From International Relations To World Civilizations

This volume focuses on the constitutive politics of civilizational identity, examining the practices through which notions of civilizational identity are produced and reproduced in different contexts, including the global credit regime, modernity debates, and the "war on terrorism".

The book comes at a very critical moment in the debate on civilization and responds to the lack of scholarly attention by international relations and political theorists as to how the discourse of dialogue of cultures, religions, and civilizations can contribute to the future of world order.

This volume explores the work of Robert W. Cox across International Relations, International Political Economy, and International Historical Sociology. Robert W. Cox has been a key figure in so-called critical approaches to world politics, contributing to the inter-paradigm debate in IR, pioneering the Gramscian approach to IPE, developing key insights into international institutions, and the changing nature of capitalism and the state. His more recent work on intercivilizational encounters and intersubjectivity has been no less influential. This comprehensive collection provides an entry-point into Cox’s work across these themes of history, theory, political economy, and civilizations, offering a way for researchers and students to engage with Robert W. Cox’s rich legacy and deploy the many insights of his thought into contemporary scholarship.This book will be of interest to undergraduate and postgraduate students as well as academics working within world politics. This book was originally published as a special issue of the journal Globalizations.

"The explosion of new themes and working areas in social sciences in the aftermath of the Cold-War stimulated the 'cultural turn' of the previous decades and strengthened the position of the notion of 'civilization' as a unit of analysis and locus of academic debate in the fields of history, philosophy, sociology, political science, and international relations. Given the fabricated and standardized nature of recent literature on political, economic and socio-cultural aspects of globalization, it is crystal clear that historically and philosophically enlightened works written from the perspective of civilizational transformation will provide the much needed sophistication to conventional social science analyses trying to elucidate the organizing principles of the global order. This novel collection represents a path-breaking work in the field of global/civilizational studies by constituting an interdisciplinary and theoretically-informed platform on which complex debates on the political, economic, socio-cultural, philosophical and ecological aspects of the global order could be conducted. The editors, Sadik Unay and Muzaffer Senel, managed to gather a truly original collection of articles from some of the leading authorities and promising academics on the theme of global orders with special reference to a civilization transformation covering a wide spectrum in time and space from Antique Greece to the Islamic World, from Europe to the US and from East Asian history to current globalizations."--Publisher's description.

This timely and original volume fills the gaps in the existing theoretical and philosophical literature on international relations by problematizing civilization as a new unit of research in global politics. It interrogates to what extent and in what ways civilization is becoming a strategic frame of reference in the current world order. The book complements and advances the existing field of study previously dominated by other approaches – economic, national, class-based, racial, and colonial – and tests its key philosophical suppositions against countries that exhibit civilizational ambitions. The authors are all leading international scholars in the fields of political theory, IR, cultural analysis, and area studies who deal with various aspects of the civilizational arena. Offering key chapters on ideology, multipolarity, modernity, liberal democracy, and capitalism, this book extends the existing methodological, theoretical, and empirical debates for IR and area studies scholars globally. It will be of great interest to politicians, public opinion makers, and all those concerned with the evolution of world affairs.

A highly original and readily accessible examination of the cultural dimension of international politics, this book provides a sophisticated and nuanced account of the relevance of cultural categories for the analysis of world politics. The book’s analytical focus is on plural and pluralist civilizations. Civilizations exist in the plural within one civilization of modernity; and they are internally pluralist rather than unitary. The existence of plural and pluralist civilizations is reflected in transcivilizational engagements, intercivilizational encounters and, only occasionally, in civilizational clashes. Drawing on the work of Eisenstadt, Collins and Elias, Katzenstein’s introduction provides a cogent and detailed alternative to Huntington’s. This perspective is then developed and explored through six outstanding case studies written by leading experts in their fields. Combining contemporary and historical perspectives while addressing the civilizational politics of America, Europe, China, Japan, India and Islam, the book draws these discussions together in Patrick Jackson’s theoretically informed, thematic conclusion. Featuring an exceptional line-up and representing a diversity of theoretical views within one integrative perspective, this work will be of interest to all scholars and students of international relations, sociology and political science.

In 1993 the esteemed journal FOREIGN AFFAIRS published an article entitled "The Clash of Civilizations?" by Samuel P. Huntington. According to the journal's editors it went on to generate more discussion than anything they had published since the Second World War. In the article, Huntington posed the question whether conflicts between civilizations would dominate the future of world politics. In the book, he gives the answer, showing not only how clashes between civilizations are the greatest threat to world peace but also how an international order based on civilizations is the best safeguard against war. Since September 11, his thesis has seemed even more prescient and acute. THE CLASH OF CIVILIZATIONS AND THE REMAKING OF WORLD ORDER is now recognised as a classic study of international relations in an increasingly uncertain world.

Aimed at readers interested in constructing a less West-centric, more global discipline of International Relations, this book provides a concise, thorough introduction to the thought and practice of international relations from premodern India, China and the Islamic world, and how it relates to modern IR.