Self-Counsel Press
Livres Canada Books
View Rights PortalDespite the essential role diplomatic training plays in the everyday workings of international relations, international law and in the various multilateral organisations, this practice has received little critical attention in the humanities, social and political sciences. Bringing together detailed accounts of the histories, development and contemporary practices of diplomatic training with insights from key practitioners, this edited collection places training centrally within our understanding of international relations. It argues that diplomatic training both reflects and reproduces hegemonic power relations, whilst at the same time offering opportunities to contest them, and imagine alternative futures. The book includes a substantive introduction, nine full-length chapters from a range of disciplinary and regional perspectives drawing on archival research, oral history, interviews, and ethnographic methods, and four 'interventions': reflection pieces from trainers and directors of training programmes. It offers a globe-spanning, interdisciplinary account of the politics of diplomatic training and appeals to both scholarly and practitioner audiences.
Student, traveller, secretary, scoundrel, spy: introducing the maverick whose diplomacy saved Europe from war. Henry Wotton had already exhausted several lives when he arrived in Venice as England's ambassador in 1604. Yet the most remarkable phase of his career was yet to come. In Lying abroad, Carol Chillington Rutter tells Wotton's extraordinary story. She reveals how this one-time exile, who fled England after his employer was convicted of treason, gained the favour of King James, securing a knighthood and a diplomatic posting. Charged with restoring relations with Venice after a fifty-year hiatus, he drew criticism for his breaches of protocol. But when a dispute brought Europe to the brink of war, Wotton took a risk - one that changed European history. This engrossing biography recounts a life that was tumultuous, tarnished and endlessly theatrical. The man King James called his 'honest dissembler' was a maverick who fashioned diplomacy in ways that still inform international relations today.
Richard Haass and Mitchell Reiss, as autonomous diplomats in the George W. Bush State Department, were able to alter US intervention in Northern Ireland and play critical roles in the post-1998 peace process. Their contributions have not been fully appreciated or understood. The restoration of Northern Ireland's power-sharing government in 2007 was made possible by State Department-led intervention in the peace process. There are few references to Northern Ireland in work examining the foreign policy legacy of the George W. Bush presidency. Moreover, the ability to control US foreign policy towards the region brought one of George W. Bush's Northern Ireland special envoys into direct diplomatic conflict with the most senior actors inside the British government. This book will uncover the extent of this fall-out and provide original accounts on how diplomatic relations between these old allies became so fraught.
During the first half of the twentieth century, world politics was reshaped in pursuit of a new international order. The ideological foundations of the 'new diplomacy' (and its fate during the interwar period) are well known. This book instead examines the practices of internationalism and diplomacy from the First Hague Conference of 1899 to the aftermath of the Second World War. By focusing on these practices, such as disarmament regimes or public diplomacy, and their use as instruments to build international order(s), it emphasises the constructed, contested, and experimental character of what subsequently became a standard repertoire of international politics. Essays from a range of interdisciplinary scholars address well-established principles such as self-determination, and also less prominent practices such as small arms control or parliamentary inquiry. The book makes a major contribution to the growing historiography on twentieth-century internationalism.
During the first half of the twentieth century, world politics was reshaped in pursuit of a new international order. The ideological foundations of the 'new diplomacy' (and its fate during the interwar period) are well known. This book instead examines the practices of internationalism and diplomacy from the First Hague Conference of 1899 to the aftermath of the Second World War. By focusing on these practices, such as disarmament regimes or public diplomacy, and their use as instruments to build international order(s), it emphasises the constructed, contested, and experimental character of what subsequently became a standard repertoire of international politics. Essays from a range of interdisciplinary scholars address well-established principles such as self-determination, and also less prominent practices such as small arms control or parliamentary inquiry. The book makes a major contribution to the growing historiography on twentieth-century internationalism.
Since the early 2000s, Turkey has shown an unprecedented interest in its diaspora. This book provides the first in-depth examination of the institutionalisation of Turkey's diaspora engagement policy since the Justice and Development Party's rise to power in 2002, the Turkish diaspora's new role as an agent of diplomatic goals, and how Turkey's growing sphere of influence affects intra-diaspora politics and diplomatic relations with Europe. The book is based on fieldwork in Turkey, France and Germany, and interviews conducted with diaspora organisation leaders and policymakers. Diasporas have become transformative for relations at the state-to-state level and blur the division between the domestic and the foreign. A case study of Turkey's diasporas is significant at a time when emigrants from Turkey form the largest Muslim community in Europe and when issues of diplomacy, migration and citizenship have become more salient than ever.
In the decades following the USSR's collapse, the US has gone from unrivalled hegemon to a position of relative decline. With America 'triumphant' after 1991, its culture, like its diplomatic, military and economic power, remained unmatched. Such favourable circumstances seemed to undercut the need for cultural diplomacy. Why should the US government sell a product that was already selling so well? After 9/11, however, it was apparent the US image was less popular than previously assumed. To reverse this negative image, cultural diplomacy was revived. Despite being beset by internal and external challenges, US officials supported various cultural initiatives and partnerships to promote the American brand globally. Along the way, cultural diplomacy has made use of new forms of expression to promote American culture and build positive foreign relations. The arrival of the second Trump administration in 2025 has clearly signalled an end to using cultural diplomacy to further causes of empowerment and diversity, making the future uncertain for this field of activity.
Aid for Dominance addresses the analytic weaknesses of mainstream analysis of foreign aid, which often focuses on its material dimensions. The book underscores the constitutive relationship between foreign aid as a material resource and the diplomatic discourses and practices that constitute complex bilateral relations between donor and recipient states. Written by two leading scholars of contemporary United States and Chinese foreign policies in the Global South, Aid for Dominance offers a pioneering, theoretically conscious, and empirically rich account of the two great powers' grand strategies in the global development sector. By deploying a multidisciplinary and comparative analysis, this book draws from a wide range of evidentiary materials from primary sources, including data from fieldwork interviews, government documents, local and international newspapers, speeches by high-ranking government officials and diplomats, and secondary data from scholarly publications and policy papers.
This book analyses the international phenomenon of private peace entrepreneurs. These are private citizens with no official authority who initiate channels of communication with official representatives from the other side of a conflict in order to promote a conflict resolution process. It combines theoretical discussion with historical analysis, examining four cases from different conflicts: Norman Cousins and Suzanne Massie in the Cold War, Brendan Duddy in the Northern Ireland conflict and Uri Avnery in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The book defines the phenomenon, examines the resources and activities of private peace entrepreneurs and their impact on the official diplomacy, and examines the conditions under which they can play an effective role in peace-making processes. This book is relevant to United Nations Sustainable Development Goal 16, Peace, justice and strong institutions.
This is a study of Britain's presence in China both at its peak, and during its inter-war dissolution in the face of assertive Chinese nationalism and declining British diplomatic support. Using archival materials from China and records in Britain and the United States, the author paints a portrait of the traders, missionaries, businessmen, diplomats and settlers who constituted "Britain-in-China", challenging our understanding of British imperialism there. Bickers argues that the British presence in China was dominated by urban settlers whose primary allegiance lay not with any grand imperial design, but with their own communities and precarious livelihoods. This brought them into conflict not only with the Chinese population, but with the British imperial government. The book also analyzes the formation and maintenance of settler identities, and then investigates how the British state and its allies brought an end to the reign of freelance, settler imperialism on the China coast. At the same time, other British sectors, missionary and business, renegotiated their own relationship with their Chinese markets and the Chinese state and distanced themselves from the settler British.
This book is dedicated to how diplomacy makes, develops, and trades in knowledge. It proposes an approach to examine how diplomatic knowledge production describes what diplomats see, how these descriptions develop, and whether they were convincing to one's own policymakers or even those of other actors. These descriptions are vital: actors can be inserted into global categories Communism or Terrorism that beget significant security, relational and policy consequences. Diplomacy and policy constitute the world we inhabit based on what policymakers made of descriptions, assessments, and analysis. Such is the power of knowing who we and the others are.
The first comprehensive account of the public and cultural diplomacy campaigns carried out by the US in Yugoslavia during the height of the Cold War, this book examines the political role of culture in US-Yugoslav bilateral relations and the fluid links between information and propaganda. Tito allowed the US Information Agency and the State Department's cultural programmes to enter Yugoslavia, liberated from Soviet control. The exchange of intellectual and political personnel helped foster the US-Yugoslav relationship, yet it posed severe ideological challenges for both sides. By providing new insights into porous borders between freedom and coercion in Tito's regime, this book shows how public diplomacy acted as an external input for Yugoslav liberalisation and dissident movements. Using extensive archival research and interviews, Konta analyses the links between information and propaganda, and the unintended effects of propaganda beyond the control of producers and receivers.
Critical theory and Independent Living explores intersections between contemporary critical theory and disabled people's struggle for self-determination. The book highlights the affinities between the Independent Living movement and studies of epistemic injustice, biopower, and psychopower. It discusses in depth the activists' critical engagement with welfare-state paternalism, neoliberal marketisation, and familialism. This helps develop a pioneering comparison between various welfare regimes grounded in Independent Living advocacy. The book draws on the activism of disabled people from the European Network on Independent Living (ENIL) by developing case studies of the ENIL's campaigning for deinstitutionalisation and personal assistance. It is argued that this work helps rethink independence as a form of interdependence, and that this reframing is pivotal for critical theorising in the twenty-first century.
Minor illness or a serious disease ? Through systematic questioning, pharmacists or pharmaceutical technicians can establish the possibilities and limits of self-medication. Each monograph on the over 100 indications for self-medication includes: - A flow chart: basis for the structured consultation - A brief description: additional information about the symptoms - Recommended medications/groups of medications: the treatment options - Additional advice: individual supportive and alternative treatment options - Specific knowledge for advising particular patient groups: e.g. pregnant women, children and senior citizens New for the 7th edition: Monographs that explore the possibilities of supportive self-medication for indications such as hypertension and diabetes. Information about what to do in the case of poisoning, scabies or inflammation of the nail bed (paronychia) is also provided! The details about active substances, products and additional tips have been updated. The pocket guide has long been the standard for providing advice on self-medication – a “must-have”!
A grand strategy of peace is the first detailed account of Britain's role in the creation of the United Nations Organization during the Second World War. As a work of traditional diplomatic history that brings in elements of intellectual history, the book describes how British officials, diplomats, politicians, and writers - previously seen to be secondary actors to the United States in this period - thought about, planned for, and helped to establish a future international order. While in the present day, many scholars and analysts have returned to the origins of the post- 1945 international system, this book offers an exhaustive account of how the statesmen and more importantly, the officials working below the statesmen, actually conceived of and worked to establish a post-war world order.
Over four decades as a diplomat, Sir Frank Roberts dealt with headline issues, including policy towards Germany during the years of appeasement, the Second World War alliance with the Soviet Union, the origins of the Cold War, NATO affairs, the Berlin and Cuban Missile Crises, European integration, and relations with the Federal Republic of Germany. Collaborating with the renowned American diplomat, George F. Kennan (the cryptonymous author 'X' of an influential 1947 article), his despatches from Moscow in 1946 shaped Britain's Cold War strategy. In 1954 he played an integral part in the diplomacy behind the rearmament of the Federal Republic and her incorporation into NATO, helping to build an enduring structure of transatlantic security. Roberts' career sheds new light on British foreign policy across an era in which Britain slipped from global pre-eminence to regional power status.
This book investigates the pronounced enthusiasm that many traditions display for codes of ethics characterised by a multitude of rules. Recent anthropological interest in ethics and historical explorations of 'self-fashioning' have led to extensive study of the virtuous self, but existing scholarship tends to pass over the kind of morality that involves legalistic reasoning. Rules and ethics corrects that omission by demonstrating the importance of rules in everyday moral life in a variety of contexts. In a nutshell, it argues that legalistic moral rules are not necessarily an obstruction to a rounded ethical self, but can be an integral part of it. An extended introduction first sets out the theoretical basis for studies of ethical systems that are characterised by detailed rules. This is followed by a series of empirical studies of rule-oriented moral traditions in a comparative perspective.
Cough, hay fever or herpes are at least as troublesome during pregnancy and breast-feeding as under normal “conditions” - and yet everything is different. Physiological changes to the body in pregnancy and lactation, together with the vulnerability of the unborn baby or infant, set particular requirements when selecting the correct, safe medication. Especially in the area of self-medication, the needs of pregnant and breast-feeding women for information are great and call for competent advice! This comprehensive handbook is the key: General information about pharmacotherapy, supplementary measures, vaccinations, questions about diet and infections in pregnancy and lactation creates a broad knowledge base. The core feature of the book are the traffic light tables, with precise recommendations for medicinal products for all types of treatment. All the important indications for selfmedication in pregnancy and lactation are listed and the tables are supported by detailed explanations of the individual assessments. The sections “Advice from medical specialists” are particularly useful, with additional tips from gynaecologists and “Footnotes” with relevant information on the use of prescription- only medicines – and as the ultimate practical tool: the enclosed sales counter leaflets with all traffic light tables to enable quick reference for first-class advice!
This book examines John Hilditch (1872-1930), a notorious collector of Chinese art who lied, hoaxed and manipulated in his struggle against museum experts to become a cultural authority. Previously overlooked as a pest with a dubious collection, this book uses Hilditch to interrogate how far the monumental social, cultural and political changes of the early twentieth century unsettled social and cultural hierarchies and how these hierarchies were remade. It shows how the cultural elites were forced to engage with the public and re-draw the boundaries of citizenship, expertise and high and low culture in response to unprecedented social mobility, the democratisation of culture and politics, as well as the effects of British imperialism which brought ordinary Britons access to antiquities as well as confidence to claim expertise over foreign cultures. The book will interest social and cultural historians of Modern Britain, museum scholars and art historians.