The intention of this work is to show that European expansion not only transformed the historical trajectory of non-European societies but also reconstituted the historical accounts of these societies before European intervention. It asserts that anthropology must pay more attention to history.

Europe and the People without History

International law is a social historical legal tradition that emerged and spread over time to deal with matters between and across polities. This statement may appear obvious, but its full implications point to a thorough reconstruction of theoretical accounts of international law. Part I recounts how Bentham inadvertently created an enduring set of theoretical problems for international law. Part II describes international law as a social historical legal tradition, showing its European origins and diffusion with imperialism, and exposing three slants in international law. Part III broadens the lens to sketch the history of interaction between and across polities and how this has been managed. Part IV details contemporary efforts to deal with this interaction through organizations and transnational law and regulation. With this background in place, Part V elaborates a series of theoretical clarifications. First I unravel several confusions that result from construing state law and international law as parallel categories and conflating system with category. Then I explain why international law is a form of law, although not a unified hierarchical system. Contrary to common perceptions, furthermore, I show that state law and international law are not and have never been separate systems. Finally, I clarify the relationship between international law and transnational law and regulation. Aspects of this theoretical reconstruction may initially appear surprising, but they follow from the insight that international law is a social historical tradition.

What Is International Law

This is not a comprehensive article about what enlightenment is. I actually question what the enlightened state might be, and might not be, or in what context one might view it. For too long we have accepted a general definition of enlightenment as it was traditionally passed on. When one starts to ask questions, it becomes much more complicated, but also more interesting. I think it is high time to start a discussion of what enlightenment really is.

What Is Enlightenment

Therefore, the seeker after the truth is not one who studies the writings of the ancients and, following his natural disposition, puts his trust in them, but rather the one who suspects his faith in them and questions what he gathers from them, the one who submits to argument and demonstration, and not to the sayings of a human being whose nature is fraught with all kinds of imperfection and de‹ciency. Thus the duty of the man who investigates the writings of scientists, if learning the truth is his goal, is to make himself the enemy of all that he reads, and, applying his mind to the core and margins of its content, attack it from every side. He should also suspect himself as he performs his critical examination of it, so that he may avoid falling into either prejudice or leniency. (Ibn al-Haytham)1

국제정치이론 = Theory of international politics

‘Globalization’ was the Zeitgeist of the 1990s. In the social sciences, it gave rise to the claim that deepening interconnectedness was fundamentally transforming the nature of human society, and was replacing the sovereign state system with a multi-layered, multilateral system of ‘global governance’. A decade later, however, these expectations appear already falsified by the course of world affairs. The idea of ‘globalization’ no longer captures the ‘spirit of the times’: the ‘age of globalization’ is unexpectedly over. Why has this happened? This article argues that ‘Globalization Theory’ always suffered from basic flaws: as a general social theory; as a historical sociological argument about the nature of modern international relations; and as a guide to the interpretation of empirical events. However, it also offers an alternative, ‘conjunctural analysis’ of the 1990s, in order both to explain the rise and fall of ‘globalization’ itself, and to illustrate the enduring potential for International Relations of those classical approaches which Globalization Theory had sought to displace.

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Globalization Theory: A Post Mortem

Historical sociological studies in IR face a challenge similar to that discussed by Martin Wight in ‘Why is There no International Theory?’ Classical social theorists conceptualized ‘society’ in the ontological singular, leaving their successors with a ‘domestic analogy’ problem which has dogged attempts to provide a social theory of International Relations. Overcoming this problem requires an expansion of the premises of social theory to incorporate those general features of social reality which generate the phenomenon of ‘the international’. This expansion can be achieved using Leon Trotsky's idea of ‘uneven and combined development’. Specifically, the existence of ‘the international’ arises ultimately from the ‘unevenness’ of human sociohistorical existence; its distinctive characteristics can be derived from analysis of the resultant condition of ‘combined development’; and its significance, thus sociologically redefined, entails a reconceptualization of ‘development’ itself — one which removes the source of the ‘domestic analogy’ problem for historical sociology.

Why is There No International Historical Sociology

The Empire of Civil Society mounts a compelling critique of the orthodox realist theory of international relations and provides a historical-materialist approach to the international system.

The empire of civil society: critique of the realist theory of international relations

In recent decades, the discipline of International Relations has experienced both dramatic institutional growth and unprecedented intellectual enrichment. And yet, unlike neighbouring disciplines such as Geography, Sociology, History and Comparative Literature, it has still not generated any ‘big ideas’ that have impacted across the human sciences. Why is this? And what can be done about it? This article provides an answer in three steps. First, it traces the problem to IR’s enduring definition as a subfield of Political Science. Second, it argues that IR should be re-grounded in its own disciplinary problematique: the consequences of (societal) multiplicity. And finally, it shows how this re-grounding unlocks the trans-disciplinary potential of IR. Specifically, ‘uneven and combined development’ provides an example of an IR ‘big idea’ that could travel to other disciplines: for by operationalizing the consequences of multiplicity, it reveals the causal and constitutive significance of ‘the international’ for the social world as a whole.

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Justin Rosenberg

Papers

Globalization Theory: A Post Mortem

Why is There No International Historical Sociology

The empire of civil society: critique of the realist theory of international relations

International Relations in the prison of Political Science

The empire of civil society