Routledge Handbook of International Political Sociology

Xavier Guillaume, Pınar Bilgin

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781315446462
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Politics
• Index: Politics & International Relations

This handbook presents in a comprehensive, concise and accessible overview, the emerging field of international political sociology. It summarizes and synthesizes existing knowledge in the field while presenting central themes and methodologies that have been at the centre of its development, providing the reader with a sense of the diversity and research dynamics that are at the heart of international political sociology as a field of study. A wide range of topics covered include:

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• International political sociology and its cognate disciplines and fields of study;

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• Key themes including security, mobility, finance, development, gender, religion, health, global elites and the environment;

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• Methodologies on how to engage with international political sociology including fieldwork, archives, discourse, ethnography, assemblage, materiality, social spaces and visuality;

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• Current and future challenges of international political sociology addressed by three key scholars.

Providing a synthetic reference point, summarizing key achievements and engagements while putting forward future developments and potential fruitful lines of inquiry, it is an invaluable resource for students, academics and researchers from a range of disciplines, particularly international relations, political science, sociology, political geography, international law, international political economy, security studies and gender studies.

1
Introduction

Xavier Guillaume and Pinar Bilgin¹

By its own denomination – international political sociology² – an emerging field of study at the centre of this Routledge handbook is an invitation to engage independently and in their connections and tensions the three terms composing it (Bigo and Walker 2007a, b; Huysmans and Nogueira 2012; Bigo 2014). This invitation is also one to problematize these terms as they originate in specific disciplines and geo-cultural epistemologies (Tickner and 2009) and how their connections should not result in closing off venues for research and engagement but, on the contrary, open them up. This handbook therefore attempts to provide to a wide and diverse readership a sense of the lively and rich research dynamics that are currently constituting international political sociology as a field of study that needs to be read in the plural.

This handbook is not designed to set boundaries or create a canon. In effect, we seek, to the best of our ability, to avoid fixing and crystallizing a possible emergent field of study that is not only constantly in flux but precisely is resulting from the ever ongoing engagement of its scholars with this invitation to think plurally and in an interweaving manner about the international, the political and the sociological. Finally, in this handbook we tried to avoid privileging one view or voice over another on what is an international political sociology, how it is to be conceived and researched. We have attempted as much as possible and as time, material factors and circumstances allowed to provide a balanced snapshot of what this field looks like (see further discussion later in this chapter).

This handbook offers a particular and situated snapshot at a potentially emerging field of study, which does not, and in the light of its contributions, should not coalesce under a single epistemologico-methodologic banner. Moreover, an international political sociology is not something completely new. There has been work coming from different strands of sociology over the past 25 years that has identified with it (see, for instance, Dezalay 1995, 2004; Dezalay and Garth 1995, 1998; Braungart and Braungart 2000). Yet, it is within the field of International Relations (IR), and largely under the aegis of the International Studies Association’s (ISA) section and eponymous journal International Political Sociology, that the idea of international political sociology as a field of study has emerged and has taken an important place not only in IR but also has started to resonate in other fields of study. At the origin of the ISA section and the journal, Didier Bigo, in association with R.B.J. Walker, has developed a specific understanding of an international political sociology, often capitalized and denominated by its acronym IPS, that has been a major factor in the emergence and success of as well as reflections about an international political sociology.³

Principally identified with the works of Michel Foucault and Pierre Bourdieu, with the inclusion of Paul Veyne (see Bigo 2014), what might be more adequately denominated a “political sociology of the international” (Fr. “une sociologie politique de l’international”) can also be associated with the work of scholars at the juncture of the field of international relations and sociology. Scholars such as Niilo Kauppi or Mikael Madsen (2013, 2014, this volume), or Gisèle Sapiro (e.g. 2002, 2009, 2011), to name but a few, have been engaging with a political sociology of the international on questions such as transnational elites or the cultural field. Importantly, this “political sociology of the international” has often been influenced by the pioneer work on transnational elites, law and political economy of Yves Dezalay and Bryant Garth (1995, 1998, this volume).

Finally, postcolonial and historical sociological engagement with IR have laid bare the limits of sociological inquiries that remain within ‘national’, ‘interstate’ or ‘comparative politics’ frameworks in the study of the international. The limits of IR scholarship in inquiring into the perspectives of ‘others’ who help constitute the international were identified by Vivienne Jabri (2013) or Sanjay Seth (2013), among others. In the early 1990s, Stephan Chan (1993) had called for a “new historical sociology” for IR. Locating his ideas in a very different school of thought (Trotsky’s “uneven and combined development”), Justin Rosenberg made a similar point when he noted that IR’s understanding of the international had been less than “genuinely sociological” (Rosenberg 2006: 308–310). Calls have also emerged from postcolonial scholars in cognate disciplines such as sociology, political philosophy, history and literary critique, to study “intertwined histories” (Said 1993), “connected histories” (Subrahmanyam 1997), “connected sociologies” (Bhambra 2007) or “universal history” (Buck-Morss 2009) – all pointing to the need for inquiring into the connections and tensions between the international, the political and the sociological. What is particularly significant about taking the challenge of postcolonialism and historical sociology seriously is to remind ourselves that those connections the study of which has been central to the scholars of international political sociology are nothing new, but have been with us for a long time. What is somewhat new is the emergence of a body of scholars (including but not limited to this handbook’s contributors) who explicitly focus on such connections and tensions in the study of the international.

It is the belief of the editors of this volume that one of the primary functions of this plural field of study is to foster multiple encounters across disciplines, fields of study, theoretical and methodological approaches in a pluri- and transdisciplinary spirit (see Bleiker). This volume should thus be seen as an invitation to engage with and achieve such plurality as to a large extent an international political sociology has largely crystallized within another field: international relations. Some chapters will thus appear to people external, but also internal, to that field maybe as quite self-centred compared to their own, whether it is sociology, geography,⁴ anthropology, historical sociology, history, and so on. What makes this engagement possible, and the ability for an international political sociology to move in a more plural direction than it is now, is that at its core an international political sociology seeks to be a pragmatic research attitude to specific problématiques⁵ by mobilizing, interweaving and engaging with these three dimensions that are the international, the political and the sociological. In that spirit, the following chapters of this handbook are organized in four parts to offer a much necessary even if by definition incomplete snapshot at this emerging field.

The first part – International Political Sociology and Its Cognate Fields of Study – offers a way to situate international political sociology in light of its engagements with cognate disciplines and fields of study. Most students and researchers producing work that can be identified as participating in international political sociology have or have had another starting point. This part thus offers engagements with the comparisons and distinctions to be made between international political sociology and its cognate disciplines and fields of study like sociology, gender and feminist studies, international law, historical sociology, security studies and postcolonialism, to name but a few. The second part – Key Themes of International Political Sociology – presents the key themes which have been at the core of the emergence of international political sociology as a field of study. Recognized and leading specialists for each theme present the key advancements provided by international political sociology, offering a state-of-the-art chapter for each theme. Themes that will be covered include security, mobility, finance, development, gender, religion, health, global elites and the environment, to name but a few. The third part – Methodologies of International Political Sociology – introduces central methodological issues and developments at the heart of the field of international political sociology. These chapters concentrate on an exposition of the central questions at the centre of each methodological issue. Finally, the fourth part – Transversal Reflections – invites three important figures in international relations and international political sociology to offer their reflections after reading the entire handbook, thus shedding specific lights that are themselves invitations to think more reflexively about what an international political sociology might be. The remainder of this introduction rapidly presents some key points emerging from each part.

International political sociology and its cognate fields of study

The chapters of this first part are engaging with the potential genealogies, cross-fertilizations, tensions, at times creative, and congruencies that may exist between this emergent field of study and other disciplines or fields of study. This part of the handbook is an important starting point to offer readers an academic snapshot to situate international political sociology. To the best knowledge of the authors, there are no academic degrees, undergraduate or otherwise, in international political sociology, though Dirk Nabers holds a chair in International Political Sociology at the University of Kiel in Germany. Most scholars currently interested in participating in the development of research in international political sociology are coming from multiple disciplinary backgrounds and/or theoretical and methodological affinities, though, as mentioned, the field of international relations seems to predominate still. This part thus offers a way to partially and punctually map how international political sociology can be compared and distinguished from some of its cognate disciplines and fields of study.

International political sociology, by its pluri-/interdisciplinary character (see Bleiker), is a field of study which can develop with and invite developments in other disciplines or fields of study not only because of their possible commonalities but also by the dissensus and tensions emerging between them. Tensions and dissensus can be here heuristic moments to open up lines of inquiry and develop lines of thought. By putting, at the same time, the international, the political and the sociological in conjunctive and disjunctive tensions, international political sociology is a mode of inquiry of the interstices (on the concept of interstice, see Huysmans and Guillaume 2013). This pluri-disciplinary character is not only interested in the interconnections, the interstices, between multiple analytical dimensions or fields of enquiry but more substantially to move away from ‘abstractions’, such as the state or the international, to focus on the relational ways by which they are given a specific shape or are concretely manifesting themselves in specific sites, temporalities and modes of deployment as forms of power (see Kessler, Rajaram).

This partial and punctual mapping also reflects, to an extent, how international political sociology has come to encapsulate a more general project within the discipline of International Relations: its decompartmentalization. This part illustrates how international political sociology is an attempt to connect with other disciplines or fields of study in order to develop modes of inquiry that concentrate on problematizing our globalized social and political worlds. This is for instance what suggests Laura Shepherd’s “provocation” in stating that “gender is international political sociology”; one did not have to wait the emergence of a self-defined field of study to problematize, research and engage with the social and political worlds via the connections between the international, the political and the sociological. Tanja Aalberts and Wouter Werner for their part demonstrate how an international political sociology enables to reproblematize the “boundaries and divides” between International Relations and International Law and enable to understand the latter as both a practice and politics in order to reflect on “how law and legal expertise is mobilized to present and order the world”. In a similar fashion, Oliver Kessler engages with the idea of an international political sociology to reread the literature on world society, which had already articulated some twenty years ago a form of engagement and interweaving between these three terms, by putting forth notably an analytics of a world of their making, to paraphrase Nicholas Onuf’s seminal book (1989), by concentrating on the politics of legal and economic expertise (see also Dezalay and Garth, Tellmann, Kauppi and Madsen).

It may be that international political sociology is attracting a lot of attention and is appealing to many scholars coming from different national and/or epistemic traditions and from different fields of study because it is not necessarily tied to or does not necessarily try to address a specific disciplinary canon. In that sense, international political sociology refers to the impossibility of being located while still being situated (Haraway 1988). Yet, despite this multi-sited outlook, international political sociology also faces the risk of reinforcing Euro- and state-centric understandings of the international by abiding to a specific national ontology and narrowing itself to Eurocentric premises (see Halperin). So while, one can see, as Sankaran Krishna does, in international political sociology a possible way in which a non-Western outlook “manifest[s] itself … in the disciplinary study of international relations and global politics”, it still remains that international political sociology has to make efforts in ontologically and epistemically decentring itself from largely disciplinary premises (see Halperin, Rajaram).

As Shepherd notes, and as is echoed by most authors of this section, an international political sociology fundamentally is a mode of inquiry. To an extent, it can be seen as an open and multifaceted toolbox that seeks to problematize each of its terms and to connect them together in a way that privilege the questioning at stake rather than specific units, temporalities or ontologies (see Rajaram). It has offer for instance a way to shift away an entrenched field of studies such as security studies from a state- and military-centric conception of what security is, to a much more adapted conception of what security does that is attuned to contemporary security phenomenon – whether it is surveillance, global terrorism, migration and so on – by providing sociological and reflexive tools to complexify our understanding of security (see Mutlu and Lüleci). Thus, beyond onto-epistemic questions, an international political sociology can also offer a toolbox for the questioning of the politico-normative canon that has largely informed an international political theory thus far by helping it to move beyond not only of the confines of the European nation state as its key referent but also of a theory of the state to think rather in global terms about ethics and international orders (see Burke).

Key themes of international political sociology

International political sociology approaches could be adopted in the study of a wide range of themes. Over the years, some themes have proven to be more central to the research agendas of its scholars than some others. This part of the handbook reflects the self-selected ‘key’ themes in the study of international political sociology. Of the themes covered here, some have also been ‘key’ in the study of IR in that they have their own subfields, as with feminism (see Stern), international political economy (see Dezalay and Garth), global governance (see Ole Jacob Sending) and security studies (see Burgess). In all these cases, researchers of international political sociology have given a new twist to their study. For example, Yves Dezalay and Bryant G. Garth’s chapter turns the reflexive gaze of international political sociology onto International Political Economy as a field, tracing the emergence, prevalence and silencing of its core ideas (see Leander). Peter Burgess offers a masterful overview of the ways in which Security Studies has been an incubator for the core ideas and theoretical moves of international political sociology, while highlighting its relatively weak spots, including “sociological approach to security practices of the international, that is at the limits of the national”. Maria Stern’s play on words in the title of her chapter, “Feminist International Political Sociology – International Political Sociology Feminism”, could be taken as a metaphor for the synergistic relationship that has developed between these two approaches in recent decades. As Stern shows, by focusing on studies on emotion, embodiment, materiality and reflexivity, over the years feminist and international political sociology approaches have fed off each other, turning tensions and complementarities into insightful “interrogations of what gender is and does as well as how ‘it’ has been produced to be, and do what it does”.

In counter-distinction to the synergistic relationship developed between international political sociology, feminism and security studies, the study of global governance has taken a radically different turn as shaped by international political sociology (see Sending). Where previous studies on global governance had emphasized the ‘global’ in ‘global governance’, inquiring into the ways in which the governance of various issues were moving beyond borders of states, scholars of international sociology have drawn upon Foucault and Bourdieu to rethink what ‘governance’ entails. As such, international political sociology has been transformative for global governance studies, moving beyond the ambitions and expectations of its early scholars (such as James Rosenau) to explore “social form of governance (or governing) in a social space that is defined (by some actors rather than others) as ‘global’ ” without losing sight of the ‘political’ and the ‘international’.

Many other ‘key themes’ that this section covers (such as development, finance or health) have traditionally been explored in cognate fields and were brought into International Relations by scholars of international political sociology in a way that is innovative for their points of ‘departure’ as well as their points of ‘arrival’. For, although these themes have been well explored by respective scholars of these fields, it is through a perspective that is cognizant of the international and the sociological as well the political that these themes were more fully ex...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of figures
• List of contributors
• 1 Introduction
• Part I International political sociology and its cognate fields of study
• Part II Key themes of international political sociology
• Part III Methodologies of international political sociology
• Part IV Transversal reflections
• Index