Culture and context in world politics / Stephanie Lawson.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Lawson, Stephanie.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

International relations and culture.

World politics.

Physical Description:

xi, 263 pages ; 23 cm

Place of Publication:

Basingstoke [England] ; New York : Palgrave Macmillan, 2006.

Summary:

This historically and theoretically informed study examines the career of the culture concept and related notions of context. Adopting an interdisciplinary approach, and drawing on a wide range of sources, the book examines the influence of the disciplines of anthropology and history in the development of culture and context as key concepts in political studies and the human sciences more generally. Particular attention is paid to the way in which culture as context has been implicated in constructions of identity and political community, and how this has played out in debates about nationalism and democracy. The study also shows how certain assumptions about culture and context have contributed to some of the most problematic dichotomies in world politics, including the West/non-West divide. Moving beyond critique, the analysis shows how culture may be re-conceptualized in a theory of cosmopolitan pluralism that avoids the errors of both a dogmatic universalism and an equally dogmatic relativism in the study of world politics.

Contents:

Identity and political community 3

Culture and civilization 6

A note on theory and methodology 12

2 World Politics and the Cultural Turn 17

The cultural turn 18

Constructivist social theory 21

After the Cold War 26

Culture and the study of world politics 28

3 Context and Contextualism 36

The idea of contextualism 36

Historical and cultural contextualism 39

Contextualism and normative international theory 44

Contextualizing contextualism 50

4 Culture and the Emergence of the Human Sciences 58

The age of discoveries 59

Explaining difference 61

The organization of knowledge 68

Knowledge and method 72

5 Culture/s: Conceptualization and Theorization 78

Humanism meets anthropology 78

Race and racism 85

From universalism to relativism 90

Hermeneutics and its critics 97

6 History, Culture and the National State 103

Nations and nationalism 104

State and nation 107

Culture and nature 114

History and nationalism 117

7 Conceptualizing Culture in Political Studies 125

The foundations of world politics 126

State identity and national character 131

The move to political culture 136

Contesting democracy 142

8 Contextualizing Cultural Politics 147

The new Asianism 148

The cultural politics of Asian democracy 151

Interpreting Confucius 155

Democracy and cultural/political pluralism 159

9 Beyond Dichotomies in World Politics 165

A conjunction of dichotomies 166

Insiders v outsiders 173

Contours of a cosmopolitan pluralism 179.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages 187-249) and index.

ISBN:

023000766X

9780230007666

OCLC:

68712444

Online:

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