This book explores the alternative futures of political community and moves beyond the critique of what is wrong with existing, state-based forms of political community. It does so not with the defence of a particular normative model of political community in mind, but rather in the quest for new ways of thinking about political community itself. Exploring how the political must be rethought in the twenty-first century and beyond, this book is divided into three parts:
Part I focuses on the core problem that, despite the obvious need to rethink political community ‘beyond’ the nation state, our conceptual language is still thoroughly shaped by modernity, its prioritisation of the state and sovereignty, and its assumption of unifying progress in history.
Part II focuses on postmodern political community, these chapters take up the calls made above for new thinking about political community that goes ‘beyond’ modern conceptions.
Part III turns to the question of the emergence and decline of new forms of political community. The purpose of this section is to consider how the transformation of political community occurs in practice, and what the primary driver of this change is globally, locally and historically.
This book will be of strong interest to students and scholars of International Relations, Political and Social Theory.
Introduction: The Future of Political Community Gideon Baker and Jens Bartelson Part 1: Assumptions of Political Community: Progress, Democracy and Boundaries in Question 1. Dream or Nightmare? Thinking the Future of World Politics Kimberly Hutchings 2. Globalising the Democratic Community Jens Bartelson 3. The Politics of Hospitality: Sovereignty and Ethics in Political Community Gideon Baker Part 2: Political Community and the Postmodern 4. Constituting Community: Heidegger, Mimesis and Critical Belonging Louiza Odysseos 5. What Future for the European Political Community? Nietzsche, Nationalism, and the Idea of the ‘Good Europeans’ Stefan Elbe 6. The Limits of Post-Territorial Political Community: From the Cosmopolitan Politics of Global Civil Society to the Biopolitics of the Multitude David Chandler Part 3: Learning from the Past and Understanding Future Transformations 7. Homer, Vergil and Identity in International Relations Richard Ned Lebow 8. Rethinking Political Community from Neglected Places Giuseppe Ballacci 9. Political Community Formation beyond the Nation-State Benjamin Herborth
Biography
Jens Bartelson is Professor of Political Science, Lund University, Sweden. He is the author of A Genealogy of Sovereignty, Cambridge University Press (1995), and The Critique of the State, Cambridge University Press (2001).
Gideon Baker is Senior Lecturer in Politics and International Relations at the University of Lancaster. He is the author of Civil Society and Democratic Theory: Alternative Voices, London, Routledge, (2002) and co-editor of Global Civil Society: Contested Futures, London, Routledge, (2005).
