Debating Worlds: Contested Narratives of Global Modernity and World Order

By the last decade of the twentieth century, the great questions of modernity seemed to be answered. With the collapse of the Soviet Union and global communism, the liberal democratic capitalist project seemed to be the only one left standing, and in the 1990s the "liberal ideal" spread worldwide. Today, of course, this universalistic narrative rings hollow. The global distribution of power has shifted and the preeminence of the West is receding as new directions for world order emerge. China is rapidly ascending as a peer competitor of the United States, bringing with it a powerful new global narrative of grievance and revision. Political Islam also burst onto the global scene as a multifaceted transnational movement reshaping regional political order and geopolitical alignments. With the rapid advance of climate change, there have arisen new narratives of global endangerment and dystopia. Far from converging, fragmentation and contestation increasingly dominate debates over world order. In Debating Worlds, Daniel Deudney, G. John Ikenberry, and Karoline Postel-Vinay have gathered a group of eminent scholars in the field to analyze the various ways in which the West's dominant narrative has waned and a new plurality of narratives has emerged. Each of these narratives combines stories of the past with understandings of the present and attractive visions of the future. Collectively, the contributors map out these narratives, focusing primarily on their key features, origins, and implications for world order. The narratives prominent on the world stage are a volatile mix of components, but they also differ in scope--some are regional and civilizational without global aspirations, while others cast themselves as globally expansive and universally ambitious. Covering the most influential narratives currently shaping world politics, Debating Worlds is an essential volume for all scholars of international relations.

Table of Contents:
Introduction: Debating Worlds Daniel Deudney, G. John Ikenberry, Karoline Postel-Vinay Chapter One: Angloworld Narratives: Race as Global Governance Duncan Bell Chapter Two: The Rise and Fall of a Global Narrative: The Soviet Challenge to the Western World Michael Cox Chapter Three: Pan-Islamic Narratives of the Global Order, 1870-1980 Cemil Aydin Chapter Four: The Enduring Dilemma of Japan's Uniqueness Narratives Saori Katada and Kei Koga Chapter Five: Writing the Right: Radical Conservative Narratives of Globalization Jean-Francois Drolet and Michael Williams Chapter Six: The Chinese Global in the Long Postwar: War, Civilization and Infrastructure since 1945 Rana Mitter Chapter Seven: Narrating India in/and the World: Colonial Origins and Postcolonial Contestations Itty Abraham Chapter Eight: Inequality, Development, and Global Distributive Justice Jeremy Adelman Chapter Nine: The Great Schism: Scientific-technological Modernity vs Greenpeace Civilization Daniel Deudney Conclusion: Many Worlds and the Coming Narrative Dilemma Karoline Postel-Vinay

About the Author :
Daniel Deudney is Professor of Political Science at Johns Hopkins University. He is the author, co-author, and co-editor of several books, including Dark Skies: Space Expansionism, Planetary Geopolitics, and the Ends of Humanity and Bounding Power: Republican Security Theory from the Polis to the Global Village. G. John Ikenberry is the Albert G. Milbank Professor of Politics and International Affairs at Princeton University. He is also Co-Director of Princeton's Center for International Security Studies and a Global Eminence Scholar at Kyung Hee University in Seoul, Korea. He is the author of eight books, including A World Safe for Democracy: Liberal Internationalism and the Crises of Global Order and Liberal Leviathan: The Origins, Crisis, and Transformation of the American World Order. Karoline Postel-Vinay is Director of Research at the Center for International Studies at Sciences Po in Paris. She is a specialist on the geopolitics of Japan and East Asia, and her books include The G20: A New Geopolitical Order and L'Occident et sa bonne parole: nos représentations du monde, de l'Europe coloniale à l'Amérique hégémonique.

Review :
Debating Worlds is a stimulating book that appealsto a cross-disciplinaryscholarly audience and succeeds in offering a map of global narratives.Regardless of whether the collection enables us to navigate towardthe plural and universal future the editors hope for, it certainlyoffers a clear-eyed diagnosis of our present narrative condition.Running through these case studies is the necessity for allcommunitynarratives to contain a history that justifies their identity- readily apparent in the fights over community/ national history waged in political campaigns and public spheres over the world today, whether in Ukraine, India, or the United States.