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"Neumann, Iver B"
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Governing the global polity
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.
eBook
Concepts of international relations, for students and other smarties
\"Concepts of International Relations, for Students and Other Smarties is not a stereotypical textbook, but an instructive, entertaining and motivating introduction to the field of International Relations (IR). Rather than relying on figures or tables, Concepts of International Relations, for Students and Other Smarties piques the reader's interest with a pithy narrative that presents apposite nutshell examples, stresses historical breaks and throws in the odd pun to get the big picture across. While there are other brief, introductory IR titles, Iver Neumann's book remains fully within the academic genre, and is comparatively long on history. It is based on his repeatedly offered introductory lectures to first-year IR students and students from other disciplines looking for an overview course at the LSE. With a relaxed lecturing style, this textbook introduces the long-term historical emergence of concepts such as state (European), state (global), empire, non-state agents, foreign policy, state system, nationalism, globalization, security, international society, great powers, diplomacy, war and peace, balance of power, international law, power and sovereignty, intervention, gender and class. It demonstrates how such phenomena have been understood in very different ways. First, the reader is alerted to how the use of concepts is an integrated part of politics. Secondly, the reader is sensitized to how social change has worked in the past, and is working now. Thirdly, the book demonstrates how historical and social context matters in ongoing international relations\"-- Provided by publisher.
Book
Russia's Europe, 1991-2016: inferiority to superiority
Russia defines itself as a Great Power in relation to Europe and the West. The first part of the article traces how, since 1991, a story about greatness centred on being part of contemporary European civilization has given way to a story of how Russia is great by being superior to a Europe that is now seen as rotten and decadent. The former story spelled cooperation with Europe and the West, where the latter spells confrontation. The second part argues that Russia's superiority complex is unsustainable. It is hard to see how, in the face of the formative structural pressure of the state system, Russia will be able to sustain its superiority complex. A state that does not order itself in such a way that it may either gain recognition as a Great Power by forcing its way and/or by being emulated by others, is unlikely to maintain that status. The costs of maintaining Great-Power status without radical political and economic change seem to be increasing rapidly. If Russia wants to maintain its status, an about-turn is needed. Such a turn may in itself be no solution, though, for if Russia does not do anything about the root causes of its perceived inferiority to Europe, then the Russian cyclical shifting from a Westernizing to a xenophobic stance will not be broken.
Journal Article
Moral authority and status in International Relations: Good states and the social dimension of status seeking
We develop scholarship on status in international politics by focusing on the social dimension of small and middle power status politics. This vantage opens a new window on the widely-discussed strategies social actors may use to maintain and enhance their status, showing how social creativity, mobility, and competition can all be system-supporting under some conditions. We extract lessons for other thorny issues in status research, notably questions concerning when, if ever, status is a good in itself; whether it must be a positional good; and how states measure it.
Journal Article
Power, culture and situated research methodology : autobiography, field, text
This book explores the extent to which our lives become an important underlying context for data production. Drawing on insights from Gestalt psychology, feminism and post-structuralism, it discusses how to situate yourself in the different phases of research.
Book
At Home with the Diplomats
The 2010 WikiLeaks release of 250,000 U.S. diplomatic cables has made it eminently clear that there is a vast gulf between the public face of diplomacy and the opinions and actions that take place behind embassy doors. InAt Home with the Diplomats, Iver B. Neumann offers unprecedented access to the inner workings of a foreign ministry. Neumann worked for several years at the Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, where he had an up-close view of how diplomats conduct their business and how they perceive their own practices. In this book he shows us how diplomacy is conducted on a day-to-day basis.
Approaching contemporary diplomacy from an anthropological perspective, Neumann examines the various aspects of diplomatic work and practice, including immunity, permanent representation, diplomatic sociability, accreditation, and issues of gender equality. Neumann shows that the diplomat working abroad and the diplomat at home are engaged in two different modes of knowledge production. Diplomats in the field focus primarily on gathering and processing information. In contrast, the diplomat based in his or her home capital is caught up in the seemingly endless production of texts: reports, speeches, position papers, and the like. Neumann leaves the reader with a keen sense of the practices of diplomacy: relations with foreign ministries, mediating between other people's positions while integrating personal and professional into a cohesive whole, adherence to compulsory routines and agendas, and, above all, the generation of knowledge. Yet even as they come to master such quotidian tasks, diplomats are regularly called upon to do exceptional things, such as negotiating peace.
eBook
How old are the first European inter-polity systems? The case for the Bronze Age
While International Relations scholars have recently excavated a number of systems previously unstudied by the discipline, few have discussed the emergence of fully-fledged systems in prehistory. Fully-fledged system have continuous multilinear (between more than two units at the time) and multidimensional (more than one institution in evidence) interaction at its core. Drawing mainly on extant archaeological research, we examine the European Bronze Age. We find that Indo-European in-migrating herders during the third millennium BCE established patron-led polities based on the steppe practices of the clients’ oath to his patron and the patron’s feast. A third practice, the guest/host relationships between patrons, anchored Europe’s first regional inter-polity systems. We also find that, due to an increase in interaction capacity caused by better boat building, horse-transport and the emergence of new technologies that made possible warfare at a distance, there systems were harbingers of a European-wide system of what we call Central Site Polities. We conclude that European inter-polity systems hail from the Bronze Age and suggest that the practices on which these systems rested are still, mutatis mutanda, with us. Further work on possible genealogical ties between the Central Site System and subsequent European systems awaits.
Journal Article