Research project
A Conceptual History of International Relations (CHOIR)
Events
We start from the assumption that concepts such as “international”, diplomacy”, “foreign policy”, “war” and “peace” are not neutral and natural, but that they have emerged at specific times, for specific purposes and with specific connotations. The concepts through which we approach the world are not neutral analytical ones, but fundamentally political ones. Taking them for granted leads to misguided historical analyses, where the past is read in light of the present, and to misguided analyses of contemporary affairs, where the political world around us is naturalised.
The main goal of CHOIR is thus to write the first conceptual history of international relations. CHOIR starts from the assumption that the political vocabulary changed fundamentally between 1750 and 1850. This is the period when it became possible to think systematically about what we today refer to as “the international”. Additionally, this was a period where political hierarchies were established, and through the project, we will investigate if and how hierarchies of gender and civilisation were written into the basic concepts of international relations.
Another common assumption is that the central concepts of international relations have the same meaning across languages. We believe this to be wrong. CHOIR will thus also investigate how central concepts were translated to languages beyond English and French.
CHOIR will be conducted by an international team of closely cooperating researchers, covering different concepts and languages. Our sources will primarily be published texts, analysed first, to the extent possible, through quantitative content analysis to identify central concepts and when they emerged, and qualitative methods for studying content.
Project Manager
Participants
External
External participants
- Ann Towns, University of Gothenburg
- Jens Bartelson, Lund University
- Ayse Zarakol, University of Cambridge
- Richard Devetak, University of Queensland
- Oliver Kessler, University of Erfurt
- Amanda Cheney, Lund University
- Julia Costa Lopez, University of Groningen
- Einar Wigen, University of Oslo
Articles
New publications
The organisation and articulation of Nordic peacefulness
Nordic peacefulness has never been a given; on the contrary it has rested on continuous articulation and organisation. While there are distinct differences between the national peace movements, there has also been significant collaboration across borders. This chapter deals with the emergence and development of Nordic peacefulness as idea and organisational fact, from the late nineteenth century to the late twentieth century, with particular emphasis on similarities, differences and interconnectedness.
Anarchy is What the Balance of Power Made of It: Two Core Concepts and The Public/Private Distinction in International Relations
In this article, Morten Skumsrud Andersen questions a familiar assumption in International Relations (IR): that the balance of power and anarchy are mutually reinforcing concepts. He argues instead that this relationship is neither natural nor necessary. Modern understandings of anarchy do not reflect timeless features of international politics, but are historically contingent outcomes of changes in how the balance of power concept itself has been understood and deployed. Drawing on conceptual history, Andersen traces how the balance of power transitioned from a principle embodying Europe’s public interest in the eighteenth century to an expression of national rivalry and competitive self-interest in the nineteenth. This transformation was underpinned by a broader redefinition of the public/private distinction, which enabled states to be imagined as atomistic units operating in decentralized, market-like competition—what came to be seen as anarchy. By recovering the practical history of the balance of power, Andersen reinterprets the genealogy of two foundational IR concepts and call for greater reflexivity about the analytical tools through which international relations are theorized.
Stories we live by: the rise of Historical IR and the move to concepts
Scholars of the humanities and social sciences are necessarily storytellers. Thus, crafting narratives is an inescapable feature of the practice of International Relations scholarship. We tell stories about the past to orient ourselves in the present and envision the future. Historical International Relations has greatly expanded the repertoire of available narrative elements. However, when we read the past through the prism of our present, we risk closing down opportunities for different ways of imagining both the present and the future. In this article, we acknowledge the advances made in HIR over the last decades but suggest that a closer engagement with conceptual history would enhance its potential even further, making it possible to explore how a wider space of experience can also widen our horizon of expectations.
The future is just another past
Before International Studies can confront the future, it needs to get a better grip on its past and present. The discipline lacks agreement on both its own name and the name of its object of study. More importantly, key concepts used to describe phenomena have changed continuously: no concept emerging in the 19th century has remained untouched, no envisioned future of the past could have prepared us for the present. Old concepts have been discarded, new ones adopted, and existing ones modified. This implies that any exercise in ‘futurology’ must necessarily come with an openness towards conceptual change, and that a key challenge for International Studies going forward will consist in matching our conceptual toolbox to an ever-changing world. The importance of conceptual change has until recently been neglected in the study of global politics. Thus, in this paper we start by presenting the empirical case for incorporating conceptual change by laying out key past and present conceptual changes in the international realm. We then move on to a presentation of conceptual history and the tools it provides us for grasping conceptual change, before discussing how to tackle conceptual developments when thinking about the future of global politics.
The emergence of foreign policy
International relations scholarship typically treats foreign policy as a taken-for-granted analytical concept. It assumes either that all historical polities have foreign policies or that foreign policy originates in seventeenth-century Europe with the separation between the “inside” and “outside” of the state. It generally holds that foreign policy differs in essential ways from other kinds of policy, such as carrying with it a special need for secrecy. Halvard Leira argues against this view. The difference between “foreign” and “domestic” policy results from specific political processes; secrecy begat foreign policy. Growing domestic differentiation between state and civil society in the eighteenth century- articulated through a relatively free press operating in a nascent public sphere - enabled the emergence of foreign policy as a practical concept. The concept served to delimit the legitimate sphere of political discourse from the exclusive, executive sphere of king and cabinet. Leira explores these processes in Britain and France, important cases with different trajectories, one of reform, the other of revolution. Historicizing foreign policy like this serves to denaturalize the separation between different forms of policy, as well as the necessity of secrecy. Doing so cautions against the uncritical application of abstract analytical terms across time and space.
A Conceptual History of International Relations
In this lecture, I discussed why we need a conceptual history of international relations, and how we can go about writing it.
Project Manager
Events
Participants
External
External participants
- Ann Towns, University of Gothenburg
- Jens Bartelson, Lund University
- Ayse Zarakol, University of Cambridge
- Richard Devetak, University of Queensland
- Oliver Kessler, University of Erfurt
- Amanda Cheney, Lund University
- Julia Costa Lopez, University of Groningen
- Einar Wigen, University of Oslo