Reflection Week 2

I felt like this week’s classes furthered my understanding of international relations theory in ways I had not previously considered. The role playing situation that we acted out on Tuesday accurately reflected how resources determine power within the international system. At first I just accepted that the less powerful “nations” would bind together to oppose the larger ones. However after reading the articles assigned for Friday I thought of this situation as reflecting the realist philosophy of blocking in which the less powerful nations joined together in order to block the more powerful nation or nations. After the reading I saw this phenomenon as a international relations theory that has flaws as well as truths rather than simply an aspect of human nature applied to nations on a global scale.

Furthermore on Friday I thought it was beneficial to examine an idea brought up in one of the blogs. It gave us each a chance to examine our views on this metaphor and how much it realistically applied to international politics. The metaphor of the classroom was just that, a metaphor, and in many ways it did reflect the reality of global politics and it failed short of explaining how the world works in others. This discussion reminded me, as I think we all should be reminded at times, to recognize that just because a theory explains a truth or a perceived truth does not mean that it is the only truth. This was further emphasized in the articles we read which stressed that only through a combination of realism, idealism, and constructivism can we reach any type of successful policy.

While I really connected to what we did in class this week I feel like in general we have not been discussing in the classroom the reading we have done outside of class. I think much of the reading we have done directly relates to the activities we have been doing in class and I would like to incorporate the readings. I think there are interesting points that could be pulled out of these readings and applied to the classroom discussions we have been having. Next week I will try to better connect the outside readings to the class discussions while in class rather than only making those connections after the fact.

Erica Peterson