Showing papers in "Journal of International Political Theory in 2010"

An Ethnography of Migrant ‘Illegality’ in Sweden: Included Yet Excepted?:

Abstract: This article examines how migrant ‘illegality’ is experienced in the Swedish context. How do ‘illegal’ migrants manage work, housing, healthcare, safety and a family life in the absence of access t ...

Transnationalism and Cosmopolitanism: Towards Global Citizenship?:

Abstract: The concept of transnationalism, despite a variety of earlier uses, has recently been used to describe the sociological phenomenon of cross-border migrants considering more than one place ‘home’. This can be in terms of identity and belonging, cultural expression, family and other social ties, visits, financial flows, organising working life in more than one nation-state or transnational political projects. In this paper I discuss the theory and practice of transnationalism to assess the practical, explanatory and normative strength of the concept. I then introduce three different forms of cosmopolitan approaches and assess whether transnational migrants' practices contribute to a cosmopolitan outlook and active global citizenship. I show that the extent to which transnationalism contributes to various forms of global citizenship varies according to the different conceptualisations of transnationalism and cosmopolitanism. In conclusion I draw out the implications of these differences for the future protec...

Rethinking International History, Theory and the Event with Hannah Arendt

Abstract: This paper reconsiders the event in International Relations (IR) through the writings of Hannah Arendt. The event has for too long been neglected in IR; international events are overwhelmingly conceived as mere happenings that have meaning only within the process and temporal structure of the theory from which they are understood, and as holding no or only limited meaning in and of themselves. In her work on political theory and her reflections on totalitarianism, however, Arendt elaborates a rich view of the event and its relationship to history, one that offers an alternative way of thinking about international relations. Arendt urges us to remain open to the possibility, however difficult, of conceiving of the event as meaningful outside of the processes within which our established mode of thoughts would have us subsume it. This requires on the part of the historian a commitment to judgement, to a recognition of the importance of imagination and impartiality that gives meaning to the event for others....

Kant, International Law, and the Problem of Humanitarian Intervention

Abstract: International law has one principal mechanism for settling the legality of humanitarian interventions, the United Nations Security Council's power to authorise coercion. However, this is hardly satisfactory in practice and has failed to provide a more secure juridical basis for determining significant conflicts among states over when humanitarian force is justified. This article argues that, in spite of Immanuel Kant's limited analysis of intervention, and his silence on humanitarian intervention, his political theory provides the elements of a compelling analysis on this topic. Five components of Kant's roadmap towards perpetual peace and an eventual world republic give conditional support for humanitarian intervention even in imperfect juridical conditions. This support is conditional on the achievement of juridical progress within and among states and has implications for the development of cosmopolitan citizenship. From Kant we learn that, ultimately, humanitarian intervention should become a matter o...

Free Movement? on the Liberal Impasse in Coping with the Immigration Dilemma:

Abstract: This paper focuses on the relevance of borders and national membership as barriers to first admission. Strengths and weaknesses of the different liberal arguments for open and restricted borders will be analysed, focusing on the ‘liberal paradox’ which holds that an asymmetrical view on entry and exit is compatible with the liberal commitment to equality and individual liberties. Finally, a proposal will be formulated in order to find a middle way between the idealism of open borders and more realist versions of liberal egalitarianism by incorporating a hermeneutical account of human morality as a relational, contextual matter which does not think in terms of borders but instead of trans-boundary dialogical spaces.

Any Given We

Abstract: Democracy and the state are two political notions that have come under considerable duress in late modernity. This paper considers a prominent critic of both, Sheldon Wolin. The paper examines three elements that figure in Wolin's analyses of democracy and the modern state in a central way: community, memory, and the culture of history. A theorisation of these elements can illuminate what is at stake in the articulation of political conceptions that yield communal forms through the constitution of political space. Wolin's analyses of democracy, the state, and modern power can be of help, first, in elucidating the political valences of the three elements themselves; second, in specifying relationships of mutuality among them; and third, in theorising what is at issue in the transposition of these elements from the domestic sphere to the international. The paper speaks mainly to the first and second concerns. A path is explored for thinking what is at stake in the third, namely, locating in and then transpo...

Deleuze, DeLanda and Social Complexity: Implications for the ‘International’

Abstract: The study of world politics in theoretical and empirical terms has recently witnessed an upsurge of interest in the question of complexity, drawing upon complexity theory; particularly, renewed interest in emergent properties and the aleatory nature of the political. This article seeks to demonstrate, primarily via an exploration of the work of Gilles Deleuze and Manuel DeLanda, the possibilities for a type of thinking about the ‘international’ that utilises the notion of social complexity as its primary mode of enframing the major dimensions to world politics. As such it argues for a theoretical re-conceptualisation of the system of states, markets and societies as individual and overlapping scale-entities, each possessing causal agency, with overlapping and enmeshed boundaries, situated in their historical and concrete manifestations. The reified concepts of polity, economy and society are re-cast in the language of assemblage theory as ordering, exchanging and cohering, thus highlighting process in wor...

Responsible Politics of the Neutral: Rethinking International Humanitarianism in the Red Cross Movement via the Philosophy of Roland Barthes:

Abstract: The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) offers a dilemma for international political theory ICRC's success as a humanitarian actor in international conflict is credited to its neutral stance However, ICRC neutrality is vulnerable to serious challenges regarding its supposed avoidance of the political ICRC neutrality is commonly dismissed as either illusory or impossible The problem is not grounded in the principle of neutrality itself, though, but rather in the lack of critical engagement with what it means to be neutral on a humanitarian register ICRC misreads the demands of neutrality in such ways as to permit both partiality and irresponsibility to its mission Drawing from Roland Barthes' address of the neutral, I argue that international humanitarianism is possible as a neutral movement but that this neutrality can only be such through vigorous and fundamentally political movement responsible to the goals of human well-being and dignity as questions

Auto-Immunity of Trust Without Trust:

Abstract: Trust has been widely investigated both theoretically and empirically. Whether thought of as the result of a calculation of costs/benefits, a shared identity, or a leap of faith, there always seems...