The International Relations of Middle-earth: Learning from The Lord of the Rings

2. Thinking about International Relations and Middle-earth

—chapter 2— Thinking about International Relations and Middle-earth the light of eärendil and ir theory When the Fellowship left Lothlórien, Lady Galadriel gave each of its members a gift to aid them along a road fraught with danger. To Frodo she gave a phial that contained the rare light of Eärendil, most precious among the Elves. This light aided him when he confronted the gigantic spider, Shelob, in her dark and frightening cave. While hardly frightening in the same way as a monstrous spider, the arcane terms of debates in IR theory can be intellectually challenging and off-putting to those new to the ‹eld. So this chapter seeks, like the light of Eärendil, to brighten our thinking about IR. This chapter discusses how people with different perspectives draw on various paradigms and analytical frameworks to evaluate global politics . Each perspective can be understood as looking through a different kind of lens or window on our world: some may view the world through rose-colored classes, while others see blue or gray. Each perspective makes sense of the world by focusing on certain patterns and paying less attention to others. Because interests and goals in›uence the development of knowledge, scholars prioritizing Order tend to develop different kinds of knowledge—and draw on different methods and ways of thinking—than scholars who prioritize Justice. Of course, these concepts and approaches also overlap. Different approaches, however, can be 32 thought of as what Max Weber described as “ideal types”—simpli‹ed, abstract versions of phenomena that highlight their characteristic features, even while the particular phenomena involved always are manifested in more historically varying ways. As such, scholars focusing on Order (e.g., “problem-solving”) and Justice (e.g., “critical”), as well as particular schools of thought within each approach (e.g., “realist” or “feminist”), can be discussed in terms of their ideal type. Discussion of “ideal typical” positions within debates allows us to highlight major differences while also recognizing the important point that, historically, scholars within any such type did not take these exact positions and were always engaged in discussion and debate. We introduce a schematic to outline how such perspectives in›uence ways people think about IR. thinking about ir Figure 2 provides a sense of how one might think about IR. Adapted from Nau (2009), the ‹gure shows how perspectives in›uence the paradigms and analytical frameworks that people use to understand and explain global politics and how these paradigms and frameworks then also in›uence those perspectives. Note that the arrows connecting boxes in the ‹gure form a cycle. While the discussion that follows will work from left to right for ease of exposition, bear in mind that thinking about IR includes feedback effects, and that relationships are interactive and dialectical (i.e., a dialogue of alternatives leading to synthesis). Some components of the ‹gure are addressed in the context of LOTR later in this chapter, while other aspects ‹t more naturally elsewhere. Overall, this ‹gure highlights how scholars analyze world politics by applying different paradigms or analytical frameworks (such as “levels of analysis” or “gender -sensitive lenses”) to the world—either our own or Middle-earth—using different methods to analyze the world and drawing on experience and perspective to make interpretations and reach conclusions. Paradigms: Problem-Solving and Critical The far left of the ‹gure depicts how “paradigms” and “analytical frameworks ” organize thinking in IR. Paradigm is a word derived from the Greek language that means “an example, model, or essential pattern” (Kegley with Blanton 2010: 578). On one hand, paradigms involve assumptions about the nature or Order of the world and how knowledge is Thinking about International Relations and Middle-earth • 33 Fig. 2. Thinking about IR. (Adapted from Nau 2009, 5.) obtained about it. On the other hand, paradigms also involve assumptions about what the world should be or its Justice. In IR scholarship from the twentieth century and beyond, this divergence between focuses on Justice and Order has been described by Cox (1981) as a fundamental division between “critical” and “problem-solving” paradigms. Problem -solving paradigms, which focus on Order, tend to be dominant in IR scholarship within the United States. Critical paradigms, which focus on Justice, tend to be more popular in Europe, Latin America, and elsewhere outside the United States. On one hand, problem-solving approaches accept the existing social order as it...