Vilho Harle – författare

As Harle shows, identity politics are nothing new. Post-Cold War ethnic conflicts and genocides are mere examples in a tradition where political conflicts are seen as struggles between good and evil. This tradition extends from ancient Iranian Zoroastrianism and classical Greek political theory up to present day American, Russian, and European politics.Harle examines how conflicts between us and them are often represented as the struggle between the representatives of good and representatives of evil. The origin of this tradition—the struggle between good and evil—is found in ancient Iranian Zoroastrianism, soon adopted by Judaism, Christianity, and finally, Islam.The political doctrine was born in ancient Greece, where power struggles between the Greek city states, especially Athens and Sparta, were represented by Athenians as the struggle between democracy and tyranny. In the Middle Ages the tradition was applied to, for example, Antichrists, rival faiths, witches, Jews, Russians, and Muslims. In the modern world, examples of the tradition in American and Russian political cultures and politics, as well as Carl Schmitt's distinction between friend and enemy and its international implications, especially the EU, are examined. Finally, identity politics in Finland, Karelia, and Lapland are presented as a problem of the definition of Europe. Harle claims that phenomena like ethnic conflicts, political extremism, neo-Nazism, and anti-Semitism are nothing new and are not independent of one another; instead, as Harle shows, they are examples in a long chain of tradition and interconnected through that tradition. A provocative analysis for scholars and researchers in international relations, political history, and the history of ideas.

Harle focuses on the perennial issue of social order by providing a comparative analysis of ideas on social order in the classical Chinese political philosophy, the Indian epic and political literature, Zoroastrianism, Judaism, the classical Greek and Roman political thought, and early Christianity. His analysis is based on the religious, political, and literary texts that represent their respective civilizations as both their major achievements and sources of shared values.Harle maintains that two major approaches to establishing and maintaining social order exist in all levels and types of social relations: moral principles and political power. According to the principle-oriented approaches, social order will prevail if and when people follow strict moral principles. According to the contending power-oriented approach, orderly relations can only be based on the application of power by the ruler over the ruled. The principle-oriented approaches introduce a comprehensive civil society of individuals; the power-oriented approaches give major roles to the city-state, its government and relationships between them. The question of morality can be recognized also within the power-oriented approaches which either submit politics to morality or maintain that politics must be taken as nothing else than politics. This book is a contribution to peace and international studies as well as political theory and international relations.

Distinctive due to explicit and systematically developed links between international relations (IR) and related disciplines, this book addresses global and regional interactions and the complex policy problems that often characterise this agenda. Such enhanced communication is crucial for improving the capacity of IR to engage with concrete issues that today are of high policy relevance for international organisations, states, diplomats, mediators and humankind in general. Whilst the authors do not reject the present IR, they offer a wider research agenda with new directions intended not only for those IR scholars who are unsatisfied with the analytical power of the current discipline, but also for those working on 'international', 'foreign', 'global' or 'interregional' issues in other disciplines and fields of research. In this instance they pay particular attention to linking up with peace research, international political economy (IPE) and cultural political economy (CPE), sociology, political geography, development studies, linguistics, cultural studies, environmental studies and energy research, gender studies, and traditions of area studies.

Distinctive due to explicit and systematically developed links between international relations (IR) and related disciplines, this book addresses global and regional interactions and the complex policy problems that often characterise this agenda. Such enhanced communication is crucial for improving the capacity of IR to engage with concrete issues that today are of high policy relevance for international organisations, states, diplomats, mediators and humankind in general. Whilst the authors do not reject the present IR, they offer a wider research agenda with new directions intended not only for those IR scholars who are unsatisfied with the analytical power of the current discipline, but also for those working on 'international', 'foreign', 'global' or 'interregional' issues in other disciplines and fields of research. In this instance they pay particular attention to linking up with peace research, international political economy (IPE) and cultural political economy (CPE), sociology, political geography, development studies, linguistics, cultural studies, environmental studies and energy research, gender studies, and traditions of area studies.