Iver B. Neumann – författare

While kinship is among the basic organizing principles of all human life, its role in and implications for international politics and relations have been subject to surprisingly little exploration in International Relations (IR) scholarship. This volume is the first volume aimed at thinking systematically about kinship in IR – as an organizing principle, as a source of political and social processes and outcomes, and as a practical and analytical category that not only reflects but also shapes politics and interaction on the international political arena.

Contributors trace everyday uses of kinship terminology to explore the relevance of kinship in different political and cultural contexts and to look at interactions taking place above, at and within the state level. The book suggests that kinship can expand or limit actors’ political room for maneuvereon the international political arena, making some actions and practices appear possible and likely, and others less so. As an analytical category, kinship can help us categorize and understand relations between actors in the international arena. It presents itself as a ready-made classificatory system for understanding how entities within a hierarchy are organized in relation to one another, and how this logic is all at once natural and social.

While kinship is among the basic organizing principles of all human life, its role in and implications for international politics and relations have been subject to surprisingly little exploration in International Relations (IR) scholarship. This volume is the first volume aimed at thinking systematically about kinship in IR – as an organizing principle, as a source of political and social processes and outcomes, and as a practical and analytical category that not only reflects but also shapes politics and interaction on the international political arena.

Contributors trace everyday uses of kinship terminology to explore the relevance of kinship in different political and cultural contexts and to look at interactions taking place above, at and within the state level. The book suggests that kinship can expand or limit actors’ political room for maneuvereon the international political arena, making some actions and practices appear possible and likely, and others less so. As an analytical category, kinship can help us categorize and understand relations between actors in the international arena. It presents itself as a ready-made classificatory system for understanding how entities within a hierarchy are organized in relation to one another, and how this logic is all at once natural and social.

"There have been many attempts to adapt Foucault''s arguments to the study of international relations, but this powerful and provocative book is the most sustained, and arguably the most successful in showing how the governmentality approach can be adapted to the analysis of global politics." ---Barry Hindess, Research School of Social Sciences, The Australian National University

A highly welcome and original contribution to contemporary debates on the shape and future of the international system and on the possibility of reconfiguring IR theory as social theory." ---Mathias Albert, Bielefeld University, Germany

"Iver Neumann and Ole Jacob Sending have put meat on the bones of Michel Foucault''s notion of governmentality, fulfilling the hopes of long-famished students and scholars of global governance. Through their focus on specific case studies, the authors have provided a much-needed contribution to the international relations literature, one that is sure to become a staple of courses and seminars throughout the world." ---Ronnie D. Lipschutz, University of California, Santa Cruz

What does globalization mean for the principle of state sovereignty and for the power and functioning of states? Whereas realists assert the continued importance of states, constructivists contend that various political entities as well as the logic of globalization itself undermine state sovereignty.

Drawing on the state formation literature and on social theory, particularly the works of Weber and Foucault, Iver B. Neumann and Ole Jacob Sending question the terms of the realist-constructionist debate. Through detailed case studies, they demonstrate that states use nongovernmental organizations and international organizations indirectly to enforce social order and, ultimately, to increase their own power. At the same time, global politics is dominated by a liberal political rationality that states ignore at their peril. While states remain as strong as ever, they operate within a global polity of new hierarchies among states and between states and other actors.

Iver B. Neumann is Director of Research at the Norwegian Institute of International Affairs and Professor of Russian Studies at the University of Oslo.

Ole Jacob Sending is Senior Researcher at the Norwegian Institute of International Affairs, where he heads the Research Programme on Global Governance and International Organizations.

Cover art credit: © iStockphoto.com/Will Evans

Also available as an e-book.