Cultural Relativism and International Politics
eBook - ePub

Cultural Relativism and International Politics

  1. 128 pages
  2. English
  3. ePUB (mobile friendly)
  4. Available on iOS & Android
eBook - ePub

Cultural Relativism and International Politics

About this book

"The political and academic worlds are fractured by two competing discourses: the universalism of human rights and cultural relativism. This fracture is represented by the deep separation of cultural analysis and theories of international politics. Derek Robbins in a brilliant interrogation of European thinkers from Montesquieu to Pierre Bourdieu seeks to replace cultural relativism with cultural relationism as a step towards reconciling Enlightenment universalism and anthropological insistence on cultural difference. Inter alia he reflects on the tensions between political and social science and takes up the challenge from Raymond Aron to construct a sociology of international relations. A dazzling achievement."
- Bryan S. Turner, The Graduate Center, CUNY

Through historical studies of some of the work of Montesquieu, Comte, Durkheim, Boas, Morgenthau, Aron and Bourdieu, Derek Robbins examines the changing and competing conceptualisations of the political and the social in the Western European intellectual tradition.

He suggests that we are now experiencing a new 'dissociation of sensibility' in which political thought and its consequences in action have become divorced from social and cultural experience. Developing further the ideas of Bourdieu which he has presented in books and articles over the last twenty years, Robbins argues that we need to integrate the recognition of cultural difference with the practice of international politics by accepting that the 'field' of international political discourse is a social construct which is contingent on encounters between diverse cultures.

'Everything is relative' (Comte) and 'everything is social' (Bourdieu), not least international politics.

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Yes, you can access Cultural Relativism and International Politics by Derek Robbins,Author in PDF and/or ePUB format, as well as other popular books in Social Sciences & Sociology. We have over one million books available in our catalogue for you to explore.

Information

Table of contents

  1. Cover
  2. Half Title
  3. Publisher Note
  4. Title Page
  5. Copyright Page
  6. Acknowledgements
  7. Contents
  8. About the Author
  9. Acknowledgements
  10. Introduction
  11. 1 Montesquieu: Cultural Relativist and Proto-Positivist?
  12. 2 Comte: Positivist Science and History
  13. 3 Durkheim: Post-Positivist Social Science and Politics
  14. 4 American Anthropology and Political Realism
  15. 5 Aron: Politics and/or Sociologism
  16. 6 Bourdieu: Reflexive Sociologism and the Field of Politics
  17. Postscript
  18. Index