Provisional Title: Theory of International Societies
How dangerous is popular animosity against the external to international order, and to what extent do individuals assert an affiliation beyond the ethnic or national? Samuel Huntington’s Clash of Civilizations thesis answered such questions in a form ready to capture imagination of the American public and perfectly prescriptive for the nation’s directionless foreign policy, further “proven” by the September 11th attacks. The problems with the thesis are innumerable and obvious, but some should be addressed. In brief, the borders were arbitrary and not particularly insightful or reflective of broad knowledge of the groups he was created, and “civilization” itself is a term with an almost ridiculous amount of connotative baggage, both connoting the line between the ‘developed’ and the ‘primitive,’ while on a technical level applied in anthropology to refer to a degree of centralization in human organization.
The Clash thesis might be thrown out, like interwar idealism, on the basis of these failures of its premise. In the broader context of post-Cold War ‘international relations,’ however, particularly its contesting ‘theories’ and schools of thought, certain points of the Clash argument may prove valid. This validity is not due to Huntington himself, and what validity there is was not intentional on his part, but starting from its broad assertions can prove a useful starting point in (re-)conceiving the world.
The thesis carries two important implications: that the interests and actions of a state (actor, agent, etc) are defined and affected by the individuals or collective thereof that comprise it, and, most importantly, that groups of people, through long-standing geographic and historical processes, have come to share a sort of latent identity or worldview beyond their nationality or ethnicity. Such notions can, when applied with more consideration, help decentralize both the American and the Occidental from examinations of the global; taking the thesis’ historical-geographic lens reminds us that the world we study now is particularly young and unshakably European: not only did the ‘sovereign state-system’ originate in Europe to be imposed upon the rest of the world, but so did its institutions and organizations: ambassadors, governments, and the system of diplomacy considered fundamental to our international system were not norms developed through the active participation of the vast majority of today’s states.
Identity, history, and, yet unmentioned but implicit in many of the above concepts, society: within International Relations theory, it is the English School and Constructivism that are best situated to address such questions, in no small part due to the fact that they are the only ‘theories’ that would recognize the validity of such questions. The English School focuses on how states together interact to form an “International Society” of increasing order and regulation from the international system; Constructivists (unknowingly) reiterate the “societal” conceptualization, asserting in more specific terms that international relations are socially constituted – that any given condition of the international system is not inevitable, the result of concrete ‘if – then’ formulae, but dependent on the actors who agree that it is so.
Constructivism’s strength lies in its ability to account for change, but along with the “International Society” approach of the English School it tends to treat the global realm in singular terms, in which all states have come to form a singular society within which allegiances, disputes, and relationships may be formed between actors within the broader society. Considering that this society was, in most cases, smashed upon the ostensibly replaced endemic forms, the expansion of IR’s research scope to account for identities and histories calls into question the completeness of integration and assimilation into the broader order on the part of non-European countries and the reality of the “International Society” itself which, in English School writing, is always referred to in the singular.
Huntington’s Clash thesis – or, more accurately, the “civilization” element of it – here renders itself useful, if only by inspiration. Before the development of the technology that facilitated the (European) Colonial Era, the extent of the ‘world’ for any given group was geographically limited, and even the ‘known,’ due to barriers of time and space, could not necessarily be equated with the ‘present’ as far as an entity’s external outlook was concerned. History and anthropology provide ample evidence for the various large-scale inter-group relationships taking divers forms through time and space, whether European suzerainty-to-sovereignty transitions or the edges of Chinese versus Nomadic cultural spheres.
The question I intend to examine, informed by the historical and social perspectives of these schools, is the extent to which today’s states (nations, global actors, etc.) have actually assimilated to the international society, especially as the United States tends to conceive of it – or whether their identities, and thus their interests, goals, perceptions, and worldview, are informed by a very different set of norms, regulations, and expectations. While such states have adopted the structures and modes of interaction expected in the modern international context (integration), understanding the deeper functions of their existence as social institutions provides more practical understanding of their contemporary behavior and a more comprehensive depiction of the international world overall.
Promising Sources
Underlined sources from outside course readings – required and recommended
General information on the relevant theories:
Alexander Wendt (1992) “Anarchy is What States Make of It: The Social Construction of Power Politics,” International Organization 46(2): 391-426.
Chris Brown, “International Political Theory and the Idea of World Community,” in Steve Smith, Ken Booth and Marysia Zalewski Eds., International Theory: Positivism and Beyond. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press: 87-107.
Dunne, Tim. “The English School.” International Relations Theories: Discipline and Diversity, edited by Tim Dunne et al., 4th ed., Oxford University Press, 2016, pp. 107–126.
Fierke, K.M. “Constructivism.” International Relations Theories: Discipline and Diversity, edited by Tim Dunne et al., 4th ed., Oxford University Press, 2016, pp. 161–178.
Tim Dunne (1995) “The Social Construction of International Society,” European Journal of International Relations 1(3): 367-389.
Watson, Adam (1987) “Hedley Bull, States Systems, and International Societies,” Review of International Studies 13(2): 147-153.
Regarding East Asia for a potential (historical) case study:
Christopher Goscha, Vietnam: a New History (New York: Basic Books, 2016), pp. 12-44.
Roger Epp (2013) “Translation and Interpretation: The English School and IR Theory in China,” E-International Relations, May 5
Foster, Robert W. 2010. “The Silk Road and Chinese Identity, Past and Present.” Chap. 3 in Teaching the Silk Road, edited by Jacqueline M. Moore and Rebecca Woodward Wendelken, 45-58. Albany: State University of New York Press.
Goscha, Christopher. 2016. “Northern Configurations.” Chap. 1 in Vietnam: A New History, by Christopher Goscha, 12-44. New York: Basic Books.
J. Suh, 2007, “War-Like History or Diplomatic History?” Australian Journal of International Affairs, (2017): Read the first six pages (382-388).
Jiyoung Lee, “The Making of Qing Hegemony,” in China’s Hegemony: Four Hundred Years of East Asian Domination (New York: Columbia University Press, 2017), pp. 135-167. Gang Zhao, The Qing Opening to the Ocean: Chinese Maritime Policies, 1684-1757 (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2013), pp. 1-40 and 169-186.
Jurgis Elisonas, “Inseparable Trinity: Japan’s Relations with China and Korea,” in The Cambridge History of Japan Volume 4: Early Modern Japan (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), pp. 235-300.
Liu, Xinru. 2010. “China Looks West.” Chap. 1 in The Silk Road in World History, by Xinru Liu, 1-19. Oxford University Press.
Peter Frankopan, “Chapter 1: The Silk Roads: A New History of the World, New York: Bloomsbury, 2015)
Pinto, “The Farce of the Wooden Hands,” in Diaz, ed. and trans., The Travels of Mendes Pinto (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990), 513-517.
Robert W. Foster, “The Silk Road and Chinese Identity, Past and Present,” in Teaching the Silk Road: A Guide for College Teachers, eds., Jacqueline M. Moore and Rebecca Woodward Wendelken (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2010), pp.45-58.
Schottenhammer, Angela. 2016. “China’s Gate to the Indian Ocean: Iranian and Arab Long-Distance Traders.” Havard Journal of Asiatic Studies (Harvard-Yenching Institute) 76 (1&2): 135-179. doi:10.1353/jas.2016.0006.
Wang, Zhenping. 2009. “Ideas concerning Diplomacy and Foreign Policy under the Tang Emperors Gaozu and Taizong.” Asia Major (Academica Sinica) 22 (1): 239-285.
Xinru Liu, “China Looks West,” in The Silk Road in World History (New York: Oxford University Press, 2010), pp. 1-19.
Other Examples
Aalto, Pami (2007) “Russia’s Quest for International Society and the Prospects for Regional-Level International Societies.” International Relations 21(4): 459-478.
Acharya, Amitav and Barry Buzan (2007). “Why is there no non-Western international relations theory? An introduction.” International Relations of the Asia-Pacific 7: 287-312.
Benjamin de Carvalho, Halvard Leira and John Hobson (2011) ‘The Myths That Your Teachers Still Tell You about 1648 and 1919’, Millennium 39(3): 735-758.
Immanuel Wallerstein (1995) “The Inter-State Structure of the Modern World System,” in: Steve Smith, Ken Booth and Marysia Zalewski Eds., International Theory: Positivism and Beyond. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press: 87-107.
Robert Cox (1981) “Social Forces, States and World Order: Beyond International Relations Theory,” Millennium 10(2): 126-155.