Search results

Nearly two decades after the end of the Cold War, academics, policy makers and commentators continue to be puzzled by the shape, form and content of contemporary world politics. The fluidity of the post-Cold War era has seen the elevation of largely functional explanations for why things are to a more transcendent set of ideas about how social relations can be made afresh. This shift from ideology to utopia is no idle problem, for what it tends to generate are images which often lie outside historical experience and time and place specificities. This article is an attempt to provide a corrective to at least parts of this malady by carrying out a Zeitdiagnose which questions some of the taken-for-granted assumptions about the current period, in particular the schema offered by the prominent cosmopolitan thinker, Nancy Fraser. The article looks in detail at the historical basis of Fraser's current work, comparing it both to similar visions prevalent in the inter-war years and to contemporary programmes based on the theory of the democratic peace and the policy of democracy promotion. The article develops a construct — realistic utopias — which aims to build from history to mid-range abstractions rather than from general abstractions to events on the ground. As a result, it is argued, a more developed link can be made between theory and practice, abstraction and history, normative project and institutional reality.

El autor señala como los orígenes dispares de las disciplinas de Sociología y de Relaciones Internacionales no ha sido óbice para que en las últimas dos décadas se hayan acercado de forma muy intensa. Esto se debe al doble giro en las Relaciones Internacionales hacia la Historia (Escuela Inglesa) y hacia la Sociología (constructivismo). Tras hacer un repaso de los autores que han transitado en este lugar de encuentro que es la Sociología Histórica, se concluye con los potenciales beneficios que ofrece este nuevo enfoque: el rechazo a las categorías eternas y universales; la posibilidad de una efectiva periodización en las Relaciones Internacionales; y la capacidad que la Sociología Histórica de las Relaciones Internacionales concede para acabar con las suposiciones dadas sobre algunos conceptos y mitos centrales.

Michael Mann is best known, in International Relations (IR) circles at least, for his two-volume work, The Sources of Social Power, an attempt to chart and assess the development of world-historical development from `the beginning' to the twentieth century. 1 But Mann's career, which spans over four decades, also encompasses forays into state theory, militarism, empire, fascism, ethnic cleansing and globalisation.2 The interview covers these various strands of Mann's work and examines some of the methodological issues involved in conducting macro-level historical sociology and interdisciplinary work. ————————————————————————

Over the past twenty years or so, there has been a concerted effort by International Relations (IR) scholars to engage with classical social theory, a tradition that takes in figures such as Max Weber and Karl Marx, C. Wright Mills and Raymond Aron, and more recently, Anthony Giddens and Charles Tilly. Of these comparative macro-sociologists, perhaps the most interesting from an IR perspective is Michael Mann whose oeuvre, now spanning four decades, includes a two-volume history of power in world affairs alongside substantial interventions on debates relating to ethnic cleansing, empire, state-formation and fascism. The interview and forum printed below are, in the first instance, attempts to tease out Mann's most important contributions to social science in general and to IR more specifically. But contributors are also keen to impress upon Mann, and historical sociologists more generally, the need to factor in contemporary advances in both IR theory and practice. As a result, the interview, comment pieces and Mann's reply bear close reading not only for IR specialists, but also for those involved in the wider enterprise of classical social theory itself.