing: Persons and Politics (2011), Trauma and the Memory of Politics (2003) and Whose Hunger? Concepts of Famine, Practices of Aid (2000). Her focus, aside from her own research and writing, is on collaborative ventures that make space for innovative approaches and bring together those engaged in developing them, including the Gregynog Ideas Lab and the Journal of Narrative Politics.
Stefanie Fishel is Senior Lecturer at the University of the Sunshine Coast in Queensland, Australia. Her book, The Microbial State: Global Thriving and the Body Politic, explored how the metaphorical power of microbial sociability could help to shape global politics for the better. Her research brings political theory, science, and the humanities into conversation about how humans understand and interact with the natural world. She takes this passion and teaches undergraduates how to care and fight for a more just world for all species in classes on environmental politics, activism, and law.
Thomas Gregory is Senior Lecturer in Politics and International Relations at the University of Auckland/Waipapa Taumata Rau in Aotearoa New Zealand. Tom is the author of Weaponizing Civilian Protection: Counterinsurgency and Collateral Damage (Oxford University Press, 2025) and he co-edited Emotions, Politics and War with Linda Åhäll (Routledge, 2017). His research continues to focus on civilian casualties in contemporary conflict, with a particular focus on how civilian harm is rendered (in)visible in debates about war. In 2016, Tom was awarded the Early Career Excellence in Teaching Award by the University of Auckland.
Naeem Inayatullah is Professor Emeritus of Politics at Ithaca College. His work locates the Third World in the global political economy. He is the author of Pedagogy as Encounter (2022). With David Blaney, he is the co-author of Within, Against, and Beyond Liberalism (2021), Savage Economics (2010), and International Relations and the Problem of Difference (2004). He is editor of Autobiographical International Relations (2011), and co-editor of Narrative Global Politics (2016), Interrogating Imperialism (2006) and The Global Economy as Political Space (1994). He serves as an associate editor for the Journal of Narrative Politics.
Sankaran Krishna is Professor in the Department of Political Science at the University of Hawai’i in Manoa and his work so far has centred on nationalism, ethnic identity and conflict, postcolonial studies, and critical approaches to international relations. He teaches courses on critical comparative politics and international relations; the material economies of globalisation; and race and racial inequality. He is author of Globalization and Postcolonialism: Hegemony and Resistance in the Twenty-First Century (Rowman and Littlefield 2009) and Postcolonial Insecurities: India, Sri Lanka and the Question of Nationhood (University of Minnesota Press 1999). In recent years, he has published essays on contemporary Indian and US politics, and on the sport of cricket, in popular online and print media.
Debbie Lisle is a Professor of International Relations in the School of History, Anthropology, Philosophy and Politics at Queen’s University Belfast. She is the author of The Global Politics of Contemporary Travel Writing (2006) and Holidays in the Danger Zone: Entanglements of War and Tourism (2016). Her research and teaching expose how accepted ‘truths’ about global politics are actually strange amalgamations of cultural norms, technologies of representation, material infrastructures and logics of power. She looks for global politics where we least expect it (e.g. contemporary art, graffiti, museums, tourism campaigns and everyday life) and her current work examines what happens when the architects of global governance try and turn failure (e.g. endless conflict, increasing migration, catastrophic climate change) into a productive ‘learning experience’.
Peter Mandaville is Professor of International Affairs in the Schar School of Policy and Government at George Mason University and Senior Advisor for Religion and Inclusive Societies at the United States Institute of Peace in Washington DC. He is the author of Islam and Politics (Routledge, 3rd edn 2020) and Transnational Muslim Politics: Reimagining the Umma (Routledge 2001), as well as editor or co-editor of the volumes The Geopolitics of Religious Soft Power (2023) and Wahhabism and the World (2021), both with Oxford University Press, as well as Politics from Afar: Transnational Diasporas and Networks (Columbia University Press 2012). Much of his recent work has focused on the comparative study of religious authority and social movements in the Muslim world. He has also served in government as a member of the US Secretary of State’s Policy Planning Staff (2011–12) and as Senior Advisor in the US State Department’s Office of Religion and Global Affairs (2015–16).
Kate Manzo is Senior Lecturer in International Development in the School of Geography, Politics and Sociology at the University of Newcastle. She is author of Domination, Resistance and Social Change in South Africa: The Local Effects of Global Power (Praeger 1992) and Creating Boundaries: The Politics of Race and Nation (Lynne Rienner 1996). Her current research interests include Africa in the politics of development, images of Africa in western media and the iconography of climate change.
Mustapha Kamal Pasha is Professor in the Department of International Politics at Aberystwyth University. He specialises in International Relations theory, Political Economy, Human Security and Contemporary Islam. Professor Pasha is the author/editor of several books, including recent articles in International Politics; Critical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy; Global Society; Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science; Journal of Developing Societies; Alternatives; and Millennium: Journal of International Studies. He also serves on the editorial boards of Globalizations, International Political Sociology, Critical Asian Studies, Asian Ethnicity and Critical Studies on Security. His most recent book is Islam and International Relations: Fractured Worlds (Routledge 2017).
Brieg Powel is Senior Lecturer in International Relations and part of the Centre of Advanced International Studies at the University of Exeter. He specialises in global historical sociology and historical global politics, with a particular interest in the deeper human past and relationsim. His articles have been published in journals including International Studies Review, Review of International Studies, International Relations, Globalizations, the Journal of Historical Sociology, and Democratization. He is also the co-author of Europe and Tunisia: Democratisation via Association (Routledge, 2010).
Giorgio Shani is Professor of Politics and International Relations at International Christian University (Japan) and was recently Visiting Professor in the Department of International Relations at the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE). He is the author of Sikh Nationalism and Identity in a Global Age (Routledge 2007), Religion, Identity and Human Security (Routledge 2014) and co-author of Sikh Nationalism (Cambridge University Press, 2021). A former President of the Asia-Pacific region of the International Studies Association (ISA), he is currently Chair of RC43 Religion and Politics of the International Political Science Association (IPSA). His main research interests focus on nationalism, religion, human security and ‘post-western’ International Relations theory.
Michael J. Shapiro is Professor of Political Science at the University of Hawai’i, Manoa. The author of numerous books, those published in this millennium include: For Moral Ambiguity: National Culture and the Politics of the Family (University of Minnesota Press 2001), Methods and Nations: Cultural Governance and the Indigenous Subject (Routledge 2004), Deforming American Political Thought: Ethnicity, Facticity, and Genre (University Press of Kentucky 2006), Cinematic Geopolitics (Routledge 2009), The Time of the City: Politics, Philosophy and Genre (Routledge 2010), The New Violent Cartography, co-edited with Sam Opondo (Routledge 2012), Studies in Trans-Disciplinary Method: After the Aesthetic Turn (Routledge 2012), War Crimes, Atrocity, and Justice and Politics and Time: Documenting the Event (Polity 2015/2016), Deforming American Political Thought: Challenging the Jeffersonian Legacy 2nd edition (Routledge 2016), The Political Sublime (Duke University Press 2018), Aesthetics of Equality (Oxford University Press, 2023), Writing Politics: Studies in Compositional Method (Routledge, 2021) and Thinking Outside the Canon: Political Theory as Textual Odyssey (Oxford University Press, 2025).
Somdeep Sen is Associate Professor at the Department of Social Sciences and Business at Roskilde University in Denmark. He is the author of Decolonizing Palestine: Hamas between the anticolonial and the postcolonial (Cornell University Press 2020), which was published in Italian by Meltemi Editore in 2023. He is also the co-author of The Palestinian Authority in the West Bank: the theatrics of woeful statecraft (Routledge 2019) as well as the co-editor of Detours: A Decolonial Guide to Palestine (Duke University Press, forthcoming), Globalizing collateral language: from 9/11 to endless war (University of Georgia Press 2021) and Syrian refugee children in the Middle East and Europe: integrating the young and exiled (Routledge 2018). He currently serves as an editor of Critical Studies on Security. Alongside scholarly outlets, his writings have appearedin The Washington Post, Al Jazeera English, Foreign Policy, The Huffington Post, Jacobin and The London Review of Books.
David Shim is Senior Lecturer at the Department of International Relations and International Organization of the University of Groningen and visiting researcher at the Chair of International Politics and Conflict Studies of the Bundeswehr University Munich. David is interested in the visual and spatial dimension of global politics and works at the intersection of International Relations, Geography and Area Studies. His work on different visual media, among others comics, memorials, photography, satellite imagery, has contributed to the study of visual politics. He has translated some of his research activities into teaching practice on his blog Visual Global Politics. His work appeared in International Political Sociology, Geoforum, International Relations for the Asia-Pacific and Review of International Studies. His book Visual Politics and North Korea is published by Routledge.
Maria Tanyag is a Senior Lecturer in International Relations at the Coral Bell School of Asia Pacific Affairs, Australian National University. She is the author of The Global Politics of Sexual and Reproductive Health (Oxford 2024). From 2022-2023, she served as program co-chair for the Feminist Theory and Gender Studies section of the International Studies Association. Maria is a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy.
Lucy Taylor teaches and researches at the Department of International Politics, Aberystwyth University. She works on Latin American politics – especially Argentina. She is currently exploring settler colonialism in Latin America, focusing on the nineteenth-century colony of the Welsh in Patagonia (she speaks Spanish and Welsh). She examines this ‘marginal’ case from a global perspective and injects decolonial critiques which emphasise the importance of unequal power relations, both in Patagonia and in Wales. She has just completed her book Global Politics of Welsh Patagonia which is published by Wales University Press.
Annick T. R. Wibben is Anna-Lindh Professor for Gender, Peace & Security and Academic Head of the War Studies Department at the Swedish Defence University. She teaches on peace and war and specialises in critical security and military studies as well as feminist international relations. She is the author of several articles and books on Feminist Security Studies: A Narrative Approach (Routledge 2011), Researching War: Feminist Methods, Ethics and Politics (Routledge 2016) and Teaching Peace and War: Pedagogy and Curricula (Routledge 2020, edited with Amanda Donahoe). She is currently working on a textbook on wars, militaries and gender to be used in professional military education as well as an edited volume that rethinks Feminist Security Studies. She continues to be interested in the changing roles of women in (state) militaries as well as in the revitalization of feminist approaches to peace studies.
Maja Zehfuss is Professor of International Politics at the University of Copenhagen. She is the author of Constructivism in International Relations: The Politics of Reality (Cambridge University Press 2002), Wounds of Memory: Politics of War in Germany (Cambridge University Press 2007) and War and the Politics of Ethics (Oxford University Press 2018). Her current work examines the politics of making migrants. She is a member of the National Academy of Teaching (UK).