Search results
Contemporary civilisational analysis has emerged in the post-Cold War period as a forming but already controversial field of scholarship. This book focuses on the scholarship produced in this field since the 1970s. It begins with anthropological axioms posited by Ibn Khaldun, Simon Bolivar and George Pachymeres. Three conceptual images of civilisations are prominent in the field. First, civilisations are conceived as socio-cultural units, entities or blocs in an 'integrationist' image. They emerge out of long-term uneven historical processes. Finally, in a 'relational' image civilisations are believed to gain definition and institute developmental patterns through inter-societal and inter-cultural encounters. The book traces the history of semantic developments of the notions of 'civilisation' and 'civilisations' coextensive with the expansion of Europe's empires and consubstantial with colonialism. Early modernities are more important in the long formation of capitalism. Outlining the conceptual framework of inter-civilisational engagement, the book analytically plots the ties instituted by human imaginaries across four dimensions of inter-civilisational engagement. It also interrogates the relationship between oceans, seas and civilisations. Oceanian civilisation exhibits patterns of deep engagement and connection. Though damaged, Pacific cultures have invoked their own counter-imaginary in closer proximity to past islander experiences. Collective memory provides resources for coping with critical issues. The book also explores Latin American and Japanese experiences that shed light on the engagement of civilisations, applying the model of inter-civilisational engagement to modern perspectives in culture and the arts, politics, theology and political economy.
into the ‘transpolitical mirror of evil’ (Baudrillard,1993: 82), there is a further element to America’s satanic destiny that is purely structural and bound inevitably to its current world role as the great protector of Western values and society. To understand why America’s role as protector necessitates that it become satanic, it is helpful to look at Derrida’s argument on the fate of the ‘rogue state’ in the post-cold-war period. This is something I do at the end of the book in chapter 11. Suffice it to say that in its self-perception as the great protector
to the AU was driven by forces within Africa and international pressure was not a determinant factor. This chapter discusses international peace and security developments in the 1990s to show that Africa was often developing new peace and security norms in tandem or ahead of international institutions. The purpose of this is to disprove arguments around the role of international pressure as well as arguments that place the transition as taking place predominantly during the post-Cold War period. In the case of the evolution of norms at the regional level in
The 1990s marked a time of tremendous turbulence and transition for Africa and the global community. The Cold War came to an abrupt and unexpected end, and African leaders knew that this would have ramifications for the continent. There were also events that unfolded in Africa, including the conflict in Somalia, the Rwandan Genocide, and the end of the last vestiges of white-minority regimes that contributed to the upheaval. All of these events pushed the OAU to re-evaluate its goals and approaches. While the immediate post-Cold War period is an important part
The volume explores a question that sheds light on the contested, but largely cooperative, nature of Arctic governance in the post-Cold War period: How do power relations matter – and how have they mattered – in shaping cross-border cooperation and diplomacy in the Arctic? Through carefully selected case studies – from Russia’s role in the Arctic Council to the diplomacy of indigenous peoples’ organisations – this book seeks to shed light on how power performances are enacted constantly to shore up Arctic cooperation in key ways. The conceptually driven nature of the enquiry makes the book appropriate reading for courses in international relations and political geography, while the carefully selected case studies lend themselves to courses on Arctic politics.
This chapter draws together the strands of the argument across the volume and makes the case for thinking of Moscow’s activity in terms of Grand Strategy rather than ad hoc or opportunistic and short-term moves. It frames the wider international context of globalisation and the “global village” discussion in international security, noting that if the US, NATO, China, and other states have adopted a more global horizon, so has Moscow. The chapter argues further that seeing Russian activity in strategic terms is essential for shaping effective policies for deterrence, defence, and, where possible, dialogue. It will serve to clarify both Moscow’s shifting mental maps (and red lines) in the post-Cold War period and now the era of Great Power Competition.
When is the use of force for humanitarian purposes legitimate? The book examines this question through one of the most controversial examples of humanitarian intervention in the post-Cold War period: the 1999 NATO intervention in Kosovo. In the face of contemporary problems of legitimacy and justification, the book offers a deep engagement with developments at the intersection of Habermasian communicative ethics and International Relations. The result is a set of rigorous normative guidelines – the ‘communicative imperatives’ – intended for application in analyses of the process and legitimacy of international deliberations around the use of force. The book provides an innovative contribution to the theory of communicative ethics through which actors are able to critique and evaluate decisions to use force. The communicative ethics framework contributes a critical communicative dimension to the question of legitimacy that extends beyond the moral and legal approaches so often applied to the intervention in Kosovo. The application of the communicative imperatives reveals forms of communicative distortion which serves to contest conventional accounts of the legitimacy of the use of force in Kosovo.
The seductive force of American supercapitalism unlocks new markets, unleashing the energy of desire, and provides a destructive version of Satan's rage. At the vanguard of this seduction has been the youthful rage and rebellion of the devil's music, American rock 'n' roll and its multiple related subgenres. This book looks at the most pervasive forms of American popular music in the post-cold-war period. Gangsta rap exploits and informs the consumption of luxury brands. The 'mom and pop rage' of the nu metal bands self-consciously exposes itself as the violent expression, the excess of the implacable banal excess, and of shopping-mall consumerism. The book explores the negativity and the 'niggativity' of American rap/metal in the 1990s in relation to a number of key events in the decade such as the Rodney King riots and the Columbine High School massacre. On the face of it, the gangsta 'nigga' is an unlikely point of identification for suburban white culture. But the phenomenon of the 'wigga' (white, wanna-be-nigga) and the success of companies like Nike testify to the fascination that such a figure holds. Rage Against the Machine (also known as Rage or RATM) do not normally have problems with machines, indeed their music and living depend upon them. Rather, the 'machine' is for Rage another word for the new world order of global capitalism. Death metal groups such as Morbid Angel and Deicide aim to outdo the others in its singular relation to death, shock and outrage.
’s themes, this is the most telling point. Talk of Europe’s division has passed through a number of stages in the post-Cold War period. In the early 1990s, debate centred on the consequences of an absence of enlargement and thus the re-creation of a division along Cold War lines. Once enlargement was accepted in principle, debate shifted to its practical consequences. The issues here concerned possibly discordant
). By the late 1990s, the hegemonic discourse of globalisation dominated in both states. How did this domination take place? What was the impact – if any – of the different domestic institutional arrangements of the two countries in the communication of the hegemonic discourse? What conclusions can be drawn about the nature of hegemonic discourses and the interplay between the hegemonic/ international and the public/domestic? These questions, and in general the study of the nature of the hegemonic, have gained additional weight in the post-Cold War period, when the US