Evolution Without Progress? Humanitarianism in a World of Hurt

2009 ◽  
Vol 63 (4) ◽  
pp. 621-663 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Barnett
Keyword(s):  
Organizational Culture ◽  
Social Science ◽  
International Relations ◽  
International Aid ◽  
International Ethics ◽  
The World ◽  
Ethical Change ◽  
History Of ◽  
Selection Mechanisms ◽  
International Aid Agencies

AbstractMany theories of international relations contain a narrative of progress and explain that progress with reference to evolutionary imagery. This article examines critically: the relevance of Darwinian and Lamarckian models of international relations to the evolution of international ethics and institutions; and the possibility that the ethics and norms are likely to be more consistent with existing world orders than challengers to it. Specifically, this article draws from evolutionary social science and organizational theory to develop a framework to explore the initial diversity of the meaning and practices of humanitarianism; how the combination of environmental mechanisms and organizational culture led many humanitarian agencies to adapt to their environment in ways that incorporated politics; and the subsequent countermovement by some agencies who wanted to purify humanitarianism. I then apply this framework to explain the recent history of four international aid agencies. I conclude with several observations regarding how the model as applied to these cases allows us to examine critically the selection mechanisms that do and do not account for ethical change and how scholars of international norms, ethics, and progress should be attentive to how principled actors are creatures of the world they want to transform.

Re-imagining International Relations

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Barry Buzan ◽  
Amitav Acharya
Keyword(s):  
International Relations ◽  
World Order ◽  
Global History ◽  
Islamic World ◽  
Multiple Origins ◽  
Collective Actors ◽  
The World ◽  
History Of

Buzan and Acharya challenge the discipline of International Relations to reimagine itself in the light of the thinking about, and practice of, international relations and world order from premodern India, China and the Islamic world. This prequel to their 2019 book, The Making of Global International Relations, takes the story back from the two-century tale of modern IR, to reveal the deep global history of the discipline. It shows the multiple origins and meanings of many concepts thought of as only modern and Western. It opens pathways for the rest of the world into this most Eurocentric of disciplines, encouraging them to bring their own histories, concepts and theories with them. The authors have written this book with the hope of inspiring others to extend these pathways by bringing in a wider array of cultures, and exploring how they thought about and acted in worlds composed of multiple, independent, collective actors.

A liberal narrative

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tamas Wells
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Civil Society ◽  
Capacity Building ◽  
Future Orientation ◽  
International Aid ◽  
Aid Workers ◽  
Transitional Countries ◽  
The World ◽  
Formal Procedure ◽  
International Aid Agencies

This chapter unpacks a liberal narrative of democracy. It grounds and locates the ways that many aid workers in Myanmar understood and communicated about democracy. The chapter outlines three elements of this narrative. First, most international aid workers involved in the research pointed toward the challenge of ethnic and religious divisions in the country. These aid workers described how divisions in Myanmar were perpetuated by a personalised political culture where formal institutions of democracy were insufficiently embedded. Second, aid agency representatives often expressed a vision of a formal procedure-based democracy supported by liberal values of human rights, pluralism and the protection of minorities. This vision also had a future orientation, where proponents of this narrative saw Myanmar’s democratisation as being set within the context of other transitional countries around the world – moving away from traditional systems toward a democratic future. Third, many aid workers emphasised a strategy of government and civil society capacity building led by international aid agencies.

scholarly journals Racial sovereignty

2019 ◽  
Vol 26 (1_suppl) ◽  
pp. 39-63 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kerem Nisancioglu
Keyword(s):  
International Relations ◽  
Critical Analysis ◽  
International Politics ◽  
17Th Century ◽  
Constitutive Relationship ◽  
World Today ◽  
The World ◽  
History Of

This article explores how International Relations (IR) might better conceptualise and analyse an underexplored but constitutive relationship between race and sovereignty. I begin with a critical analysis of the ‘orthodox account’ of sovereignty which, I argue, produces an analytical and historical separation of race and sovereignty by: (1) abstracting from histories of colonial dispossession; (2) treating racism as a resolved issue in IR. Against the orthodox account, I develop the idea of ‘racial sovereignty’ as a mode of analysis which can: (1) overcome the historical abstractions in the orthodox account; (2) disclose the ongoing significance of racism in international politics. I make this argument in three moves. Firstly, I present a history of the 17th century struggle between ‘settlers’ and ‘natives’ over the colonisation of Virginia. This history, I argue, discloses the centrality of dispossession and racialisation in the attendant attempts of English settlers to establish sovereignty in the Americas. Secondly, by engaging with criticisms of ‘recognition’ found in the anticolonial tradition, I argue that the Virginian experience is not simply of historical interest or localised importance but helps us better understand racism as ongoing and structural. I then demonstrate how contemporary assertions of sovereignty in the context of Brexit disclose a set of otherwise concealed colonial and racialised relations. I conclude with the claim that interrogations of racial sovereignty are not solely of historical interest but are of political significance for our understanding of the world today.

Introduction: Diversity and Disciplinarity in International Relations Theory

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-12
Author(s):  
Steve Smith
Keyword(s):  
Critical Theory ◽  
Social Science ◽  
International Relations ◽  
Structural Realism ◽  
International Relations Theory ◽  
Normative Theory ◽  
English School ◽  
International Theory ◽  
The World

This text argues that theory is central to explaining International Relations (IR) and that the discipline of IR is much more relevant to the world of international relations than it has been at any point in its history. Some chapters cover distinct IR theories ranging from realism/structural realism to liberalism/neoliberalism, the English school, constructivism, Marxism, critical theory, feminism, poststructuralism, green theory, and postcolonialism. Oher chapters explore International Relations theory and its relationship to social science, normative theory, globalization, and the discipline’s identity. This introduction explains why this edition has chosen to cover these theories, reflects on international theory and its relationship to the world, and considers the kind of assumptions about theory that underlie each of the approaches.

scholarly journals Empire, imperialism and the Bush doctrine

2004 ◽  
Vol 30 (4) ◽  
pp. 585-608 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Cox
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
International Relations ◽  
World System ◽  
Class Struggle ◽  
International History ◽  
The Past ◽  
Bush Doctrine ◽  
The World ◽  
History Of ◽  
State Survival

It is an empire without a consciousness of itself as such, constantly shocked that its good intentions arouse resentment abroad. But that does not make it any the less of an empire, with a conviction that it alone, in Herman Melville's words, bears ‘the ark of liberties of the world.If all history according to Marx has been the history of class struggle, then all international history, it could just as well be argued, has been the struggle between different kinds of Empire vying for hegemony in a world where the only measure was success and the only means of achieving this was through war. Indeed, so obvious is this fact to historians – but so fixated has the profession of International Relations been with the Westphalian settlement – that it too readily forgets that imperial conquest, rather than mere state survival, has been the principle dynamic shaping the contours of the world system from the sixteenth century onwards. Empires, however, were not just mere agents existing in static structures. They were living entities that thought, planned, and then tried to draw the appropriate lessons from the study of what had happened to others in the past.

Problems of Japanese Economic History

1963 ◽  
Vol 23 (4) ◽  
pp. 619-628
Author(s):  
Sydney Crawcour
Keyword(s):  
Social Science ◽  
Economic History ◽  
Social Science Research ◽  
Science Research ◽  
Faculty Members ◽  
Economic Activities ◽  
Research Institutes ◽  
American Counterpart ◽  
The World ◽  
History Of

The economic history of the underdeveloped areas of the world, insofar as it has been written at all, has been written mainly by Western scholars. In the field of economic history, at any rate, Japan is far from underdeveloped. She has more economic historians per thousand academics than any other country in the world. Roughly a quarter of all faculty members of departments of economics are economic historians. Others are to be found in departments of history, in social science research institutes, and in faculties of agriculture, law, and even engineering. Even the local amateur antiquarian is far more interested in the economic activities of his forebears than is his European or American counterpart.

Being-in-the-world of the international

2015 ◽  
Vol 41 (4) ◽  
pp. 781-798
Author(s):  
GERARD VAN DER REE
Keyword(s):  
Social Science ◽  
International Relations ◽  
Daily Lives ◽  
The World

AbstractEven though the international permeates our daily lives in many ways, it rarely discloses itself as part of our everyday engagements. Drawing from Martin Heidegger’s phenomenology, this article seeks to explore the ways in which the international remains hidden to, as well as the ways in which the international can become part of, our being-in-the-world. Additionally, it will show the terms in which International Relations (IR) scholars can disclose the world of the international, and what the implications of that ‘knowing’ are for the discipline. Finally, it will explore the possibilities and limitations of a Heidegerrian phenomenology for a social science such as IR.

Giuseppe Mazzini and the Globalization of Democratic Nationalism, 1830-1920

2008 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
International Relations ◽  
Political Thought ◽  
Literature And Religion ◽  
The Arts ◽  
History Of Art ◽  
The World ◽  
History Of ◽  
Religion Of Humanity ◽  
The 19Th Century

Giuseppe Mazzini – Italian patriot, humanist, and republican – was one of the most celebrated and revered political activists and thinkers of the 19th century. This volume compares and contrasts the perception of his thought and the transformation of his image across the world. Mazzini's contribution to the Italian Risorgimento was unparalleled; he stood for a ‘religion of humanity’; he argued against tyranny, and for universal education, a democratic franchise, and the liberation of women. The chapters in this book reflect the range of Mazzini's political thought, discussing his vision of international relations, his concept of the nation, and the role of the arts in politics. They detail how his writings and reputation influenced nations and leaders across Europe, the Americas, and India. The book links the study of political history to the history of art, literature and religion, modern nationalism, and the history of democracy.

American Foreign Policy

2017 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Policy ◽  
International Relations ◽  
Intellectual History ◽  
American Foreign Policy ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
The World ◽  
History Of ◽  
Late Nineteenth ◽  
Clash Of Civilisations

This book brings together international relations scholars, political theorists, and historians to reflect on the intellectual history of American foreign policy since the late nineteenth century. It offers a nuanced and multifaceted collection of essays covering a wide range of concerns, concepts, presidential doctrines, and rationalities of government thought to have marked America’s engagement with the world during this period: nation-building, exceptionalism, isolationism, modernisation, race, utopia, technology, war, values, the ‘clash of civilisations’ and many more.

scholarly journals Periodicals of integrated units of Ukrainian Galician Army in Czechoslovakia (the second part of 1917 – 1923): the current state of historical researches

2020 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
pp. 31-40
Author(s):  
Yana Martianova
Keyword(s):  
International Relations ◽  
Value Orientations ◽  
Primary Sources ◽  
Clear Understanding ◽  
Current State ◽  
World Outlook ◽  
The World ◽  
Special Value ◽  
History Of ◽  
Living Circumstances

The article considers a degree of knowledge and the current state of scientific researche in the problem of functioning in camps of integrated units of Ukrainian Galician Army in Czechoslovakia (Deutsch Gabel, Liberec, Josefov), of a number of magazines (including «Voice of the Camp», «Ukrainian Shooter», «Ukrainian Wanderer» and so on). The materials, published on the pages of the above mentioned camp periodicals, represent a special value as the primary sources of the history of UGA camps. Their study is absolutely necessary for understanding the informative-educational and organizational-mobilization functions of the camp press of interned Ukrainian soldiers in the second half of 1919 – 1923. The journalistic period in the camp of international relations of the UGA in Czechoslovakia has established itself as an effective tool for influencing the world outlook and value orientations of Ukrainian soldiers. The idea of a united fighting for the independence of Ukraine. At the same time, in accordance with these living circumstances, in different living conditions in the conditions of emigration, an adaptation of the interned military personnel took place. The publication of camp periodicals became one of the evidence of a clear understanding by their first colleagues of the tasks and prospects of the Ukrainian liberation movement. Thus, we can easily imagine the daily life of the interned soldiers of the UGA in the camp.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document