Richard K. Ashley | |
|---|---|
| Known for | Postmodernist international relations |
| Title | Associate professor |
| Awards | Karl Deutsch Award (1985) |
| Academic background | |
| Education | PhD |
| Alma mater | MIT |
| Thesis | Growth, Rivalry, and Balance (1976) |
| Doctoral advisor | Nazli Choucri |
| Influences | Alker, Derrida, Foucault, Habermas, Spivak |
| Academic work | |
| Discipline | International relations |
| Institutions | School of Politics and Global Studies,Arizona State |
| Main interests | International relations theory |
| Notable works |
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| Website | pgs |
Richard K. Ashley is a postmodernist scholar of International relations. He is an associate professor at the Arizona State University's School of Politics and Global Studies.
Ashley studied at the University of California, Santa Barbara and at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). He was research assistant to Hayward Alker. Initially, Ashley's research was on the balance of power in international relations, particularly in his The Political Economy of War and Peace (1980). He soon began to shift his approach to metatheoretical questions and Critical Theory. By the mid-1980s, Ashley had adopted a postmodernist and subversive approach to international relations theory, exemplified by his influences: Jacques Derrida, Michel Foucault, and Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak.
Ashley was one of the first to challenge the position of mainstream realism and liberalism. In "The Poverty of Neorealism" (1984), he coined the term "neorealism" to describe the work of Kenneth Waltz.
Ashley received his Bachelor of Arts degree from University of California, Santa Barbara in 1970, [1] after which he entered graduate school in Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) studying political science. [2] He received his Doctorate of Philosophy from MIT in 1977, [3] with a dissertation titled Growth, Rivalry, and Balance: The Sino-Soviet-American Triangle of Conflict (1976), [4] supervised by Nazli Choucri. [5]
Ashley studied under Hayward Alker and served as his research assistant. This relationship influenced Ashley's approach to international relations. [6] Other influences include Jacques Derrida, Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, Foucauldian discourse analysis, [7] and Jürgen Habermas. [8] For some time in the 1970s, Ashley was assistant professor of international relations at the University of Southern California. [4]
Early in his career, with The Political Economy of War and Peace (1980), Ashley focused on conventional analysis of balance of power. He soon began to focus on metatheoretical issues instead. [3] Before turning to postmodernist international relations, Ashley's early work moved to the direction of Critical Theory. [9] He became the first scholar to introduce the thought of Habermas to international relations. [10] All Ashley's major writings from this phase of the first half of the 1980s can be characterized as a critique of technical rationality in the study of international relations and advocacy of emancipatory ways of knowing. This approach is evident in his debates concerning Habermas with John H. Herz. Since the mid-1980s, his critique has become a self-confessed subversive dissidence of the discipline. [11] Ashley has since distanced himself from his early work, considering it too ideological in its epistemology. [12]
Ashley become one of the first to challenge the predominance of mainstream realism and liberalism in the 1980s. [13]
Ashley retired in 2018. Prior he taught at Arizona State University's Department of Political Science (now School of Politics and Global Studies) since 1981, [3] as an associate professor. [14]
Some of Ashley's influential work includes "The Poverty of Neorealism" (1984) where he coined the term "neorealism" to describe the work of Kenneth Waltz and others. [15] Indeed, Ashley's critique of microeconomic analogies employed by neorealists made him a key figure in the inter-paradigm debate in international relations theory. [11] "Untying the Sovereign State: A Double Reading of the Anarchy Problematique" (1988) [16] is a Derridan double reading of the concept of international anarchy in traditional international relations literature. [17] "Living on Border Lines: Man, Poststructuralism, and War" (1989) is influential, too. [18] In 1989, he contributed to the seminal volume International/Intertextual Relations edited by fellow postmodernists James Der Derian and Michael J. Shapiro. [7] In addition, Ashley has contributed many academic articles to journals such as International Organization , Millennium , Alternatives , and International Studies Quarterly . [14] Ashley is an editor of International Studies Quarterly. [19]
According to Darryl S. L. Jarvis, "the undiminished allure of postmodernism [in international relations theory ] is plainly attributable to ... Richard Ashley, and to a lesser extent, [ R. B. J. ] Walker", [20] with whom Ashley has also written. [21] [22]
He received the Karl Deutsch Award of the International Studies Association in 1985. [3]
Post-structuralism is a term for philosophical and literary forms of theory that both build upon and reject ideas established by structuralism, the intellectual project that preceded it. Although post-structuralists all present different critiques of structuralism, common themes among them include the rejection of the self-sufficiency of structuralism, as well as an interrogation of the binary oppositions that constitute its structures. Accordingly, post-structuralism discards the idea of interpreting media within pre-established, socially constructed structures.
Neorealism or structural realism is a theory of international relations that emphasizes the role of power politics in international relations, sees competition and conflict as enduring features and sees limited potential for cooperation. The anarchic state of the international system means that states cannot be certain of other states' intentions and their security, thus prompting them to engage in power politics.
International relations theory is the study of international relations (IR) from a theoretical perspective. It seeks to explain behaviors and outcomes in international politics. The four most prominent schools of thought are realism, liberalism, constructivism, and rational choice. Whereas realism and liberalism make broad and specific predictions about international relations, constructivism and rational choice are methodological approaches that focus on certain types of social explanation for phenomena.
A military alliance is a formal agreement between nations concerning national security. Nations in a military alliance agree to active participation and contribution to the defense of others in the alliance in the event of a crisis. In the event a nation is attacked, members of the alliance are often obligated to come to their defense regardless if attacked directly. In the aftermath of the Second World War military alliances usually behave less aggressively and act more as a deterrent.
International political economy (IPE) is the study of how politics shapes the global economy and how the global economy shapes politics. A key focus in IPE is on the distributive consequences of global economic exchange. It has been described as the study of "the political battle between the winners and losers of global economic exchange."
Kenneth Neal Waltz was an American political scientist who was a member of the faculty at both the University of California, Berkeley and Columbia University and one of the most prominent scholars in the field of international relations. He was a veteran of both World War II and the Korean War.
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Critical international relations theory is a diverse set of schools of thought in international relations (IR) that have criticized the theoretical, meta-theoretical and/or political status quo, both in IR theory and in international politics more broadly – from positivist as well as postpositivist positions. Positivist critiques include Marxist and neo-Marxist approaches and certain ("conventional") strands of social constructivism. Postpositivist critiques include poststructuralist, postcolonial, "critical" constructivist, critical theory, neo-Gramscian, most feminist, and some English School approaches, as well as non-Weberian historical sociology, "international political sociology", "critical geopolitics", and the so-called "new materialism". All of these latter approaches differ from both realism and liberalism in their epistemological and ontological premises.
In epistemology, and more specifically, the sociology of knowledge, reflexivity refers to circular relationships between cause and effect, especially as embedded in human belief structures. A reflexive relationship is bidirectional with both the cause and the effect affecting one another in a relationship in which neither can be assigned as causes or effects.
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Robert Gilpin was an American political scientist. He was Professor of Politics and International Affairs at the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University where he held the Eisenhower professorship.
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James D. Fearon is the Theodore and Francis Geballe Professor of Political Science at Stanford University; he is known for his work on the theory of civil wars, international bargaining, war's inefficiency puzzle, audience costs, and ethnic constructivism. According to a 2011 survey of International Relations scholars, Fearon is among the most influential International Relations scholars of the last twenty years. His 1995 article "Rationalist Explanations for War" is the most assigned journal article in International Relations graduate training at U.S. universities.
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Security studies, also known as international security studies, is an academic sub-field within the wider discipline of international relations that studies organized violence, military conflict, national security, and international security.
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