Subject Area: Politics and International Relations

We all talk about 'international affairs' and the 'international community', without necessarily wondering what exactly we mean by 'the international'. This course encourages you to think critically about the concept of the international and various other concepts that are foundational to the discipline of International Relations, including the state, sovereignty, order, law and war. As we investigate each of these concepts, we will engage with a range of issues that are of crucial importance to contemporary global politics and our place in it: Who gets to decide which rules we live by? What does it mean to be a 'global citizen'? Can we hold states to account as moral actors? These are just some of the questions that will animate this course.