The English School and the practices of world society

Review of International Studies

Volumn 27, Issue 3, 2001, Pages 503-507

  Neumann, Iver B ^a  

^a NONE

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 0035613416     PISSN: 02602105     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1017/S0260210501005034     Document Type: Article

References (13)

1. See Mark Laffey and Jutta Weldes, 'Beyond Belief: Symbolic Technologies and the Study of International Relations', European Journal of International Relations, 3:2 (1997), pp. 193-237.
2. E.E. Evans-Pritchard, The Nuer. A Description of the Modes of Livelihood and Political Institutions of a Nilotic People (Oxford: Clarendon, 1940); Clifford Geertz, Negara: The Theatre-State in Nineteenth-Century Bali (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1980); James C. Scott, Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed (New Haven, NJ: Yale University Press, 1998). An anthropologist may find it strange that I may laud a push beyond hermeneutics and a work by Geertz in the same paragraph, but to the IR eye Geertz is positively advanced in his inclusion of issues which are to do with social organization.
3. E.E. Evans-Pritchard, The Nuer. A Description of the Modes of Livelihood and Political Institutions of a Nilotic People (Oxford: Clarendon, 1940); Clifford Geertz, Negara: The Theatre-State in Nineteenth-Century Bali (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1980); James C. Scott, Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed (New Haven, NJ: Yale University Press, 1998). An anthropologist may find it strange that I may laud a push beyond hermeneutics and a work by Geertz in the same paragraph, but to the IR eye Geertz is positively advanced in his inclusion of issues which are to do with social organization.
4. E.E. Evans-Pritchard, The Nuer. A Description of the Modes of Livelihood and Political Institutions of a Nilotic People (Oxford: Clarendon, 1940); Clifford Geertz, Negara: The Theatre-State in Nineteenth-Century Bali (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1980); James C. Scott, Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed (New Haven, NJ: Yale University Press, 1998). An anthropologist may find it strange that I may laud a push beyond hermeneutics and a work by Geertz in the same paragraph, but to the IR eye Geertz is positively advanced in his inclusion of issues which are to do with social organization.
5. Barry Buzan, 'The English School: An Underexploited Resource in IR', Review of International Studies, 27:3 (2001), p. 477.
6. R.J. Vincent, Nonintervention and International Order (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1974).
7. Iver B. Neumann, 'Kosovo and the End of the Legitimate Warring State', in Peter van Ham and Sergei Medvedev (eds.), Kosovo and the End of an Era (Manchester: Manchester University Press, forthcoming).
8. Margaret E. Keck and Kathryn Sikkink, Activists beyond Borders: Advocacy Networks in International Politics (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1998), pp. 32-4. Their key definition runs as follows: 'Networks are forms of organization characterized by voluntary, reciprocal, and horizontal patterns of communication and exchange. ... Major actors in advocacy networks may include the following: (1) international and domestic nongovernmental research and advocacy organizations; (2) local social movements; (3) foundations; (4) the media; (5) churches, trade unions, consumer organizations, and intellectuals; (6) parts of regional and international intergovernmental organizations; and (7) parts of the executive and/or parliamentary branches of governments. Not all these will be present in each advocacy network' (pp. 8-9). One notes that the two latter items on the list signal a direct overlap with international society as understood by the English School. A reconceptualization of these networks in the light of the English School concepts of international society and world society would probably prove fruitful.
9. Buzan, 'The English School', p. 487. Focusing on new actors, and on how states interact with these new actors, would also be interesting responses to the sustained attacks on the English School for being state-centric: it would acknowledge the charge, but demonstrate reasons why and to what extent state-centrism is still called for. Ian Clark, Globalization and International Relations Theory (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), begins to chart some routes along which this may be done. Another direction for such efforts would be to complement the canonical text on The Expansion of International Society with more work on how state and non-state actors experienced being expanded upon. I have made a preliminary effort in this direction in Neumann, Russia and the Idea of Europe: A Study in Identity and International Relations (London: Routledge, 1996).
10. Buzan, 'The English School', p. 487. Focusing on new actors, and on how states interact with these new actors, would also be interesting responses to the sustained attacks on the English School for being state-centric: it would acknowledge the charge, but demonstrate reasons why and to what extent state-centrism is still called for. Ian Clark, Globalization and International Relations Theory (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), begins to chart some routes along which this may be done. Another direction for such efforts would be to complement the canonical text on The Expansion of International Society with more work on how state and non-state actors experienced being expanded upon. I have made a preliminary effort in this direction in Neumann, Russia and the Idea of Europe: A Study in Identity and International Relations (London: Routledge, 1996).
11. Buzan, 'The English School', p. 487. Focusing on new actors, and on how states interact with these new actors, would also be interesting responses to the sustained attacks on the English School for being state-centric: it would acknowledge the charge, but demonstrate reasons why and to what extent state-centrism is still called for. Ian Clark, Globalization and International Relations Theory (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), begins to chart some routes along which this may be done. Another direction for such efforts would be to complement the canonical text on The Expansion of International Society with more work on how state and non-state actors experienced being expanded upon. I have made a preliminary effort in this direction in Neumann, Russia and the Idea of Europe: A Study in Identity and International Relations (London: Routledge, 1996).
12. But see Carsten F. Rønnfeldt. 'Beyond a Pluralistic Conception of International Society? A Case Study on the International Response to the Conflict in Bosnia-Hercegovina', Cooperation and Conflict: Nordic Journal of International Relations, 34: 2 (1999), pp.141-68.
13. R.B.J. Walker, Inside/Outside: International Relations as Political Theory (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), remains the best demonstration of why this is an apposite and pressing task.