Query Result Set
Skip Navigation Links
SLIM21 Home
Advanced Search
My Info
Browse
Arrivals
Expected
Reference Items
Journal List
Proposals
Media List
Rules
   ActiveUsers:96Hits:17111481Skip Navigation Links
Show My Basket
Contact Us
IDSA Web Site
Ask Us
Today's News
HelpExpand Help
Advanced search

  Hide Options
Sort Order Items / Page
STEELE, BRENT J (17) answer(s).
 
SrlItem
1
ID:   108517


Alternative accountability after the naughts / Steele, Brent J   Journal Article
Steele, Brent J Journal Article
0 Rating(s) & 0 Review(s)
Publication 2011.
Summary/Abstract The article posits that in global politics, and in the scholarly subfield of international ethics, we should begin moving away from intentions and intentionality when considering accountability. Intentionality is problematic in at least three respects - analytically it is hard to determine; normatively it is difficult because we must invest our trust in authority; and it comes coupled with the problematic relationship between means and ends. This article explores these issues through three sections. First, it engages some of the purposes but also overall problems with 'intentions' in world politics (and especially the debate as it has progressed in the field of international ethics). The second section reviews recent theses on accountability, before moving towards an alternative aspect of accountability which already exists in world politics, termed in this article 'the accountability of the scar'. This last form of accountability refers to the physical damage produced by violence, with reference to three domains - the anthrobiological, the architectural, and the agentic sphere. Two examples of the scar come to us from the different context of the Emmett Till case of 1955 and the more fluid, and recent case of Iranian protestor Neda Agha-Soltan.
        Export Export
2
ID:   129835


Competence and Just War / Amoureux, Jack L; Steele, Brent J   Journal Article
Steele, Brent J Journal Article
0 Rating(s) & 0 Review(s)
Publication 2014.
Summary/Abstract This article argues that the Just War tradition would do well to consider the importance of competence - and that doing so would invigorate debates about the use of organized violence. The article defends this argument through several moves. First, inspired by Aristotle's thoughts on phronesis and chance, we view competence as a practice among those who, as a matter of course, engage in practical reasoning that takes into account the contingency of political action. Second, following from Arendt, competence can be considered that which foregrounds means over ends. Third, because competence is a continuous and more vigilant consideration of justice within war, it extends through both jus ad bellum and jus in bello principles, including the 'proper authority' and 'reasonable chance for success' conditions of the former, and the 'double effect' doctrine discussed in the latter. The article concludes by acknowledging the challenges presented by an overemphasis on competence, before ultimately restating its purchase for Just War debates in the twenty-first century.
        Export Export
3
ID:   165332


Critical Security History: (De)securitisation, ontological security, and insecure memories / Donnelly, Faye; Steele, Brent J   Journal Article
Steele, Brent J Journal Article
0 Rating(s) & 0 Review(s)
Summary/Abstract This article makes a case for incorporating the concept of ‘Critical Security History’ (CSH) into security studies. While history plays a powerful role in a cornucopia of security stories, we contend that it often goes unnoticed in scholarly research and teaching. Against this backdrop, we present a detailed guide to study how history is told and enacted in non-linear ways. To do this, the article outlines how CSH can contribute to securitisation and ontological security studies. As shown, this lens casts a new light on the legacies of (de)securitisation processes and how they are commemorated. It also illustrates that ontological security studies have only begun to call into question the concept of historicity. Working through these observations, the article marshals insights from Halvard Leira's notion of ‘engaged historical amateurism’ to entice scholars interested in ‘doing’ CSH. While acknowledging that this research agenda is hard to achieve, our study of the 2012 Sarajevo Red Line project helps to illustrate the added value of trying to ‘do’ CSH in theory and in practice. We end with some reflections for future research and continued conversations.
        Export Export
4
ID:   188927


From subjects to objects: honor flights and US ontological insecurity / Steele, Brent J   Journal Article
Steele, Brent J Journal Article
0 Rating(s) & 0 Review(s)
Summary/Abstract Following the 2004 establishment of the World War II memorial in Washington DC, itself a product of the collective re-commemoration of the so-called ‘Greatest Generation’ of WWII veterans in the US, nonprofit organizations began the practice of ‘Honor flights’. These flights transported US veterans of the Second World War to Washington DC to visit that memorial and other commemorative sites, meet with Congressional members, and return to their local airports to great fanfare and celebration. The practice has evolved to incorporate Korean War and now Vietnam War veterans. As honor flights include much more than the veterans themselves, and as it has become an affectively charged festival for local communities to ‘honor’ their veterans during periods of unresolved wartimes, I articulate the Honor Flight as a treatment for – but also a symptom of – US ontological insecurity in the 21st Century. Honor flights are celebratory, judgmental, and political micro-practices that reflect and reproduce US militarism in ways that will likely outlast the wartimes of the 21st century United States. Along with other micro-practices of US ontological (in)security, Honor Flights threaten to destabilize the politics of military intervention hereafter, and encourage the extension of or inauguration of new times of war.
        Export Export
5
ID:   082747


Ideals that were really never in our possession': torture, honor and US identity / Steele, Brent J   Journal Article
Steele, Brent J Journal Article
0 Rating(s) & 0 Review(s)
Publication 2008.
Summary/Abstract This article addresses how the recent US treatment of suspects detained in its War on Terror relates to the issues of US self-identity and US honor. Both the abuse of these individuals, and the shock which such abuse engenders (when revealed to the US public), are manifested by punishment drives that reinforce a nation's sense of internal honor, which is constructed and connected to a nation's self-identity. While professing commitments to human rights, on the one hand, and interrogation and torture, on the other, are contradictory practices - they are similar in the sense that both are forms of discipline which uphold internally constituted ontological visions of the US Self. Drawing upon a Foucauldian view of ethics, `the relation to oneself', the article avers that precisely because these disciplinary mechanisms are driven by self-identity and protecting the `honor' of the US nation-state, domestic and international actors can use two tactics - `reflexive discourse' and self-interrogative imaging - to stimulate US agents to reform such practices in the future
Key Words Ethics  Shame  Aesthetics  Ontological Security  Foucault  Abu Ghraib 
Self-Identity  US Identity 
        Export Export
6
ID:   077676


Liberal-Idealism: a constructivist critique / Steele, Brent J   Journal Article
Steele, Brent J Journal Article
0 Rating(s) & 0 Review(s)
Publication 2007.
Summary/Abstract Recently, scholars have connected US constructivism to liberal-idealism. International relations theorists have branded US constructivists as "liberal theorists" for three notable reasons: (1) realists apply an "idealist" tag on constructivism so that it can efficiently be dismissed as a form of theoretical naïvete, (2) rational choice empiricists are motivated with amending constructivist assumptions to make them viable for quantitative analysis; and (3) certain constructivist scholars have attempted to build bridges with rationalist scholarship, especially on epistemological terms, and this "bridge-building" has opened a door for a liberal-constructivist synergy. This essay demonstrates how constructivism can, and must, be distinguished from liberalism. It uses the recent Iraq War to illustrate three constructivist critiques of an important liberal theory: democratic peace "theory." The three critiques are (1) ontological-liberal democratic peace researchers' focus on events leads to an incomplete understanding of processes, structures, and agency; (2) epistemological-unlike constructivism, liberal democratic peace research fails to acknowledge the contamination of subject and object or that state agents use theory to inform their actions; thus the traditionally positivist emphasis on outcomes instead of processes makes for faulty conclusions; and (3) normative-liberalism's radical celebration of the individual desocializes states thereby inhibiting, in structurationist terms, the reflexive monitoring of actions. The essay concludes with some general theoretical statements about democratic peace's future as a paradigm for research.
        Export Export
7
ID:   079952


Making words matter: the Asian Tsunami, Darfur, and "Reflexive Discourse" in international politics / Steele, Brent J   Journal Article
Steele, Brent J Journal Article
0 Rating(s) & 0 Review(s)
Publication 2007.
Summary/Abstract Prominent communicative approaches to humanitarian crisis assume that international action is constrained by definitional disagreement. Yet interpretive agreement is not always enough to stimulate states into acting. Reflexive discourse is an alternative form of communicative action, and it occurs when international actors (state, nonstate, or suprastate) generate insecurity in powerful states, and stimulate these states into actions that they might initially be reluctant to pursue. By calling out the discrepancy between a targeted state's actions and its biographical narrative, reflexive discourse challenges a targeted state's self-identity and thus illuminates the interest such a state has in confronting certain crises. I use the American response to the recent Asian Tsunami, reviewing how then U.N. Undersecretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs Jan Egeland inadvertently used reflexive discourse by suggesting that Western nations were being "stingy" with their initial aid offers. This (in part) prompted the United States, albeit with much indignation, to increase by twenty times its aid to the affected areas. I then posit how a reflexive discourse strategy might have been used to persuade the United States into acting to confront the genocide in Darfur
        Export Export
8
ID:   162760


Moral injury in international relations / Subotic, Jelena ; Steele, Brent J   Journal Article
Steele, Brent J Journal Article
0 Rating(s) & 0 Review(s)
Summary/Abstract The war in Iraq unleashed disastrous global instability—from the strengthening of Al-Qaeda, to the creation of ISIS, and civil war in Syria accompanied by a massive exodus of refugees. The war in Afghanistan is continuing in perpetuity, with no clear goals or objectives other than the United States’ commitment to its sunk cost. The so-called war on terror is a vague catch-all phrase for a military campaign against moving targets and goalposts, with no end date and no conceivable way to declare victory. The toll of these wars on civilians in Iraq and Afghanistan and elsewhere in the Middle East, on US troops, and on the US economy is staggering. But these ambiguous campaigns are also fundamentally changing US state identity—its view of itself, its role in the world, and its commitment to a liberal international order. They are producing profound anxiety in the US body politic and anxiety in US relationships with other international actors. To understand the sources and consequences of this anxiety, we adopt an ontological security perspective on state identity. We enrich ontological security scholarship by introducing the concept of moral injury and its three main consequences: loss of control, ethical anxiety, and relational harm. We demonstrate how the concept of moral injury illuminates some of the most central anxieties at the core of US identity, offering a new understanding of our global moment of crisis.
        Export Export
9
ID:   094555


Of 'witch's brews' and scholarly communities: the dangers and promise of academic parrhesia / Steele, Brent J   Journal Article
Steele, Brent J Journal Article
0 Rating(s) & 0 Review(s)
Publication 2010.
Summary/Abstract In a series of lectures in the early 1980s, Michel Foucault resurrected the Greek word for frankness or truth-telling-'parrhesia'-to investigate the inter-relationships and tensions that existed between freedom, truth-telling and political power. He concluded that in order for one to 'tell the truth' against a powerful superior, one needs the courage to oppose a community of which the parrhesiastes ('truth teller') is a member. This paper uses parrhesia to investigate the practice of the international relations (IR) scholar in speaking out against his or her scholarly community. Tony Smith's 2007 book Pact with the devil is used as an example of academic-intellectual parrhesia not only to illustrate the content of a potential form of parrhesia, but to demonstrate the challenges IR scholars who wish to practise academic parrhesia face in criticizing members of their academic community. Smith's critique of democratic peace theory specifically, and liberal IR theory more generally, is particularly noteworthy considering Smith's former position as a leading liberal proponent. The paper reviews, and then supplements and extends, Smith's critique of democratic peace theory.
Key Words Academic  Brews  Sociological Vectors 
        Export Export
10
ID:   167595


Ontological insecurities and the politics of contemporary populism / Steele, Brent J   Journal Article
Steele, Brent J Journal Article
0 Rating(s) & 0 Review(s)
        Export Export
11
ID:   064525


Ontological security and the power of self-identity: British neutrality and the American civil war / Steele, Brent J Jul 2005  Journal Article
Steele, Brent J Journal Article
0 Rating(s) & 0 Review(s)
Publication Jul 2005.
        Export Export
12
ID:   081016


Ontological security in international relations: self-identity and the IR state / Steele, Brent J 2008  Book
Steele, Brent J Book
0 Rating(s) & 0 Review(s)
Publication London, Routledge, 2008.
Description xiv, 214p.
Series The new international relations
Standard Number 9780415772761
        Export Export
Copies: C:1/I:0,R:0,Q:0
Circulation
Accession#Call#Current LocationStatusPolicyLocation
053166327.101/STE 053166MainOn ShelfGeneral 
13
ID:   151180


Organizational processes and ontological (in)security: torture, the CIA and the United States / Steele, Brent J   Journal Article
Steele, Brent J Journal Article
0 Rating(s) & 0 Review(s)
Summary/Abstract This paper builds upon previous work that has sought to use ontological security to understand problematic and violent state practices, and how they relate to the securitizing of identity. Yet like much (although not all) work which has utilized it in International Relations theory, the application of ontological security theory (OST) to state ‘drives’ has provided only a superficial unpacking of ‘the state’. Further, while OST scholars have examined environmental or background conditions of ‘late modernity’, and how these conditions facilitate anxiety and uncertainty for agents, the content of such factors can be further explicated by placing OST in conversation with one particular systemic account. Alongside ‘the state’ and ‘late modernity’, the paper therefore explores several complementary sites shaping the ontological security seeking process of, within and around states. The paper reads the 2000s re-embrace of torture by the United States by examining ontological security alongside: (1) the structural level via Laura Sjoberg’s ‘gender–hierarchical’ argument; (2) the routinized organizational processes (via Graham Allison) of the US intelligence community and specifically the Central Intelligence Agency; and (3) the narrated interplay between public opinion and elite discourses.
        Export Export
14
ID:   152108


Recognising, and realising, the promise of the aesthetic turn / Steele, Brent J   Journal Article
Steele, Brent J Journal Article
0 Rating(s) & 0 Review(s)
Summary/Abstract Roland Bleiker’s iconic and courageous mapping of the aesthetic turn in international political theory called attention to one very basic but up until then unstated maxim: that the ‘inevitable difference between the represented and its representation is the very location of politics’.1 Exactly. Thanks to this insight, the aesthetic turn revealed a kind of vulnerability of states – and of great powers in particular – that had not previously been seen. This ‘aesthetic vulnerability’ brought to light states’ concern with their own representation and self-representation, with the way they ‘look’ in their own eyes and in the eyes of others. This soft underbelly of power politics acquired particular urgency after 9/11, as the hyper-visuality of the event – and its violent aftermath – so evidently pointed at that ‘representational gap’. The ‘aesthetic vulnerability’ of the United States called attention to its representational practices and, simultaneously, opened political spaces to challenge its policies. However, as the never-ending ‘War on Terror’ mutates into ‘global Trumpism’, the limits of this near-exclusive focus on the United States and the West are becoming more evident, demanding consultation of new perspectives and new terrains for ‘aesthetic’ engagements in, and of, critical IR.
Key Words Security  Power  Micropolitics  Aesthetics 
        Export Export
15
ID:   166895


Review of everyday International Relations Cooperation and Conflict special issue / Steele, Brent J   Journal Article
Steele, Brent J Journal Article
0 Rating(s) & 0 Review(s)
Summary/Abstract The following include reviews of the special issue contributions, and in some cases reviews of the resubmissions.
        Export Export
16
ID:   167601


Welcome home! Routines, ontological insecurity and the politics of US military reunion videos / Steele, Brent J   Journal Article
Steele, Brent J Journal Article
0 Rating(s) & 0 Review(s)
Summary/Abstract This article investigates the military ‘reunion’ videos that proliferated in the United States throughout the late 2000s and early 2010s. The typical video entails a returning soldier who surprises a family member, usually a child or female spouse, at a public event. I articulate the reunion video as a key feature of populism in contemporary US society. The videos can be considered examples of the ‘encounters’ theorized by both Anthony Giddens and Erving Goffman. Both private and public ‘social occasions’ with performative qualities of ‘day-to-day life’, the videos disclose the institutional and societal routines of not only a family but broader layers and circles of the US political community. They relate not only to loss but also to redemption. The article therefore investigates when and how, and provides a provisional argument for why, these videos have proliferated by consulting the everyday features of ontological security. It focuses on both the local and the international contexts within which they attend to, but also generate, US ontological insecurity.
        Export Export
17
ID:   177256


When Good Enough is Good Enough: Department Chairing During Covid-19 / Steele, Brent J   Journal Article
Steele, Brent J Journal Article
0 Rating(s) & 0 Review(s)
        Export Export