Jarvis, Lee ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4149-7135 and Robinson, Nick
(2023)
Oh help! Oh no! The international politics of The Gruffalo: Children’s picturebooks and world politics.
Review of International Studies.
ISSN 0260-2105
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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 |
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Additional Information: | Supplementary material: The supplementary material for this article can be found at https://doi.org/10.1017/S0260210523000098. Video Abstract: To view the online video abstract, please visit: https://doi.org/10.1017/S0260210523000098 |
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 |
UEA Research Groups: | Faculty of Arts and Humanities > Research Groups > Critical Global Politics 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: | 21 Jul 2023 09:59 |
URI: | https://ueaeprints.uea.ac.uk/id/eprint/91305 |
DOI: | 10.1017/S0260210523000098 |
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