Policy Press

The Idea of Civilization and the Making of the Global Order

By Andrew Linklater

Published

Nov 18, 2020

Page count

340 pages

Browse the series

Bristol Studies in International Theory

ISBN

978-1529213911

Dimensions

234 x 156 mm

Imprint

Bristol University Press

Published

Nov 18, 2020

Page count

340 pages

Browse the series

Bristol Studies in International Theory

ISBN

978-1529213874

Dimensions

234 x 156 mm

Imprint

Bristol University Press

Published

Nov 18, 2020

Page count

340 pages

Browse the series

Bristol Studies in International Theory

ISBN

978-1529213881

Dimensions

Imprint

Bristol University Press

Published

Nov 18, 2020

Page count

340 pages

Browse the series

Bristol Studies in International Theory

ISBN

978-1529213881

Dimensions

Imprint

Bristol University Press
The Idea of Civilization and the Making of the Global Order

The idea of civilization recurs frequently in reflections on international politics. However, International Relations academic writings on civilization have failed to acknowledge the major 20th-century analysis that examined the processes through which Europeans came to regard themselves as uniquely civilized – Norbert Elias’s On the Process of Civilization.

This book provides a comprehensive exploration of the significance of Elias’s reflections on civilization for International Relations. It explains the working principles of an Eliasian, or process-sociological, approach to civilization and the global order and demonstrates how the interdependencies between state-formation, colonialism and an emergent international society shaped the European 'civilizing process'.

Andrew Linklater is Woodrow Wilson Professor of International Politics at Aberystwyth University.

Introduction: A Process-Sociological Approach to Understanding Civilization

The Return of Discourses of Civilization and Barbarism

Elias’s Explanation of the European Civilizing Process

The Nation-State, War and Human Equality

The Classical European ‘Standard of Civilization’

Civilization, Diplomacy and the Enlargement of International Society

Standards of Civilization in the Post-European Global Order

Civilizing Processes at the Level of Humanity as a Whole

Summary and Conclusions