Confessions of a sociolator

Following recent critiques of ‘the social’ in international theory, this text revisits a contribution the author made to ‘the social turn’ in 1994. While C. Wright Mills’ The Sociological Imagination appears to survive the recent critiques, the passage of time has nonetheless revealed a quite different weakness in the author’s use of it: namely, its neglect of ‘the international’ as an object of theory. This neglect, which is indeed common to almost all ‘social theory’, is now being corrected in the growing literature on ‘uneven and combined development’

The elusive international

This piece responds to the critical commentaries offered in this forum. I re-state the core aspects of the thesis and emphasize four themes related to theory in response to the critics: (1) Levels of Theory, (2) Locations of Theory, (3) Disciplines of Theory and (4) Ideologies of Theory

Conformal invariance in three-dimensional rotating turbulence

We examine three--dimensional turbulent flows in the presence of solid-body rotation and helical forcing in the framework of stochastic Schramm-L\"owner evolution curves (SLE). The data stems from a run on a grid of $1536^3$ points, with Reynolds and Rossby numbers of respectively 5100 and 0.06. We average the parallel component of the vorticity in the direction parallel to that of rotation, and examine the resulting $_\textrm{z}$ field for scaling properties of its zero-value contours. We find for the first time for three-dimensional fluid turbulence evidence of nodal curves being conformal invariant, belonging to a SLE class with associated Brownian diffusivity $\kappa=3.6\pm 0.1$. SLE behavior is related to the self-similarity of the direct cascade of energy to small scales in this flow, and to the partial bi-dimensionalization of the flow because of rotation. We recover the value of $\kappa$ with a heuristic argument and show that this value is consistent with several non-trivial SLE predictions.Comment: 4 pages, 3 figures, submitted to PR

Uneven and combined development: a defense of the general abstraction

This article responds to criticisms of the current revival of Uneven and Combined Development (UCD), particularly those aimed at the idea of a ‘general abstraction’ of UCD. Three main charges have been pressed: that UCD is not a real theory; that its transhistorical extension has reduced it to an unhistorical reification; and that its language of ‘advanced’ and ‘backward’ betrays its enduring Eurocentric foundations. The article argues not only that UCD can be defended, but also that it is the general abstraction which enables UCD to make its strongest contributions to solving problems of theoretical insufficiency, ahistoricism and Eurocentrism in social thought more generally. Finally the article ends by speculating on the reason why the much-maligned general abstraction of UCD should turn out to be of such significance

International relations in the prison of political science

In recent decades, the discipline of International Relations has experienced both dramatic institutional growth and unprecedented intellectual enrichment. And yet, unlike neighbouring disciplines such as Geography, Sociology, History and Comparative Literature, it has still not generated any ‘big ideas’ that have impacted across the human sciences. Why is this? And what can be done about it? This article provides an answer in three steps. First, it traces the problem to IR’s enduring definition as a subfield of Political Science. Second, it argues that IR should be re-grounded in its own disciplinary problematique: the consequences of (societal) multiplicity. And finally, it shows how this re-grounding unlocks the trans-disciplinary potential of IR. Specifically, ‘uneven and combined development’ provides an example of an IR ‘big idea’ that could travel to other disciplines: for by operationalizing the consequences of multiplicity, it reveals the causal and constitutive significance of ‘the international’ for the social world as a whole

Social structures and geopolitical systems: A critique of the Realist theory of International Relations.

This thesis provides a critique of, and an alternative to, the Realist school of International Relations theory. Rejecting the Realist starting point of the condition of anarchy among states, it argues instead for the importance of wider social structures in determining the social form of geopolitical systems. The method used is the historical materialism of Marx - in particular his injunction to examine how 'the direct relationship of the owners of the conditions of production to the direct producers' underlies the form of the state. Following an opening interrogation of Realism, this method is used to explore several premodern geopolitical systems. In each case, attention is drawn to the correspondence between the form of the geopolitical system and the character of the societies composing it. This correspondence is then used to mount historical explanations which contrast strongly with those supplied by a Realist treatment. The tools forged in these historical explorations are next turned onto the contemporary international system. Two main conclusions result. First, the distinctive properties of the sovereign states-system are to be understood by examining their correspondence to 'the direct relationship of the owners of the conditions of production to the direct producers' in the leading capitalist societies which dominate the system. This argument includes a formal redefinition of the two core categories of Realist theory. 'Sovereignty' is redefined as the abstracted political form of the state under capitalism, while 'anarchy' is rediscovered as the form of social connectedness peculiar to capitalism which Marx describes as 'personal independence based on dependence mediated by things'. The second conclusion is that the history of the emergence of the modern international system is to be found in those historical processes of social change which generalized the capital-labour relation - processes focussed above all on the expropriation of the direct producer

What's the matter with realism?

International relations, as an academic discipline, is not known for its strength in the area of theory. It has no immediate equivalent to the rich contrasts of perspective generated in sociology by the legacy of Max Weber, Marx and Durkheim—a lack so felt that Martin Wight once wrote a paper called ‘Why is there no International Theory?’ His own answer was, in part, that there is nothing further to theorize after the discovery of the repetitive mechanisms of the balance of power. This was a sad conclusion for such an acute and creative mind to reach. But it does illustrate a central feature of IR theory. For the balance of power, it can be argued, is the limit of any Realist theory of international relations. And Wight's conclusion was perhaps more an index of the dominance of a Realist orthodoxy than a relection of the inherent properties of ‘the international’

What's the matter with realism?

International relations, as an academic discipline, is not known for its strength in the area of theory. It has no immediate equivalent to the rich contrasts of perspective generated in sociology by the legacy of Max Weber, Marx and Durkheim—a lack so felt that Martin Wight once wrote a paper called ‘Why is there no International Theory?’ His own answer was, in part, that there is nothing further to theorize after the discovery of the repetitive mechanisms of the balance of power. This was a sad conclusion for such an acute and creative mind to reach. But it does illustrate a central feature of IR theory. For the balance of power, it can be argued, is the limit of any Realist theory of international relations. And Wight's conclusion was perhaps more an index of the dominance of a Realist orthodoxy than a relection of the inherent properties of ‘the international’

Secret origins of the state: the structural basis of raison d'état

The Italian city-state system occupies a special place in the canon of orthodox international relations. For, as Martin Wight says, ‘it was among the Italian powers that feudal relationships first disappeared and the efficient, self-sufficient secular state was evolved, and the Italian powers invented the diplomatic system’. And of course this was not all they invented. In addition to the earliest modern discourse of Realpolitik (‘Machiavelli’, Carr tells us, ‘is the first important political realist’), it is in the Italian city-states that we find the first routine use of double-entry book-keeping, of publicly traded state debt, of marine insurance, of sophisticated instruments of credit (such as the bill of exchange), of commercial and banking firms coordinating branch activity across the continent, and so on. Here, too, the citizen militias gave way earliest to the mercenary armies that would later characterize European Absolutism; and within the town walls, a population given over increasingly to commerce and manufacture elaborated new forms of urban class conflict