World politics is full of dramatic events: wars, financial crises, terrorist attacks, peace talks, revolutions, popular campaigns for human rights etc. International Relations (IR) theory helps us explain and understand those events by equipping us with the appropriate conceptual tools to use in placing these events into context. This course explores the interplay between culture, norms, identity and power in contemporary world politics by focusing on concepts such as race, religion, difference, and representation which have emerged as objects of major political and theoretical contestation. The course underlines that international politics, in addition to state level interactions, is also enacted and performed through our everyday identities and cultural contexts. The course will enable the students to look at the twoway relationship between culture, norms and identity and international politics − both shaping and structuring the other.
ananya.sharma@ashoka.edu.in