The International Politics of Fashion
This book seeks to address and fill a puzzling omission in contemporary critical international relations scholarship. Following on from the aesthetic turn in international relations, critical and postmodern international relations has produced an impressive array of studies into film, literature, music and art and the way that these media produce, mediate and represent international politics. By contrast, the proponents of the aesthetic turn have overlooked fashion as a source of knowledge about global politics.
Yet stories about the political role of fashion abound in the news media. Former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher used dress to define her political image, and more recently the fascination with US First Lady Michelle Obama, former French First Lady Carla Bruni-Sarkozy and other women in similar positions, and the discussions about the appropriateness of their wardrobes, regularly make the news. In Sudan, a female writer and activist successfully challenged the government over her right to wear trousers in public, and in Europe, the debate on womens headscarves has politicized a garment item and turned it into a symbol of fundamentalism and oppression. In response, the contributors to this book investigate the politics of fashion from a variety of perspectives, addressing theoretical as well as empirical issues, establishing the critical study of fashion and its protagonists as a central contribution to the aesthetic turn in international politics.
The politics of fashion go beyond these examples of the uses and abuses of textiles and fabrics for political purposes, extending into its very grammar and vocabulary. This book will be a unique contribution to the field and of interest to students and scholars of international relations, critical international relations theory, popular culture and world politics.
Andreas Behnke is Associate Professor in International Political Theory at the University of Reading, UK.
Popular Culture and World Politics
Edited by Matt Davies, Newcastle University, Kyle Grayson, Newcastle University, Simon Philpott, Newcastle University, Christina Rowley, University of Bristol and Jutta Weldes, University of Bristol
The Popular Culture and World Politics book series is the forum for leading interdisciplinary research that explores the profound and diverse interconnections between popular culture and world politics. It aims to bring further innovation, rigour and recognition to this emerging sub-field of international relations.
To these ends, this series is interested in various themes, from the juxtaposition of cultural artefacts that are increasingly global in scope and regional, local and domestic forms of production, distribution and consumption; to the confrontations between cultural life and global political, social and economic forces; to the new or emergent forms of politics that result from the rescaling or internationalization of popular culture.
Similarly, the series provides a venue for work that explores the effects of new technologies and new media on established practices of representation and the making of political meaning. It encourages engagement with popular culture as a means for contesting powerful narratives of particular events and political settlements, as well as explorations of the ways that popular culture informs mainstream political discourse. The series promotes investigation into how popular culture contributes to changing perceptions of time, space, scale, identity and participation, while establishing the outer limits of what is popularly understood as political or cultural.
In addition to film, television, literature and art, the series actively encourages research into diverse artefacts including sound, music, food cultures, gaming, design, architecture, programming, leisure, sport, fandom and celebrity. The series is fiercely pluralist in its approaches to the study of popular culture and world politics, and is interested in the past, present and future cultural dimensions of hegemony, resistance and power.
Gender, Violence and Popular Culture
Telling stories
Laura J. Shepherd
Aesthetic Modernism and Masculinity in Fascist Italy
John Champagne
Genre, Gender and the Effects of Neoliberalism
The new millennium Hollywood rom com
Betty Kaklamanidou
Battlestar Galactica and International Relations
Edited by Iver B. Neumann and Nicholas J. Kiersey
The Politics of HBOs The Wire
Everything is connected
Edited by Shirin Deylami and Jonathan Havercroft
Documenting World Politics
A critical companion to international relations and non-fiction film
Edited by Rens van Munster and Casper Sylvest
Sexing War/Policing Gender
Motherhood, myth and womens political violence
Linda Ahall
Popular Culture, Political Economy and the Death of Feminism
Why women are in refrigerators and other stories
Penny Griffin
Post-communist Aesthetics
Revolutions, capitalism, violence
Anca M. Pusca
Understanding Popular Culture and World Politics in the Digital Age
Laura J. Shepherd and Caitlin Hamilton
Political Torture in Popular Culture
The role of representations in the post 9/11 torture debate
Alex Adams
The International Politics of Fashion
Being fab in a dangerous world
Edited by Andreas Behnke
In many of our scholarly books and articles, international politics appears to take place between and among abstract, fleshless entities without personality or perspective. Focusing on fashion as both a site and a medium of political and social life goes a long way towards addressing this gap and curing this blindness. This collection of insightful essays on the enfashioning that goes on all throughout international affairs is an impressive show indeed!
Patrick Thaddeus Jackson,
Professor of International Studies,
School of International Service, American University, USA
Covering an impressive range of issues and ideas related to all things sartorial, Behnkes The International Politics of Fashion offers a refreshing refashioning of the interconnections between culture and politics.
Elspeth Van Veeren, Lecturer in Political Science, University of Bristol, UK
First published 2017
by Routledge
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Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
2017 selection and editorial material, Andreas Behnke; individual chapters, the contributors
The right of Andreas Behnke to be identified as author of the editorial material, and of the individual authors as authors of their contributions, has been asserted by them in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.
