WHAT PRICE PEACE? ON THE DIALECTICAL RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN CIVILIZATION AND WAR

It is generally understood that that there is a direct correlation between civilized society and a propensity for cooperation and peace over confrontation and violent conflict, both in domestic affairs and in international relations. Under the influence of democratic and liberal theories of perpetual peace, this leads to the assumption…

To Rethink Standards of Civilisation, Start with the End

Many people recognise that there is a need to distinguish between states in the international system, such as on the basis of legitimacy. For much of the system’s history the means of drawing such distinctions have been standards of civilisation. For some, the need to divide and separate is unavoidable;…

The Thin Ice of Civilization

It is widely accepted that as time passes, the more we progress as both a species and as individual human beings; the more we progress, the more civilized we become individually and collectively; the more civilized we become, the further we are removed from the vestiges of savagery and barbarism.…

The river of inter-civilisational relations: The ebb and flow of peoples, ideas and innovations

As a tool for understanding the world in which we live the study of the history of political thought is stunted because of a preoccupation with the Western canon as the history of political thought to the exclusion of other histories and traditions. This ongoing exclusion is itself facilitated by…

The ideal of civilisation: Its origins and socio‐political character

There has been a revival in the use of the terms ‘civilisation’ and ‘civilisations’ to describe and explain events in the social sciences and humanities, nowhere more so than in politics and international affairs. This revival has seen the terms interpreted and applied in a variety of manners and different…

Politics in a World of Civilizations: Long-term Perspectives on Relations between Peoples

It is a truism to say that the discipline of international relations (IR) is primarily concerned with relations between states. That is not to say that IR is only concerned with states, but by definition, relations between states is what the discipline is largely about. One of the criticisms often…