Competing Metaphors for International Relations: Jungle or Playground?

This book examines how the thinking towards international relations of political leaders, researchers, the media and the public is fundamentally metaphorical in nature: the abstract and far away constantly made concrete and familiar through the imaginative rationality of metaphors. It delves into ten competing structural metaphors: international relations as natural selection, as family dynamics, as balancing operations, as building and constructing, as games and play, as business and trade, as journeys and paths, as musical performances, as health or sickness and as puzzles and riddles. Drawing attention to the important role of metaphors in grasping this field and providing explanations for its events and motives for its actors, this study will appeal to scholars and students of International Relations and World Politics. For experts on metaphor theory or cognitive linguistics, this book will offer practical examples and speculate on the concrete consequences of adopting different metaphorical schemes.

Riikka Kuusisto is Senior Lecturer in World Politics at the University of Helsinki, Finland. She has published on themes including IR theory narratives, foreign policy rhetoric and conflict metaphors in journals such as International Politics, Journal of Peace Research, European Journal of international Relations and Quarterly Journal of Speech. Her latest book International Relations Narratives: Plotting World Politics was published by Routledge in 2020.