Meaning and International Relations: (Routledge Advances in International Relations and Global Politics)

This innovative volume brings together specialists in international relations to tackle a set of difficult questions about what it means to live in a globalized world where the purpose and direction of world politics are no longer clear-cut. What emerges from these essays is a very clear sense that while we may be living in an era that lacks a single, universal purpose, ours is still a world replete with meaning. The authors in this volume stress the need for a pluralistic conception of meaning in a globalized world and demonstrate how increased communication and interaction in transnational spaces work to produce complex tapestries of culture and politics. Meaning and International Relations also makes an original and convincing case for the relevance of hermeneutic approaches to understanding contemporary international relations.

Table of Contents:
1. Andrew J. Williams Introduction 2. Andrew J. Williams Meaning and International Relations: Some Thoughts 3. Christopher Coker Surfing the Zeitgeist 4. Zaki Laidi The Delocalisation of Meaning 5. Gerard Delanty Meaning and Social Transformations: Ideology in a Post-Ideological Age 6. Stefan Elbe Eurosomnia: Europe's 'Spiritual Vitality' and the Debate on the European Idea 7. Annick Wibben Whose Meaning(s)?!: A Feminist Perspective on the Crisis of Meaning in International Relations 8. Tarja Värynen The Search for Meaning in Global Conjunctions: From Ethnographic Truth to Ethnopolitical Agency 9. Peter Mandaville When Meaning Travels: Muslim Translocality and the Politics of 'Authenticity' 10. Andrea Den Boer Messianic Moments and the Religious (Re)turn in International Relations 11. Stephen Chan Reliving the Boxer Uprising, or the Restricted Meaning of Civilisation 12. Peter Mandaville On the Danger of Premature Conclusion(s)

About the Author :
Peter Mandaville is Assistant Professor of Government and Politics at George Mason University, Washington D.C. He was previously a Lecturer in International Relations at the University of Kent at Canterbury. Recent publications include Transnational Muslim Politics: Reimagining the Umma and The Zen of International Relations: IR Theory from East West, a co-edited volume. Andrew Williams is Professor of International Relations at the University of Kent at Canterbury. Recent publications include Failed Imagination? New World Orders of the Twentieth Century. He is currently writing a book entitled The Victors and the Vanquished: Liberal Dilemmas and the Ending of Wars.