Ordering disorder: The making of world politics (original) (raw)
Related papers
Review of International Studies, 2022
This article offers insights into the character and composition of world order. It does so by focusing on how world order is made and revealed through seemingly disorderly events. We examine how societies struggle to interpret and respond to disorderly events through three modes of treatment: tragedy, crisis, and scandal. These, we argue, are the dominant modes of treatment in world politics, through which an account of disorder is articulated and particular political responses are mobilised. Specifically, we argue that each mode provides a particular way of problematising disorder, locating responsibility, and generating political responses. As we will demonstrate, these modes instigate the ordering of disorder, but they also agitate and reveal the contours of order itself. We argue, therefore, that an attentiveness to how we make sense of and respond to disorder offers the discipline new opportunities for interrogating the underlying forces, dynamics, and structures that define contemporary world politics.
Review of International Studies, 2022
This article offers insights into the character and composition of world order. It does so by focusing on how world order is made and revealed through seemingly disorderly events. We examine how societies struggle to interpret and respond to disorderly events through three modes of treatment: tragedy, crisis, and scandal. These, we argue, are the dominant modes of treatment in world politics, through which an account of disorder is articulated and particular political responses are mobilised. Specifically, we argue that each mode provides a particular way of problematising disorder, locating responsibility, and generating political responses. As we will demonstrate, these modes instigate the ordering of disorder, but they also agitate and reveal the contours of order itself. We argue, therefore, that an attentiveness to how we make sense of and respond to disorder offers the discipline new opportunities for interrogating the underlying forces, dynamics, and structures that define contemporary world politics.
Order and Disorder in World Politics
Alex J. Bellamy (ed), International Society and its Critics (Oxford: Oxford University Press), 2005
In this final chapter of Part Two, the author addresses arguably the central stumbling block for those who would enlarge international society to incorporate elements of world society, alternative levels of analysis, and subject matters: namely, the problem of order. He argues that a concern with order, in its methodological, theoretical, and empirical guises, is the principal feature of the understanding of international society by the English School of International Relations. While order may endorse methodological pluralism, the author argues that the approach does not embrace it and has powerful canons that structure its work, one being the requirement that to count as valid knowledge about international society, a piece of work must begin by referring to the established fathers of the tradition. This preoccupation with order carries over into the empirical and theoretical work conducted by those associated with the School, and the author attempts to critique this by challenging the assumption, central to English School theorizing since Henry Bull, that a degree of order is necessary for the achievement of social goods. Instead, he argues that an overpreoccupation with order can serve the cause of oppression, and therefore insists that progressive change tends to come about through periods of disorder.
The series includes contributions that investigate political, social and cultural processes from a linguistic/discourse-analytic point of view. The aim is to publish monographs and edited volumes which combine language-based approaches with disciplines concerned essentially with human interaction -disciplines such as political science, international relations, social psychology, social anthropology, sociology, economics, and gender studies.
Narrating Global Order and Disorder
Politics and Governance
This thematic issue addresses how strategic narratives affect international order. Strategic narratives are conceived of as stories with a political purpose or narratives used by political actors to affect the behavior of others. The articles in this issue address two significant areas important to the study of international relations: how strategic narratives support or undermine alliances, and how they affect norm formation and contestation. Within a post-Cold War world and in the midst of a changing media environment, strategic narratives affect how the world and its complex issues are understood. This special issue speaks to the difficulties associated with creating creative and committed international cooperation by noting how strategic narratives are working to shape the Post-Cold War international context.
Global Disorder: A Blind Spot or Distinct Concept of the International Society Approach?
Global Studies Quarterly
The international society approach to the study of international relations has advanced a distinct understanding of international order in world politics. Does this approach therefore also implicitly have a distinct understanding of disorder in world politics, too? From a close reading of this literature, and the writings of Hedley Bull in particular, I argue that a “purposive” understanding of disorder in world politics is evident, as well as a set of sociological explanations of it, including hierarchy conflict, political value conflict, and the structural contradictions of international society. I suggest that this approach is more insightful and promising for studying increasing manifestations of disorder in world politics than alternative realist approaches. Finally, I make the case that this concept's analytical utility and theoretical role in this approach is the assessment of the continued viability of international society as a path to order in world politics.
Exploring Vocabularies of Political Disorder
2020
The World Peace Foundation, an operating foundation affiliated solely with the Fletcher School at Tufts University, aims to provide intellectual leadership on issues of peace, justice and security. We believe that innovative research and teaching are critical to the challenges of making peace around the world, and should go hand-in-hand with advocacy and practical engagement with the toughest issues. To respond to organized violence today, we not only need new instruments and tools— we need a new vision of peace. Our challenge is to reinvent peace.