Deciphering the modern Janus: societal multiplicity and nation-formation

Matin, Kamran

doi:10.1080/14747731.2019.1673615

Cited by 16 publications

(9 citation statements)

References 44 publications

(22 reference statements)

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“…The two consequences are politically embodied in the modern sovereign state, which forms the basic unit of the modern world order marked by substantive hierarchy and formal anarchy (Rosenberg, 1994). The modern sovereign state is also the historically distinct political form of the nation (Matin, 2019).…”

Section: Beyond Internalism: the Uneven And Combined Development Of T...mentioning

confidence: 99%

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The Kurdish Janus: The intersocietal construction of nations

Matin

Mahmoudi

2023

Nations and Nationalism

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Existing accounts of Kurdish nationalism can be mapped onto the main theories of nationalism, that is, primordialism, ethnosymbolism and modernism. These theories, however, suffer, respectively, from essentialism, circularity and aporia, manifest in their common inability to digest the Janus‐like character of nations, that is, their display of simultaneous modernity and antiquity. This paper develops an alternative account through a critical application of the theory of ‘uneven and combined development’ (UCD) to the Republic of Kurdistan of 1946. The argument unfolds in three steps. First, we argue that the failure of mainstream theories of nationalism to explain the nation's historical ambiguity lies in their ‘internalism’. Second, we show that UCD overcomes internalism through its plural social ontology and enables a retheorising of nations as interactive products of the geopolitical mediation of historical capitalism's expansion through societal multiplicity. Central to this process was the emergence of nationalism as a defensive and emulative ideology of geopolitical self‐preservation. This involved reversing the sociological and political moments of the originary formation of the British imperial nation. We argue that this historical reversal underpins the Janus‐like form of nations, including the Kurdish nation. Third, we substantiate the argument through a brief case study of the Republic of Kurdistan.

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Section: Beyond Internalism: the Uneven And Combined Development Of T...mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…413–414). In other words, almost all nations have emerged in social contexts where what modernist theories of nationalism consider their fundamental causes were absent (Matin, 2019, p. 2).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Kurdish Janus: The intersocietal construction of nations

Matin

Mahmoudi

2023

Nations and Nationalism

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“…For scholars including Rosenberg (2017Rosenberg ( , 2016Rosenberg ( , 2013 and Matin (2020), multiplicity provides the ontological starting point for IR's contribution to such debates. While Markell (2003: 15-16, 110-111) is rightly suspicious of how spatial concepts such as multiplicity defer difficult questions in recognition theory, these historical factors are essential to the contribution that IR might make when, at a historical level, multiple such geographies intersect.…”

Section: Historicising Recognition: Simultaneity and Multiplicitymentioning

confidence: 99%

“…For Rosenberg, once more, 'whether viewed in the long term of world history or at the quotidian level of shifting political conjunctures, social development -meaning causally cumulative change -is shaped by interactive, as well as reproductive, logics of process' (Rosenberg, 2013: 27). This interplay, I suggest, whether (among others) in political economy (Matin, 2020;Shilliam, 2009), a structural shift towards external affirmation by other states (Onuf, 2013;Zarakol, 2018), or colonialism and the suzerain character of the states-system (Buzan and Lawson, 2015;Hobson and Sharman, 2005) gives global struggles for recognition their form and specific articulation.…”

Section: Historicising Recognition: Simultaneity and Multiplicitymentioning

confidence: 99%

Recognition, multiplicity and the elusive international

Hoseason

2021

Journal of International Political Theory

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This article argues that the normative promise of recognition theory in International Relations has become increasingly inadequate to the cross-cutting and intersecting issues characteristic of a globalised and fragmented world. Engaging in critical readings of cosmopolitan forms of recognition theory, the critique of sovereignty and Markell’s influential critique of recognition theory, I suggest that the increasing ontological specificity of recognition theory in IR has come at the expense of its ability to develop links between different areas of international politics. The result is a failure to deal with recognition’s simultaneity, or the co-existence of analytically distinct and internally coherent recognition orders that is characteristic of the international. Building on this insight, I argue that a more historically-sensitive and materialist approach to recognition can be grounded in the concept of multiplicity. By opening recognition up to processes of interaction, and not merely reproduction, multiplicity frames the international more clearly as a historical presupposition, rather than a limit, of recognition. Furthermore, placing recognition struggles within the state, international institutions or transnational movements in relation to each other ensures that IR can contribute to the further development of recognition theory by situating recognition struggles at the intersection of different moral geographies.

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“…A conception of the social world as both multiple and uneven therefore builds a conception of cultural relationality into its core theoretical optic. It encompasses the idea of identity as an inherently relational phenomenon constituted by the interactions between one social actor or group and another (Matin 2020). It locates the possibility of collective identity-formation in the constitutive interface between multiple social entities and differentially constituted cultural subjectivities.…”

Section: Geocultural Feedbackmentioning

confidence: 99%

Geoculture and unevenness: Occidentalism in the history of uneven and combined development

Leigh

2020

Cambridge Review of International Affairs

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Recent works on 'uneven and combined development' (UCD) have focused on its contributions to the study of political economy and geopolitics, but they have yet to systematically address the cultural dimension of social changethe socially shared ideas by which people understand and act upon the world. The present article addresses this lacuna by applying the premises of UCD to the nineteenth-century emergence of Occidentalism: the idea of 'the West' as the dominant site of culture, civilisation and modernity. Against the problems of methodological internalism and Eurocentrism, I argue that the categories of unevenness and combined development provide critical entry points for an examination of the international construction of 'Western' identities and discourses during the late-nineteenth century imperial era. Specifically, I advance a theory of geocultural feedback which locates the constituting terms of those identities and discourses in a specific conjuncture of global unevenness: how the experience of 'relative backwardness' in late-industrialising societies translated into self-consciously 'Westernising' projects of catch-up development which destabilised prevailing conceptions of white European supremacy. In both the British and American empires, this historical dynamic produced a distinct pattern of cultural transformation: a reactive discourse of civilisational closure centred on the defence of 'the West.' I am especially grateful to my supervisor, George Lawson, for his advice and support throughout the PhD from which this article arises. Thanks also to Justin Rosenberg, the editors of CRIA, and three anonymous reviewers for convening this special issue and providing invaluable comments and suggestions. I would also like to thank Grace Benton and Lewis Bassett-Yerrell for their insightful comments on an earlier draft.

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Deciphering the modern Janus: societal multiplicity and nation-formation

Abstract: Article (Accepted Version) http://sro.sussex.ac.uk Matin, Kamran (2020) Deciphering the modern Janus: societal multiplicity and nation-formation. Globalizations,

Cited by 16 publications

References 44 publications

The Kurdish Janus: The intersocietal construction of nations

The Kurdish Janus: The intersocietal construction of nations

Recognition, multiplicity and the elusive international

Geoculture and unevenness: Occidentalism in the history of uneven and combined development

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