POL101Y1 Lecture Notes - Global Politics, Social Fact
Document Summary
International relations (all lowercase) refers to the interaction between states. International relations (uppercase i and r) refer to the disciplines of the interactions between states. Give us a strong grounding in ir theory. Humans impose on the world particular understandings of politics of the world. Human beings who decide the separations: ex. We construct the world in particular ways. There are alternatives: we can conceivable think of politics in different ways. Different ways of understanding the nature of the world in a general sense but more specifically in a political sense. Ontology; theory of the nature of existence: there are different ontologies, determines what kind of knowledge can be achieved. Determined by how you perceive the world: there are distinct ontologies within things. Epistemology; theory of the nature of knowledge: determines how one thinks about gathering or generating knowledge. Methodology; theory of the generation of knowledge. How we think of the world has a lot of trickle down effects.
