. We also would like to thank for their comments and suggestions on previous drafts of the paper the editors and reviewers of EJIR. Earlier drafts of the paper were Constructivism's western-centrism tends to overlook that the international sphere is replete with normative contestation. 6 The international sphere is, in fact, inhabited by a wide variety of non-western actors and norm entrepreneurs that are not solely norm-takers, but also active norm-makers, seeking to promote and internationalize their own beliefs, values and principles. This normative competition and complexity is becoming all the more apparent as world politics turns increasingly multipolar, as well as post-western (Acharya and Buzan, 2010;Kupchan, 2013;Tickner and Waever, 2009;Weber and Jentleson, 2010;Zakaria, 2011).The process of contestation and interaction between western and non-western norms 7 and their entrepreneurs in international society needs to be understood better.This paper seeks to theoretically and empirically broaden Constructivist research by looking beyond the global diffusion of liberal and secular norms by western-based actors. A small number of scholars are starting to explicitly push Constructivist thinking along similar lines (Acharya, 2013;Adamson, 2005;Merry, 2006). We aim 2 to advance this emerging scholarly research by exploring the processes through which non-western actors promote norms within the structures of the 'liberal international order ' (Deudney and Ikenberry, 1999;Ikenberry, 2009). In other words, we flip the coin and investigate norm diffusion from a non-western periphery to a western core, and by non-western norm-makers to western norm-takers.It is possible to think of several non-western agents and norms that interact with the actors and norms of the liberal order. We focus on religious-based norms margin of the translated norm provides it with a higher degree of vagueness and malleability, which facilitates agreement between promoters and receivers over the meaning and legitimacy of the norm, even if the parties differ over its ethical justification. That is, the process of translation allows for the possibility that, while a 4 norm entrepreneur uses one language and set of meanings rooted in a particular cultural milieu, the receiving agents, when and if they become socialised in the new norm, internalise it in their own semantics and knowledge structures. 13We build on an emerging interest within constructivist scholarship in processes and mechanisms of norm 'translation' (Boesenecker and Vinjamuri, 2011;Brake and Katzenstein, 2013;Zwingel, 2012). More specifically, we seek to contribute to the development of what can be described as a third wave of research on the cross-cultural dynamics of norm diffusion. First wave scholarship generally portrays non-western actors as norm-takers. These are socialized and 'converted', thanks to the 'persuasive' power of the 'better argument' or the 'better norm', into the structure of meaning of the entrepreneurial, liberal, western-based norm-maker. The mechani...
In the past two decades, calls for International Relations (IR) to ‘turn’ have multiplied. Having reflected on Philosophy's own linguistic turn in the 1980s and 1990s, IR appears today in the midst of taking – almost simultaneously – a range of different turns, from the aesthetic to the affective, from the historical to the practice, from the new material to the queer. This paper seeks to make sense of this puzzling development. Building on Bourdieu's sociology of science, we argue that although the turns ostensibly bring about (or resuscitate) ambitious philosophical, ontological, and epistemological questions to challenge what is deemed to constitute the ‘mainstream’ of IR, their impact is more likely to be felt at the ‘margins’ of the discipline. From this perspective, claiming a turn constitutes a position-enhancing move for scholars seeking to accumulate social capital, understood as scientific authority, and become ‘established heretics’ within the intellectual subfield of critical IR. We therefore expect the proliferation of turns to reshape more substantively what it means to do critical IR, rather than turning the whole discipline on its head.
This article maps and develops—theoretically and empirically—the field of civilizational analysis in international relations (IR). In particular, it teases out a more explicit “civilizational politics” line of research, which builds upon latent and underdeveloped themes in the civilizational turn in IR. “Civilizational politics” offers an avenue for theoretically inclined, empirically minded scholars to explore how social and political actors have come to understand, change, and construct world politics as if plural civilizations existed and their relations mattered. The article anchors “civilizational politics” research to a modernist‐constructivist approach to IR and structures it around two key steps. The first step is to recover and interpret subjective and intersubjective meanings through participants' discourse. The article proposes an understanding of civilizations as “imagined communities” narrated by political and intellectual elites: as essentialized or non‐essentialized entities; and as clashing/conflicting or dialoguing/engaging with each other. The second step outlines three causal pathways that explain how narrated civilizational imaginaries affect world politics and turn civilizations into social facts: by guiding and structuring social action; by shaping and becoming embedded in formal institutions and patterned practices; and by bestowing recognition and socially empowering actors claiming to speak for civilizations. The empirical import of a “civilizational politics” line of research is demonstrated through a re‐reading of Turan Kayaoğlu's article “Constructing the Dialogue of Civilizations in World Politics: A Case of Global Islamic Activism.”
Are rising authoritarian powers such as China and Russia converging towards or challenging the normative structures of the liberal international order? This article argues that scholarship on norm contestation provides a fruitful theoretical avenue for addressing this question. It finds, however, that this literature has problematically tended to either overlook or externalize power dynamics from norm contestation. The article therefore proposes and develops a power political approach to norm contestation that, informed by a realpolitik sensibility, more explicitly and consistently makes power central to the analysis. A power political perspective conceptualizes norm contestation as the expression of battles for influence in world politics that take place at the ideational level and through symbolic instruments. It understands these struggles as occurring in the context of an international system profoundly marked by conflicting interests, cultural pluralism, hierarchical structures, and power asymmetries. This power political lens is then used to identify four modes of contestation that Russian and Chinese actors are engaged in: liberal performance, liberal mimicry, civilizational essentialization, and counter-norm entrepreneurship. It empirically explores how these contestatory practices express themselves at different intensity levels—applicatory, meaning, and validity—and display specific power political logics—fragmenting and integrative—with the goal of undermining the ideational hegemony of liberal Western-based actors and structures in world politics, and advancing alternative non-liberal visions of domestic and international order. Along with contributing to the literature on norms, this article also makes a broader intervention in current debates about rising powers and the future of the liberal international order.
The version presented here may differ from the published version. If citing, you are advised to consult the published version for pagination, volume/issue and date of publication 1 ISIS' Clash of Civilizations: Constructing the 'West' in Terrorist Propaganda "Today we are upon the doorstep for a new era, a turning point for the map of the region, rather the world. Today we witness the end of the lie called Western civilization and the rise of the Islamic giant.[…] The region is changing into one that threatens civilization with destruction, meaning the civilization of shirk and kufr, the civilization of usury and prostitution, the civilization of humiliation and subjugation" (Dabiq #4) "It becomes important for us to clarify to the West in unequivocal termsyet againwhy we hate you and why we fight you" (Dabiq #15) As exemplified by the above quotes, the vast and multifaceted propaganda produced by the self-proclaimed "Islamic State" (IS) regularly mentions the "West" and identifies it as an enemy that "Muslims" should resist and fight against. 1 Yet who and what defines the West IS refers to, what harm does IS claim the West is doing, and what does IS argue ought to be done with/to the West as a response, remains unclear. This is so for two reasons. First, IS uses many overlapping labels to name its enemies, simultaneously promoting a dichotomous worldview ("believers" vs. "disbelievers", "Muslims" vs. "non-Muslims") and depicting a complex environment where numerous enemies co-exist ("Crusaders", "apostate regimes", "evil scholars", the Shi'a, the US, etc.). Second, the few available studies focusing on IS' take on the West, such as Hegghammer and Nesser's (2015) analysis of IS' commitment to attack it, tend to conflate the West with other related categories or individual countries. The present paper attempts to disentangle these conflations in order to investigate the importance of the West in IS discourse, and more generally to evaluate the extent to which the group advances the thesis of a civilizational clash. In other words, we clarify the specific position given by IS to the West as a discrete civilizational category in its propaganda, which allows us to assess the group's commitment to reifying and exacerbating tensions along civilizational fault-lines (as distinct from religious, sectarian, or national ones).This investigation takes place against the backdrop of, and directly contributes to, two interwoven discussions exploring the "uses of the West" (Hellmann & Herborth 2017; also Bonnett 2004; Browning & Lehti 2010) as a category and discourse in international politics. First, we are interested in exploring how IS' use of the West (re-)produces a view of the world defined in civilizational terms and marked by contemporary forms of "civilizational politics" (Bettiza 2014; also Hall & Jackson 2007). Namely, the idea that civilizations and their relationsespecially understood in conflictual termsmatter in today's international system. We do so not only on the tail of Samuel Huntington's (1993; "clash ...
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