Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-s2hrs Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-13T11:42:16.705Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

International historical what?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 October 2016

Patricia Owens
Patricia Owens*
Affiliation:
Department of International Relations, University of Sussex, Brighton, UK
*
E-mail: p.owens@sussex.ac.uk
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

This essay examines the relationship between history and theory through a historical and political analysis of the rise of distinctly social theories, concepts, and practices in the ‘long 19th century’. Sociomania, obsession with things ‘socio’, is a problem in international theory. It is also a serious missed opportunity for Buzan and Lawson’s study of the 19th century. The Global Transformation contributes to international theory in showing how mainstream IR has failed to grasp the full significance of this period. But, in this crucial regard at least, so too have its authors. In adopting rather than fully historicizing the rise and expansion of social theories, works of ‘historical social science’ obscure rather than illuminate the historical and political origins of social forms of governance and thought; underestimate their significance for the history of international theory; and are unable to identify the more fundamental governance form of which the rise of the modern social realm is a concrete historical expression.

Type
Symposium: Theory, History, and the Global Transformation
Information
International Theory , Volume 8 , Issue 3 , November 2016 , pp. 448 - 457
Copyright
© Cambridge University Press 2016 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Albert, Mathias, Buzan, Barry, and Zürn, Michael. 2013. Bringing Sociology to International Relations: World Politics as Differentiation Theory. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Arendt, Hannah. 1958. The Human Condition. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Barnett, Michael. 2011. Empire of Humanity: A History of Humanitarianism. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.Google Scholar
Bayly, C. A. 2004. The Birth of the Modern World, 1780-1914: Global Connections and Comparisons. Malden, MA: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Bellamy, Alex. 2004. International Society and its Critics. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Buzan, Barry, and Lawson, George. 2015. The Global Transformation: History, Modernity and the Making of Modern International Relations. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Buzan, Barry, and Lawson, George. 2016. “Author’s Response: Theory, History, and the Global Transformation.” International Theory 8(3):502–522.Google Scholar
Buzan, Barry, and Albert, Mathias. 2010. “Differentiation: A Sociological Approach to International Relations Theory.” European Journal of International Relations 16(3):315–3317.Google Scholar
Comte, Auguste. 1875. System of Positive Polity or Treatise on Sociology: Instituting the Religion of Humanity. London: Longmans, Green and co.Google Scholar
Durkheim, Émile. 1984 [1893]. The Division of Labour in Society. Translated by W.D. Halls and introduction by Lewis A. Coser. New York: The Free Press.Google Scholar
Habermas, Jürgen. 1991 [1962]. The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere: An Inquiry Into a Category of Bourgeois Society. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Hobsbawm, Eric. 1962. The Age of Revolution, 1789-1848. London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson.Google Scholar
Hobsbawm, Eric. 1975. The Age of Capital, 1848-1875. London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson.Google Scholar
Hobsbawn, Eric. 1989. The Age of Empire, 1875-1914. London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson.Google Scholar
Kratochwil, Friedrich V. 1991. Rules, Norms, and Decisions: On the Conditions of Practical and Legal Reasoning in International Relations and Domestic Affairs. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Osterhammel, Jürgen. 2009 [2014]. The Transformation of the World: A Global History of the Nineteenth Century. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Owens, Patricia. 2015a. “Method or Madness: Sociolatry in International Thought.” Review of International Studies 41(4):655–674.Google Scholar
Owens, Patricia. 2015b. Economy of Force: Counterinsurgency and the Historical Rise of the Social. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Piven, Francis Fox, and Cloward, Richard A.. 1971. Regulating the Poor: The Functions of Public Welfare. New York: Vintage Books.Google Scholar
Reus-Smit, Christian. 2016. “Theory, History, and Great Transformations.” International Theory 8(3):422–435.Google Scholar
Steinmetz, George. 1993. Regulating the Social: The Welfare State and Local Politics in Imperial Germany. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar