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Civilisations and harm: the politics of civilising processes between the West and the non-West

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  08 September 2017

Alan Chong
Alan Chong*
Affiliation:
Associate Professor, Centre for Multilateralism Studies, S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies, Singapore
*
* Correspondence to: Alan Chong, Associate Professor, Centre for Multilateralism Studies, S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies, Nanyang Technological University Singapore, Block S4, Level B4, Nanyang Avenue 639798, Singapore. Author’s email: iscschong@ntu.edu.sg
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Abstract

Andrew Linklater’s Violence and Civilization in the Western States-System is to be both praised and critiqued for opening spaces for discussing civilisational standards in the era of a globalising world. It offers a healthy provocation for inquiry into how non-Western states ought to comprehend the legacies of Western political evolution colouring existing ‘IR’ as a discipline. Linklater’s book inspires three thematic reactions: globalisation does bring harm; the notion of a universal civilisation remains open to debate; and the possibilities of civilising patterns in premodern Southeast Asia serving as supplementary mirrors and extensions of the relationship between violence and civilisation. It is suggested that Linklater’s sequel must consider the trajectory of non-Western sociologies of IR.

Keywords

Critical TheoryHistorical SociologyAsian IRPremodern International FormationsGlobal IR
Type
Forum: Linklater’s Violence and Civilization in the Western States-Systems
Information
Review of International Studies , Volume 43 , Issue 4 , October 2017 , pp. 637 - 653
Copyright
© British International Studies Association 2017 

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References

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52 Chong, ‘Prowess and prestige’, p. 100.

53 See, for instance, Acharya, Amitav and Buzan, Barry (eds), Non-Western International Relations Theory: Perspectives on and beyond Asia (Abingdon: Routledge, 2010)Google Scholar.

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57 My position associates with the tone of Ling, L. H. M., ‘Introduction: Learning anew: Asia in IR and world politics’, in Pinar Bilgin and L. H. M. Ling (eds), Asia in International Relations: Unlearning Imperial Power Relations (Abingdon: Routledge, 2017), pp. 1–10 Google Scholar.