This book argues that not only has the present international relations (IR) paradigm failed to preserve global peace in our time, it has also proved to be an obstacle in this regard, and for this reason a paradigm shift is urgently required. With a view to demonstrating the IR paradigm’s failure to secure global peace, moreover, a Foucauldian-inspired discourse analysis is used here to flesh out an archaeology of what I call knowledge relations within IR studies.
This analysis reveals that within IR’s paradigmatic corridors of knowledge the theoretical/analytical category of war has been privileged, i.e., elevated to the level of chief subject and object of analysis vis-à-vis peace. In order to show how this is the case, moreover, this book examines the paradigm’s mainstream debates, e.g., those on human nature, power, and the state of nature, and by implication state sovereignty and nationalism, in addition to its authoritative subfields, in particular peace studies, international relations theory, global governance, and security studies. Each of these works reproduces, indeed glorifies, war to the exclusion of a lasting global peace, and in large part by promoting certain knowledges that are racial, colonial, gendered, and consequently bellicose.
All this connotes that the IR paradigm is grounded in a regime of knowledge that tells us everything about the dynamics of war and nothing substantive about realizing peace—hence the pressing need for a paradigm shift. Put differently, under the auspices of IR studies, contemplating peace is fruitless, a mere scholarly mirage, and precisely because achieving it under this paradigmatic status quo is not, and will never be, a condition of possibility. If anything, this book demonstrates that we have not even begun to speak truth to knowledge in the cause of global peace.
Table of Contents:
Chapter 1- A Brief Account of a Kuhnian Paradigm and Paradigm Shift.- Chapter 2- Why a Foucauldian-Inspired Discursive Approach to IR studies?.- Chapter 3 - The Present IR Paradigm: Genesis and Foundational Assumptions.- Chapter 4-Theory-as-Discourse: Neorealism and Neoliberalism as IR Paradigm Maintainer Theories.- Chapter 5- The IR Paradigm: Human Nature, the State of Nature and the Discourse on State Sovereignty.- Chapter 6- The Current IR Paradigm and Dominant Discourses: International Policies and Global Practices.- Conclusion-The Case for a Paradigm Shift in IR: Knowledge Surveillance, Knowledge Fundamentalism and the Present IR Paradigm’s Disciplinary Gaze.
About the Author :
Navid Pourmokhtari is Assistant Professor of Governance, Law, and Management at Athabasca University. His teaching and research interests lie in gender and global governance, social movements and revolutions, and international peace and security. Pourmokhtari is also the author of Iran's Green Movement: Everyday Resistance, Political Contestation, and Social Mobilization. His other publications have appeared in Third World Quarterly, International Sociology, Against the Current, Jadaliyya, the Journal of Human Trafficking, Sociology of Islam, Legal Pluralism and Critical Social Analysis, Foucault Studies, and the Journal of International Women's Studies.
Centre for Social Sciences, Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, Athabasca University, Athabasca, Canada Navid Pourmokhtari
Review :
"In his book, Navid Pourmokhtari offers a nuanced analysis of IR supporting this very hypothesis. This is an ambitious and valuable goal. ... 'Rather than continue to hold on to outworn concepts and unworkable assumptions, leaders, together with the peoples of the world, must arise, and with resolute will, consult together in search of appropriate solutions.' Pourmokhtari's monograph is an important contribution to this effort. It documents the unworkable assumptions of IR that humanity must urgently reconsider, making the case for both the avid layperson and the scholar in the field that the time for a paradigm shift has come." (Alex Douglas, The Journal of Bahá'í Studies, Vol. 35 (4), 2025)
