Jarvis, Lee ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4149-7135 and Robinson, Nick
(2023)
Oh help, oh no! The international politics of The Gruffalo.
Review of International Studies.
ISSN 0260-2105
(In Press)
![]() |
Microsoft Word (OpenXML) (Gruffalo RIS AS RESUBMITTED)
- Accepted Version
Available under License Creative Commons Attribution Non-commercial No Derivatives. Download (172kB) |
Abstract
The article explores the importance of children’s picturebooks – a seemingly-insignificant site of global politics – through an original reading of The Gruffalo. It argues that this text provides an important, polysemous, vernacular theorisation of global politics which: (i) reproduces the international as a pessimistic, anarchical world populated by self-interested, survival-seekers; (ii) simultaneously destabilises this reading through evocation of the social production of threat; and, (iii) offers opportunity for a more fundamental decolonial critique of the international through its parochial privileging of its protagonist’s journey through a ‘deep dark wood’. Three contributions are made. First, empirically, we broaden research on popular culture and world politics through investigating a surprisingly neglected example of the former. Second, theoretically, we demonstrate the work such texts perform in (re)creating and (de)stabilising (knowledge of) global politics. Third, we offer a composite methodological framework for critically interrogating the context, content, and framing of complex texts like The Gruffalo.
Item Type: | Article |
---|---|
Uncontrolled Keywords: | popular culture,global politics,children's literature,international relations theory,the gruffalo |
Faculty \ School: | Faculty of Arts and Humanities > School of Politics, Philosophy, Language and Communication Studies University of East Anglia > Faculty of Arts and Humanities > Research Groups > Political, Social and International Studies |
Depositing User: | LivePure Connector |
Date Deposited: | 28 Feb 2023 17:31 |
Last Modified: | 28 Feb 2023 17:31 |
URI: | https://ueaeprints.uea.ac.uk/id/eprint/91305 |
DOI: |
Actions (login required)
![]() |
View Item |