Chapter 1: Introduction Flashcards
Political memories
What/Who:
- History serves as a resource for political memories
- Memories are extremely unreliable
- If you want to change a memory: you will have to institutionalize the
alternative understanding.
When: /
Why important IR / Significance: see ‘what/who’
Presentism
What/Who:
- Presentism is a way of historical analysis in which contemporary ideas and perspectives are anachronistically introduced into representations or interpretations of the past.
When: /
Why important IR / Significance:
- Historici believe that to truly understand the past, one must approach
it with the ideas and perspectives of the time in mind.
Eurocentrism
What/Who:
- Eurocentrism is the emphasizing - consciously or unconsciously - of European culture, and more generally of Western ideas and theories, without taking into account the influences of other cultures.
- In historiography, an example of Eurocentrism is the frequent appearance of books that claim to describe world history, when they only deal with the history of Europe. Other parts of the world are then discussed in them only from the moment they came into contact with Europe.
When: /
Why important IR / Significance:
- It is suggested that other cultures would be impervious to international
legal thought and the rules that result from it.
International system
What/Who:
- Units of the international system, an analysis that is concerned with the structure of the system, the interactions between its units, and the implications for peace and war, or cooperation and conflict, of the existence of different types of states.
- Basic unit: state, sovereign state
- Social practices: borders, flags, anthems
- Rules & norms: sovereign equality
- Implications: anarchy, security dilemma, violence
When: /
Why important IR / Significance:
- Standard story: it is a world of states without an umbrella state.
- ! Inadequate portrayal that generalizes too readily from European experience
