Culture and Order in World Politics – eBook

Understanding how cultural diversity links to international order is a pressing contemporary challenge. Building on ideas first advanced in Reus-Smit’s On Cultural Diversity (2018), Culture and Order in World Politics (PDF) advances a new framework for understanding the connection between culture and order in world politics. Through a ground-breaking interdisciplinary collaboration between leading historians, sociologists and international relations scholars, international lawyers, it argues that cultural diversity in social life is ubiquitous instead of exceptional, and shows that the organization of cultural diversity has been inseparably tied to the legitimation and constitution of political authority in diverse international orders, from the Warring States China, through early modern Europe and the Ottoman and Qing Empires, to present’s global liberal order. It stresses the successive ‘diversity regimes’ that have been built to govern cultural differences since the nineteenth century, traces the resistances and exclusions these projects have engendered, and considers modern global vulnerabilities and axes of contestation.

Reviews

‘This ebook pulls off a seemingly impossible task: to highlight the role of culture in international orders without treating ‘culture’ as homogenous, static, and bounded. Once and for all we can see past the clash of civilizations to better understand how cultural diversity matters for global politics.’ — Julian Go, Boston University, and author of Patterns of Empire

‘The second volume of a trilogy, this intensely conceived and executed ebook draws on multiple disciplines (sociology, history, law, and political theory) to develop its crucial argument. Cultural diversity is marbled by diversity regimes (Ottoman, Chinese, Westphalian) and noticeable in a large number of variegated domains (such as religion, law, gender, and global cultural heritage). The persuasive results are a wake-up call for much IR scholarship. Culture rest time is over.’ — Peter J. Katzenstein, Walter S. Carpenter, Jr. Professor of International Studies, Cornell University, New York

‘Culture and Order in World Politics is a path-breaking ebook that sets out a new and interdisciplinary approach for systematically studying culture, and its effect, in global politics. Challenging the last tendency in IR to subscribe to either outdated or simplistic conceptions of culture, the contributors draw on insights from anthropology, history sociology, and cultural studies to show how different international orders over time have been formed by cultural differences. The ebook’s historical breadth, which places the much discussed ‘liberal international order’ in perspective, together with its theoretically-rich treatment of cultural diversity, will make it a vital reading for those seeking to cope with the lasting reality of cultural diversity and its connection to international order.’ — Jennifer Welsh, European University Institute, Italy

NOTE: The product only includes the ebook, Culture and Order in World Politics, in PDF. No access codes are included.