Why is there no gender in the English School?

Review of International Studies

Volumn 37, Issue 2, 2011, Pages 855-879

  Blanchard, Eric M ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

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EID: 79953077550     PISSN: 02602105     EISSN: 14699044     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1017/S0260210510000458     Document Type: Article

References (162)

1. Hedley Bull, 'International Theory: The Case for a Classical Approach', World Politics, 18:3 (1966), pp. 361-77, 366.
2. Despite a recent proliferation of work developing English School theory, gender has been almost entirely ignored by this literature outside of passing mentions of women. Feminist IR theorists for their part, Christine Sylvester, Feminist International Relations: An Unfinished Journey (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), p. 13
3. and Charlotte Hooper, Manly States (New York: Columbia University Press, 2001) have made suggestive comments about the English School's silence on gender but not pursued them systematically.
4. The exception is Jacqui True, 'Feminism', in Alex J. Bellamy (ed.), International Society and its Critics (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), pp. 151-62.
5. While True's analysis focuses on expanding the underdeveloped concept of international society to incorporate gender, the analysis offered here aims to develop a conversational framework at a more general level of mutual theory building. The reformulated English School troika of James der Derian's post-classical approach, sketched in der Derian, 'Hedley Bull and the Case for a Post-Classical Approach', in Harry Bauer and Elisabetta Brighi (eds), International Relations at LSA: A History of 75 Years (London: Millennium Publishing Group, 2003), pp. 61-93, includes an 'Irenist' tradition, which drawing heavily on Beauvoirian feminism, focuses on the links between patriarchy and war. These promising but brief interventions have not served to prompt any sea-change in English School thought.
6. Timothy Dunne, 'The Social Construction of International Society', European Journal of International Relations, 1:3 (1995), pp. 367-89.
7. Chris Brown, 'World Society and the English School: An 'International Society' Perspective on World Society', European Journal of International Relations, 7:4 (2001), pp. 423-41. (Pubitemid 33403133)
8. James der Derian, On Diplomacy: A Genealogy of Western Estrangement (Oxford: Blackwell, 1987)
9. as well as 'Hedley Bull and the Idea of Diplomatic Culture', in Rick Fawn and Jeremy Larkins (eds), International Society after the Cold War: Anarchy and Order Reconsidered (London: MacMillan, 1996), pp. 84-100, and 'Hedley Bull and the Case for a Post-Classical Approach', note 3 above.
10. Timothy Dunne, 'Colonial Encounters in International Relations: Reading Wight, Writing Australia', Australian Journal of International Affairs, 51:3 (1997), pp. 309-23.
11. Barry Buzan, 'From International System to International Society: Structural Realism and Regime Theory Meet the English School', International Organization, 47:3 (1993), pp. 327-52;
12. Tony Evans and Peter Wilson, 'Regime Theory and the English School of International Relations: A Comparison', Millennium, 21:3 (1992), pp. 329-51.
13. Buzan, 'From International System'; Richard Little, 'The English School's Contributions to the Study of International Relations', European Journal of International Relations, 6:3 (2000), pp. 395-422.
14. Roger Epp, 'The English School on the Frontiers of International Society: A Hermeneutic Recollection', Review of International Studies, 24 (1998), pp. 47-63.
15. Timothy Dunne, 'International Society: Theoretical Promises Fulfilled?', Cooperation and Conflict, 30:2 (1995), pp. 125-54, 138.
16. Timothy Dunne, Inventing International Society: A History of the English School (London: Macmillan Press, 1998).
17. Martin Wight, in Gabriele Wight and Brian Porter (eds), International Theory: The Three Traditions (New York: Holmes and Meier/Royal Institute of International Affairs, 1992).
18. Barry Buzan, 'The English School: An Underexploited Resource in IR', Review of International Studies, 27 (2001), pp. 471-88.
19. Timothy Dunne, 'International Society: Theoretical Promises Fulfilled?' Cooperation and Conflict, 30, 2, (1995) pp. 125-154, p. 140.
20. Dunne, 'The Social Construction,' p. 368. (see n. 4 above);
21. see also the project outlined in Andrew Linklater and Hidemi Suganami, The English School of International Relations: A Contemporary Reassessment (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006).
22. Ole Wæver, 'Four Meanings of International Society', in B. A. Roberson (ed.), International Society and the Development of International Relations Theory (London: Continuum, 2002), pp. 80-144, p. 98.
23. Dunne, Inventing International Society, p. 183.
24. Robert Keohane, 'Beyond Dichotomy: Conversations between International Relations and Feminist Theory', International Studies Quarterly, 42:1 (1998), pp. 193-8, 197.
25. Robert Keohane, 'International Institutions: Two Approaches', International Studies Quarterly, 32:4 (1988), pp. 379-96.
26. Timothy J. McKeown, 'Case Studies and the Statistical Worldview: Review of King, Keohane, and Verba's Designing Social Inquiry: Scientific Inference in Qualitative Research', International Organization, 53:1 (1999), pp. 161-90.
27. However, this is not an unqualified endorsement of Buzan's vision of the School's potential for 'grand theory' of the sort offered in Alexander Wendt, Social Theory of International Politics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999). For the argument that Wendt's brand of constructivism is problematic because its grand theory 'remains committed to the ideal of a disciplinary unity that in fact no longer finds any correspondence in the subject matter it claims knowledge of'
28. see Andreas Behnke, 'Grand Theory in the Age of its Impossibility: Contemplations on Alexander Wendt', Cooperation and Conflict, 36:1 (2001), pp. 121-34, 131.
29. Behnke, 'Grand Theory'.
30. V. Spike Peterson, 'Transgressing Boundaries: Theories of Knowledge, Gender and International Relations', Millennium: Journal of International Studies, 21:2 (1992), p. 184.
31. Ann Tickner, 'You Just Don't Understand: Troubled Engagements between Feminists and IR Theorists', International Studies Quarterly 41:4 (1997), pp. 611-32, 613.
32. V. Spike Peterson, 'Introduction', in V. Spike Peterson (ed.), Gendered States: Feminist (Re) Visions of International Relations Theory (Boulder, Colorado: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 1992), pp. 1-29, 16.
33. Ann Tickner, Gendering World Politics: Issues and Approaches in the Post-Cold War Era (New York: Columbia University Press, 2001).
34. Roger Epp, 'Martin Wight: International Relations as a Realm of Persuasion', in Francis A. Beer and Robert Hariman (eds), Post-Realism: The Rhetorical Turn in International Relations (East Lansing, Michigan: Michigan State University Press, 1996), pp. 121-42, 132, 137.
35. Iver B. Neumann, 'The English School and the Practices of World Society', Review of International Studies, 27 (2001), pp. 503-7. (Pubitemid 33609072)
36. Richard Little, 'The English School's Contributions to the Study of International Relations', European Journal of International Relations, 6:3 (2000), pp. 395-422; (Pubitemid 33277491)
37. cf. Barry Buzan, From International to World Society? English School Theory and the Social Structure of Globalization (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), p. 23.
38. Bull, 'International Theory'.
39. Hedley Bull, 'Martin Wight and the Theory of International Relations', British Journal of International Studies, 2 (1976), pp. 101-16, 114.
40. Evelyn Fox Keller, Reflections on Gender and Science (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1985), p. 7.
41. Hedley Bull, The Anarchical Society: A Study of Order in World Politics (New York: Columbia University Press, 1977), p. xv.
42. Peterson, 'Introduction', p. 12.
43. Sandra Harding, 'Starting Thought from Women's Lives: Eight Resources for Maximizing Objectivity', Journal of Social Philosophy, 21:2/3 (1990), pp. 140-9, 142.
44. Dunne, 'The Social Construction' and Inventing International Society; cf. Christian Reus-Smit, 'Imagining Society: Constructivism and the English School', British Journal of Politics and International Relations, 4:3 (2002), pp. 487-509.
45. Dunne, Inventing International Society, p. 187-89.
46. Buzan, From International to World Society?, pp. 3, 95.
47. Birgit Locher and Elisabeth Prügl, 'Feminism and Constructivism: Worlds Apart or Sharing the Middle Ground?', International Studies Quarterly, 45 (2001), pp. 111-29.
48. J. Ann Tickner, Gender in International Relations: Feminist Perspectives on Achieving International Security (New York: Columbia University Press, 1992), ch. 3.
49. Bull, 'Martin Wight', p. 104, emphasis added.
50. Christine di Stephano, Configurations of Masculinity: A Feminist Perspective on Modern Political Theory (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1991).
51. Bull, Anarchical Society, p. 25.
52. Wight, International Theory, p. 40.
53. Jean Bethke Elshtain, Public Man, Private Woman: Women in Social and Political Thought (Princeton: Princeton University Press, (1981), p. 98.
54. Christine Sylvester, Feminist Theory and International Relations in a Postmodern Era (Great Britain: Cambridge University Press, 1994), p. 80.
55. Rebecca Grant, 'The Sources of Gender Bias in International Relations Theory', in Rebecca Grant and K. Newland (eds), Gender and International Relations (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1991), pp. 8-26, 10.
56. Di Stephano, who interprets Hobbes as a 'modern masculine thinker', argues that masculinity 'inhabits his work across a remarkably broad range of levels', see Di Stephano, Configurations, pp. 102-3.
57. Bull, Anarchical Society, p. 25.
58. Tickner, Gendering World Politics, p. 48.
59. Susan Moller Okin, Women in Western Political Thought (Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1979), pp. 112-3.
60. Jean Bethke Elshtain, Mediations on Modern Political Thought: Masculine/Feminine Themes from Luther to Arendt (University Park, Pennsylvania: Pennsylvania State University Press), pp. 26-7.
61. Wight, International Theory, p. 8.
62. Jan Jindy Pettman, Worlding Women (New York: Routledge, 1996), p. 137.
63. Mary Ann Tetrault, 'Women and Revolution', in V. Spike Peterson (ed.), Gendered States: Feminist (Re) Visions of International Relations Theory (Boulder: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 1992), pp. 99-121, 111.
64. R. W. Connell, Masculinities (Berkeley and los Angeles: University of California Press, 1995).
65. Bull, Anarchical Society, p. 140.
66. V. Spike Peterson, 'Whose Rights? A Critique of the "Givens" in Human Rights Discourse', Alternatives, 15 (1990), pp. 303-44
67. see also Hilary Charlesworth, 'What are "Women's International Human Rights"?', in Rebecca Cook (ed.), Human Rights of Women: National and International Perspectives (USA: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1994), pp. 58-84.
68. Tickner, Gendering World Politics, pp. 115-6.
69. Bull, Anarchical Society, p. 5.
70. Bull, Anarchical Society, p. 4-6.
71. Linklater and Suganami, The English School, pp. 58-9.
72. Bull, Anarchical Society, p. 68.
73. Bull, Anarchical Society, pp. 13-4.
74. Bull, Anarchical Society, p. 46.
75. Bull, 'Society and Anarchy in International Relations', in James der Derian (ed.), International Theory: Critical Investigations (New York: New York University Press, 1995), pp. 75-93, 75.
76. Bull, 'International Theory', p. 35.
77. V. Spike Peterson, 'Security and Sovereign States: What Is at Stake in Taking Feminism Seriously?', in V. Spike Peterson (ed.), Gendered States, pp. 31-64, 46.
78. Mona Harrington, 'What Exactly Is Wrong with the Liberal State as an Agent of Change?', in Peterson (ed.), Gendered States, pp. 65-82, 66.
79. Bull, 'Society and Anarchy', p. 93.
80. Bull quoted by Andrew Hurrell, 'Society and Anarchy in International Relations', in B. A. Robertson (ed.), International Society and the Development of International Relations Theory (New York: Continuum, 2002), pp. 37-42, 37.
81. Bull, Anarchical Society, p. 14.
82. Bull, Anarchical Society, pp. 67-71.
83. Buzan, From International to World Society?, p. 167.
84. Buzan, From International to World Society?, pp. 28, 97, 226.
85. Buzan, From International to World Society?, p. 23.
86. Buzan, From International to World Society?, pp. 106-107.
87. Buzan, From International to World Society?, p. 109.
88. Buzan, From International to World Society?, p. 117.
89. Reus-Smit, 'Imagining Society', p. 491.
90. Buzan, From International to World Society?, p. 176.
91. Buzan, From International to World Society? P. 230.
92. Buzan, From International to World Society? P. 250.
93. Barry Buzan, 'Rethinking Hedley Bull on the Institutions of International Society', in Richard Little and John Williams (eds), The Anarchical Society in a Globalized World (Great Britain: Palgrave, 2006), pp. 75-96, 92.
94. Buzan, From International to World Society?, pp. 183-4.
95. Many feminists have come to see patriarchy as an overused and imprecise concept, finding that gender has more general connotations suitable for treating the 'social relations that separate people into differentiated gendered statues'.
96. See Judith Lorber, Paradoxes of Gender (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1994), p. 3.
97. However, Cynthia Enloe argues for the continued use of the term on grounds that continues to provoke thought in a way that less inflammatory terms, such as gender and gender system, do not, while it 'reminds us that we're investigating power.' Carol Cohn and Cynthia Enloe, 'A Conversation with Cynthia Enloe: Feminists Look at Masculinity and Men Who Wage War', Signs: Journal of Women and Culture in Society, 28:4 (2003), pp. 1187-207, 1193.
98. See Eric M. Blanchard, 'Gender, International Relations, and the Development of Feminist Security Theory', Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society, 28:4 (2003), pp. 1289-312.
99. Hedley Bull and Adam Watson (eds), The Expansion of International Society (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1984), p. 32.
100. Hedley Bull, 'The Revolt Against the West', in Hedley Bull and Adam Watson (eds), The Expansion of International Society (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1984), pp. 217-28, 220-222.
101. Bull and Watson, 'Conclusion', in Bull and Watson, The Expansion of International Society, pp. 425-35, 433.
102. Andrew Linklater, 'Rationalism', in Scott Burchill, et al. (eds), Theories of International Relations (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1996), pp. 93-118, 106.
103. See Edward Keene, Beyond the Anarchical Society: Grotius, Colonialism and Order in World Politics (Cambridge University Press, 2002)
104. and Buzan, From International to World Society?, particularly pp. 214-7 and the discussion in ch. 6.
105. See William A. Callahan, 'Nationalizing International Theory: Race, Class and the English School', Global Society, 18:4 (2004), pp. 305-23. (Pubitemid 39533188)
106. Linklater and Suganami, The English School of International Relations, p. 134.
107. Jacqui True, 'Feminism', p. 157, see n. 3.
108. Chandra Talpade Mohanty, 'Under Western Eyes: Feminist Scholarship and Colonial Discourses', in Chandra Talpade Mohanty, Ann Russo, and Lourdes Torres (eds), Third World Women and the Politics of Feminism (Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1991), pp. 51-80, 55.
109. Chandra Talpade Mohanty, 'Under Western Eyes: Feminist Scholarship and Colonial Discourses', in Chandra Talpade Mohanty, Ann Russo, and Lourdes Torres (eds), Third World Women and the Politics of Feminism (Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1991), p. 70.
110. R. W. Connell, Masculinities (Berkeley and los Angeles: University of California Press, 1995), p. 199.
111. R. W. Connell, Masculinities (Berkeley and los Angeles: University of California Press, 1995), p. 200.
112. R. W. Connell, Masculinities (Berkeley and los Angeles: University of California Press, 1995), p. 201.
113. For an excellent review and assessment, see Iver B. Neumann, 'The English School on Diplomacy', in Christer Jönsson and Richard Langhorne (eds), Diplomacy Volume I: Theory of Diplomacy (London: Sage, 2004), pp. 92-116.
114. See also James der Derian, On Diplomacy: A Genealogy of Western Estrangement (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1987).
115. Paul Sharp, 'For Diplomacy: Representation and the Study of International Relations', International Studies Review, 1:1 (1999), pp. 33-57. (Pubitemid 29527374)
116. Christer Jöhnsson, 'Diplomacy, Bargaining and Negotiation', in Walter Carlsnaes, Thomas Risse and Beth A. Simmons (eds), Handbook of International Relations (London: Sage, 2002), pp. 212-34.
117. Ian Clark, 'Traditions of Thought and Classical Theories of International Relations', in Ian Clark and Iver B. Neumann (eds), Classical Theories of International Relations (New York: St. Martin's Press), pp. 1-19, 5.
118. Bull, Anarchical Society, p. 172.
119. Bull, Anarchical Society, p. 183.
120. Bull, Anarchical Society, p. 169.
121. Bull, Anarchical Society, p. 169.
122. Christine Sylvester, Feminist Theory and International Relations in a Postmodern Era (Great Britain: Cambridge University Press, 1994), p. 82.
123. Madeline Albright, Madame Secretary: A Memoir (New York: Miramax Books, 2003), p. 340.
124. Marilyn Séphocle, Then, They Were Twelve: The Women of Washington's Embassy Row (Westport, Connecticut: Praeger, 2000).
125. See Lynne K. Dunn, 'Joining the Boys' Club: The Diplomatic Career of Eleanor Lansing Dulles', and Judith Ewell, 'Barely in the Inner Circle: Jeane Kirkpatrick', both in Edward Crapol (ed.), Women and American Foreign Policy: Lobbyists, Critics, and Insiders. 2nd edition (Wilmington, Delaware: Scholarly Resources Inc., 1992), pp. 119-35 and pp. 153-71;
126. Ann Miller Morin, Her Excellency: An Oral History of American Women Ambassadors (New York: Twayne Publishers, 1995);
127. see also Martin F. Herz (ed.), Diplomacy: The Role of the Wife A Symposium (Washington DC: Georgetown University Institute for the Study of Diplomacy, 1981)
128. and Séphocle, Then, They Were Twelve (see note 112 above).
129. Cynthia Enloe, Bananas, Beaches, and Bases: Making Feminist Sense of International Politics (Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1989).
130. Cynthia Enloe, Bananas, Beaches, and Bases: Making Feminist Sense of International Politics (Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1989). p. 97.
131. Geoffrey Wiseman, '"Polylateralism" and New Modes of Global Dialogue', in Christer Jönsson and Richard Langhorne (eds), Diplomacy Vol. III: Problems and Issues in Contemporary Diplomacy (Sage Library of International Relations), (London: Sage 2004), pp. 36-57.
132. Richard Burt et al., Reinventing Diplomacy in the Information Age: A Report of the CSIS Advisory Panel on Diplomacy in the Information Age (Washington, DC: Center for Strategic and International Studies, 1998).
133. Wilson Dizard Jr., Digital Diplomacy: US Foreign Policy in the Information Age (Westport, Connecticut: Praeger, 2001), pp. 4-5.
134. Margaret E. Keck and Kathryn Sikkink, Activists Beyond Borders: Advocacy Networks in International Politics (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1998), ch. 5.
135. Erica Svedberg, 'Academics, Practitioners, and Diplomacy: An ISP Symposium on the Theory and Practice of Diplomacy - Feminist Theory and International Negotiations', International Studies Perspectives, 3 (2002), pp. 139-75. (Pubitemid 34577551)
136. Reus-Smit, p. 490. On the strength and weaknesses of the classical English School in regards to normative theory, see Linklater and Suganami, pp. 107-13.
137. Hedley Bull, 'The Grotian Conception of International Society', in Herbert Butterfield and Martin Wight (eds), Diplomatic Investigations: Essays in the Theory of International Politics (London: Allen & Unwin, 1966), pp. 51-73.
138. I am grateful to an anonymous reviewer for this point. For an account of Bull's shift towards sceptical solidarism, see Nicholas J. Wheeler and Timothy Dunne, 'Hedley Bull's Pluralism of the Intellect and Solidarism of the Will', International Affairs, 72:1 (1996), pp. 91-107. (Pubitemid 126324275)
139. Linklater and Suganami, The English School of International Relations; for an overview pp. 59-74.
140. Nicholas J. Wheeler, Saving Strangers: Humanitarian Intervention in International Society (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), p. 295.
141. For contrasting views on this debate, see also Nicholas J. Wheeler, 'Pluralist or Solidarist Conceptions of International Society: Bull and Vincent on Humanitarian Intervention', Millennium: Journal of International Studies, 21:3 (1992), pp. 463-87;
142. Wheeler and Dunne, 'Hedley Bull's Pluralism';
143. Robert Jackson, The Global Covenant: Human Conduct in a World of States (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000)
144. and John Williams, 'Pluralism, Solidarism and the Emergence of World Society in English School Theory', International Relations, 19:1 (2005), pp. 19-38. (Pubitemid 40412843)
145. Wheeler, 'Pluralist or Solidarist Conceptions', p. 471.
146. Dunne's account of the post-9/11 period focuses on the threat that hierarchy, exacerbated by American preponderance, poses to international society, arguing that international relations is currently characterised by 'revolt' against international society on the part of the US, see Tim Dunne, 'Society and Hierarchy in International Relations', International Relations, 17:3 (2003), pp. 303-20. (Pubitemid 37283261)
147. Wheeler finds that the War on Terrorism has not affected the underlying solidaristpluralist dynamic, see Nicholas J. Wheeler, 'Humanitarian Intervention After September 11, 2001', in Anthony F. Lang (ed.), Just Intervention (Washington DC: Georgetown University Press, 2003), pp. 192-216.
148. As suggested by Linklater and Suganami, p. 60.
149. Peterson, 'Whose Rights?', p. 305.
150. Andrew Hurrell, 'Society and Anarchy in International Relations', in B. A. Robertson (ed.), International Society and the Development of International Relations Theory (New York: Continuum, 2002), pp. 37-42, 37.
151. Wheeler, Saving Strangers, p. 34.
152. Wheeler, Saving Strangers, p. 250.
153. Francine D'Amico, 'Critical Feminism: Deconstructing Gender, Nationalism, and War', in Jenifer Sterling-Folker (ed.), Making Sense of International Relations Theory (Boulder: Lynne Rienner), 2006, pp. 268-81.
154. Further, feminists argue that it is discourses of gender that produce the very distinction between combatant and civilian that the laws of war are predicated on. See Helen M. Kinsella, 'Gendering Grotius: Sex and Sex Difference in the Laws of War', Poltical Theory, 34:2 (2006), pp. 161-91. (Pubitemid 43289816)
155. Wheeler, Saving Strangers, p. 284.
156. Caroline Kennedy-Pipe and Penny Stanley, 'Rape in War: Lessons of the Balkan Conflicts in the 1990s', in Ken Booth (ed.), The Kosovo Tragedy: The Human Rights Dimensions (Portland, OR: Frank Cass, 2001), pp. 67-84, 79. The gender-analytical literature on wartime sexual violence is too vast to note here; on gender and the former Yugoslavia
157. see Alexandra Stiglmayer (ed.), Mass Rape: The War Against Women in Bosnia-Herzegovina (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1994);
158. Beverly Allen, Rape Warfare: The Hidden Genocide in Bosnia-Herzegovina and Croatia (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1996);
159. Lene Hansen, 'Gender, Nation, Rape: Bosnia and the Construction of Security', International Feminist Journal of Politics, 3:1 (2001), pp. 55-75;
160. R. Charli Carpenter, 'Women and Children First: Gender, Norms, and Humanitarian Evacuation in the Balkans 1991-5', International Organization, 57:4 (2003), pp. 661-94. (Pubitemid 37524674)
161. Wheeler, Saving Strangers, p. 12.
162. Wheeler, Saving Strangers, p. 299.