The Limits of the Civilizing Mission: A Comparative Analysis of British Protestant Missionary Campaigns to End Footbinding and Female Circumcision

2008 ◽  
Vol 21 (2) ◽  
pp. 193-227
Author(s):  
Bryony Lau
Keyword(s):  
Comparative Analysis ◽  
International Relations ◽  
Female Circumcision ◽  
International Relations Theory ◽  
Civilizing Mission ◽  
Colonial Resistance

AbstractDrawing on international relations theory, this article examines why a British missionary campaign against footbinding in China at the turn of the 20 th century succeeded, while a similar campaign against female circumcision in Kenya in the 1920s failed. It argues that the diff erent outcomes can be explained by the incentives new elites had in swiftly changing political climates to adopt, adapt or reject foreign norms promoted by missionaries. Whereas Chinese reformers recast footbinding as a source of China's weakness, the emerging nationalist elite among the Kikuyu in Kenya argued for the continuation of female circumcision as part of anti-colonial resistance. Cette contribution interroge, à l'aide de la théorie de relations internationales, les raisons pour lesquelles une campagne dirigée par des missionnaires britanniques en Chine, à la veille du XXe siècle, contre les pieds bandés réussit, alors qu'une campagne similaire menée durant les années 1920 contre l'excision féminine au Kenya échoua. Ces résultats opposés s'expliquent par le choix que fi rent les nouvelles élites locales d'adopter, d'adapter ou de rejeter les normes étrangères introduites par les missionnaires. Alors que les réformateurs chinois réinterprétèrent les pieds bandés comme une source de l'impuissance de la Chine, la nouvelle élite nationaliste kikuyu au Kenya vit dans la pratique de l'excision féminine un moyen de résistance contre le colonialisme.

scholarly journals Multistakeholderism: anatomy of an inchoate global institution

2015 ◽  
Vol 7 (3) ◽  
pp. 572-616 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mark Raymond ◽  
Laura DeNardis
Keyword(s):  
Corporate Social Responsibility ◽  
Comparative Analysis ◽  
International Relations ◽  
Significant Variation ◽  
International Relations Theory ◽  
Securities Regulation ◽  
Internet Governance ◽  
Institutional Form ◽  
Central Argument ◽  
Corporate Social

Building on John Ruggie’s pioneering study of multilateralism, this paper presents an analogous study of multistakeholder governance, or multistakeholderism. Its central argument is that multistakeholderism is, as yet, a much less well-defined institutional form. Cases exhibit significant variation both in the combinations of actor classes entitled to participate and the nature of authority relations among those actors. The first section discusses multistakeholderism as an institutional form, and proposes a taxonomy of its types. This section also briefly addresses the implications of the analysis for International Relations theory. The paper then conducts a comparative analysis of multistakeholderism, applying the taxonomy to five illustrative cases. It demonstrates the degree of inter-case variation, and the range of issue-areas across which the institutional form is employed and invoked by actors. Three cases are drawn from the increasingly contentious area of Internet governance; the paper thus makes a secondary contribution to this growing literature. The paper’s most striking finding in this regard is that Internet governance often fails to live up to its multistakeholder rhetoric. Other cases include governance of securities regulation and the governance of corporate social responsibility. The paper concludes by examining the implications of our argument, and identifying areas for further research.

scholarly journals Role and relation in Confucian IR: Relating to strangers in the states of nature

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-20
Author(s):  
Chih-yu Shih
Keyword(s):  
Comparative Analysis ◽  
International Relations ◽  
North Korea ◽  
Common Ground ◽  
Role Theory ◽  
Relational Theory ◽  
International Relations Theory ◽  
Rule Based ◽  
Different Types ◽  
States Of Nature

Abstract The literature on International Relations theory has yet to align relational theory with role theory, despite the fact that these two theories share so much epistemological common ground. This article uses role theory to bridge the gap between the Confucian and Western conceptions of relationality, whose practitioners regard each other as strangers. With the support of role theory, the comparative analysis of relationality in this article has mainly focused on two different types of relations: prior rule-based relations and improvised relations. The differences in the cultural preparation for these two relations partially explain the plurality of the relational universe and the perception of stranger. Role theory is one way to reconnect the seemingly irreconcilable relational universes. To illustrate the value of a composite agenda of relational theory and role theory, the article will use Kim Jong-un of North Korea as its case. Confucian relations propose that, for all nations, the necessity of having a certain role relation is a more important agenda than insisting on exactly what role to take.

A REFUNDAÇÃO DA TEORIA DAS RELAÇÕES INTERNACIONAIS: ORIGENS DO PENSAMENTO REFLEXIVISTAINTERNATIONAL RELATIONS THEORY REBUILDING: ORIGINS OF REFLEXIVISTA THOUGTH

2017 ◽  
Vol 8 (14) ◽  
Author(s):  
Renato Somberg Pfeffer (IBMEC/MG)
Keyword(s):  
International Relations ◽  
International Relations Theory

Desde a década de 1980, o campo teórico das Relações Internacionais tem passado por uma crise profunda. Na nova sociedade da informação marcada pela globalização, o conceito fundamental das teorias tradicionais – a soberania do Estado – é desafiado. Em diálogo com outras áreas das Ciências Sociais e da Filosofia, a teoria das Relações Internacionais busca, então, refundar sua identidade. Essa refundação tem passado por uma reflexão crítica acerca de sua história e uma reavaliação de seus pressupostos. A defesa da emancipação humana passa a ser o mote orientador dessa nova tendência entre os críticos reflexivistas. Esse artigo busca resgatar algumas influências de outros campos do saber que estão na origem ao pensamento reflexivista.

Introduction

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Matthew Kroenig
Keyword(s):  
International Relations ◽  
International Relations Theory ◽  
Nuclear Deterrence ◽  
Central Question ◽  
Deterrence Theory ◽  
Nuclear Strategy ◽  
Nuclear Policy ◽  
Previous Scholarship ◽  
As If

This chapter provides a summary introduction to the book. It explains the central question the book addresses and why it is important. Namely, it asks why academic nuclear deterrence theory maintains that nuclear superiority does not matter, but policymakers often behave as if it does. It then provides a brief explanation of the answer to this question: the superiority-brinkmanship synthesis theory. It discusses the implications of the argument for international relations theory and for US nuclear policy. In contrast to previous scholarship, the argument of this book provides the first coherent explanation for why nuclear superiority matters even if both sides possess a secure, second-strike capability. In so doing, it helps to resolve what may be the longest-standing, intractable, and important puzzle in the scholarly study of nuclear strategy. It concludes with a description of the plan for the rest of the book.

Hobbes among International Relations Thinkers

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Boucher
Keyword(s):  
International Relations ◽  
Political Thought ◽  
International Relations Theory ◽  
English School ◽  
State Of Nature ◽  
International Issues ◽  
Civil Condition ◽  
The Individual

Among philosophers and historians of political thought Hobbes has little or nothing to say about relations among states. For modern realists and representatives of the English School in contemporary international relations theory, however, caricatures of Hobbes abound. There is a tendency to take him too literally, referring to what is called the unmodified philosophical state of nature, ignoring what he has to say about both the modified state of nature and the historical pre-civil condition. They extrapolate from the predicament of the individual conclusions claimed to be pertinent to international relations, and on the whole find his conclusions unconvincing. It is demonstrated that there is a much more restrained and cautious Hobbes, consistent with his timid nature, in which he gives carefully weighed views on a variety of international issues, recommending moderation consistent with the duties of sovereignty.

Sovereignty at the Paris Peace Conference of 1919

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Leonard V. Smith
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
International Relations ◽  
International System ◽  
International Relations Theory ◽  
League Of Nations ◽  
Great Power ◽  
World War ◽  
Treaty Of Versailles ◽  
The World ◽  
Paris Peace Conference

We have long known that the Paris Peace Conference of 1919 “failed” in the sense that it did not prevent the outbreak of World War II. This book investigates not whether the conference succeeded or failed, but the historically specific international system it created. It explores the rules under which that system operated, and the kinds of states and empires that inhabited it. Deepening the dialogue between history and international relations theory makes it possible to think about sovereignty at the conference in new ways. Sovereignty in 1919 was about remaking “the world”—not just determining of answers demarcating the international system, but also the questions. Most histories of the Paris Peace Conference stop with the signing of the Treaty of Versailles with Germany on June 28, 1919. This book considers all five treaties produced by the conference as well as the Treaty of Lausanne with Turkey in 1923. It is organized not chronologically or geographically, but according to specific problems of sovereignty. A peace based on “justice” produced a criminalized Great Power in Germany, and a template problematically applied in the other treaties. The conference as sovereign sought to “unmix” lands and peoples in the defeated multinational empires by drawing boundaries and defining ethnicities. It sought less to oppose revolution than to instrumentalize it. The League of Nations, so often taken as the supreme symbol of the conference’s failure, is better considered as a continuation of the laboratory of sovereignty established in Paris.

Markets are constantly collapsing: Reconceptualizing ‘the market’ as a quantum social wavefunction

2021 ◽  
pp. 102452942098782
Author(s):  
Michael Murphy
Keyword(s):  
Quantum Mechanics ◽  
International Relations ◽  
Social Theory ◽  
Open Economy ◽  
International Relations Theory ◽  
Social Structures ◽  
Value Chains ◽  
Special Issue ◽  
Core Concepts ◽  
Broad Framework

The quantum moment in International Relations theory challenges the taken for granted Newtonian assumptions of conventional theories, while offering a novel physical imaginary grounded in quantum mechanics. As part of the special issue on reconceptualizing markets, this article questions if prior efforts to conceptualize ‘the market’ have been unsuccessful at capturing the paradoxical microfoundational/macrostructural because of the Newtonian worldview within which much social science operates. By developing a new, quantum perspective on the market, taking the physical paradigm of the wavefunction, I seek to explore the connections between entanglement, nonlocality, interference and invisible social structures. To demonstrate the applicability of quantum thinking, I explore how global value chains and open economy politics might be ‘quantized’, through the mobilization of core concepts of quantum social theory, within the broad framework of the market as a quantum social wavefunction.

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