Iver B. Neumann

Returning Practice to the Linguistic Turn: The Case of Diplomacy

The linguistic turn in the social sciences has been fruitful in directing attention towards the preconditions for action, as well as those actions understood as speech acts. However, to the extent that the linguistic turn comprises only textual approaches, it brackets out the study of other kinds of action, and so cannot account for social life understood as a whole. We should return to seminal theorists such as Wittgenstein and Foucault, who complemented a linguistic turn with a turn towards practices. Drawing on the work of ethnographers such as Michel de Certeau and sociologists such as Ann Swidler, in part one of this article I suggest that this may be done by using a simple model of culture as a mutually conditioned play between discourse and practices. In part two, I use this model to study changing Norwegian diplomatic practices in the High North in the aftermath of the Cold War. The claim is that capital-based diplomatic practices are being complemented by emerging local practices which may only be governed from the capital by indirect means. Diplomacy thus changes from being a centralised to being a multibased practice.

Russia and the idea of Europe: a study in identity and international relations

The end of the Soviet system and the transition to the market in Russia, coupled with the inexorable rise of nationalism, brought to the fore the centuries-old debate about Russias relationship with Europe. In this revised and updated second edition of Russia and the Idea of Europe, Iver Neumann discusses whether the tensions between self-referencing nationalist views and Europe-orientated liberal views can ever be resolved. Drawing on a wide range of Russian sources, this book retains the broad historical focus of the previous edition and picks up from where the it off in the early 1990s, bringing the discussion fully up to date. Discussing theoretical and political developments, it relates the existing story of Russian identity formation to new foreign policy analysis and the developments in the study of nationalism. The book also offers an additional focus on post-Cold War developments. In particular it examines the year 2000, when Putin succeeded Yeltsin as president, and 2014, when Russian foreign policy turned from cooperation to confrontation. Bringing to life the various debates surrounding this complicated relationship in an accessible and clear manner, this book continues to be a unique and vital resource for both students and scholars of international relations.

The Other in European self-definition: an addendum to the literature on international society

The dominant role of the realist paradigm in international relations theory has left little room for the study of the role of cultural variables in world politics. The two central tenets of the realist theoretical game-plan—the primacy of the sovereign state system, and the autonomy of that system, from domestic political, social and moral considerations—focus our attention on the vertical division of the world into sovereign states, rather than on the horizontal forces and ties that cut across state frontiers. The result is the metaphor for the interaction of states as the mechanical one of the billiard table, with power politics as the primary dynamic.

European Identity, EU Expansion, and the Integration/Exclusion Nexus

No cultural identity presents itself as the opaque body of an untranslatable idiom, but always, on the contrary, as the irreplaceable inscription of the universal in the singular, the unique testimony to the human essence and to what is proper to man. Each time, it has to do with the discourse of responsibility: I have, the unique I has, the responsibility of testifying for universality. Each time, the exemplarity of the example is unique. This is why it can be put into series and formalized into a law.1

From Alliance to Security Community: NATO, Russia, and the Power of Identity

The evolution of NATO constitutes one of the most important developments in post-Cold War international security. Despite predictions of fragmentation from within or supercession from above, the Alliance has emerged as a — perhaps the — dominant institution in contemporary security relations. While debates in the late 1980s often revolved around whether NATO would, could, or should survive, they now centre around the implications of its centrality, and its current and (possible) future enlargement. While disputes remain concerning the wisdom of NATO’s policies, the place of the Alliance at the centre of contemporary relations seems beyond dispute.

Classical theories of international relations

Foreword - Notes on the Contributors - Traditions of Thought and Classical Theories of International Relations I.Clark - Hobbes, the State of Nature and the Laws of Nature C.Navari - Grotius B.Kingsbury - Kant: Theorist beyond Limits H.Williams & K.Booth - Vitoria and the Universalist Conception of International Relations M.C.Ortega - Desperately Clinging to Grotian and Kantian Sheep: Rousseaus Attempted Escape from the State of War D.P.Fidler - Adam Smith and the Liberal Tradition in International Relations A.W.Walter - Edmund Burke and the Commonwealth of Europe: The Cultural Bases of International Order J.M.Welsh - Hegel, the State and International Relations A.Linklater - Friedrich Gentz, Rationalism and the Balance of Power R.Little - Vattel: Pluralism and its Limits A.Hurrel - Conclusion I.Clark & I.B.Neumann - Index

Diplomatic sites: a critical enquiry

Although diplomacy increasingly takes place in non-traditional, non-Western settings, public and academic debates still focus solely on the conference table, the ministerial office, and the press conference as sites of diplomatic practice. This book confronts the problem of diplomatic Euro-centrism head on, weighing potentially revolutionary changes such as increasing globalization and the rise of such powers as India, China, and Brazil. Iver Neumann, a Norwegian scholar with broad diplomatic experience, considers the potential of diplomatic sites that range from the dinner table to a host of culturally specific locations, in which todays third parties attempt to mediate conflict, facilitate peace, and manage aggressors and long-standing civil wars. Since the media plays a significant role in shaping the publics perception of diplomacy, Neumann surveys the representation of diplomacy in popular culture and concludes that, far from being in crisis, diplomatic activity is becoming more and more prevalent in an increasing number of unconventional locations. His study concludes that in todays globalized world, the art of diplomacy is thriving.

Grand Strategy, Strategic Culture, Practice The Social Roots of Nordic Defence

The article produces a model for empirical study of the security and defence policies of states, with a starting point in the literature on strategic culture (e.g. Gray, Klein, Johnston) and grand strategy (e.g. Kennedy, Posen, Kier). We identify two key problems with the literature. First, it only superficially touches base with the social sciences grouped around the concept of culture for a century, namely cultural anthropology and, to a lesser degree, sociology. The literature on strategic culture consequently operates with a reified concept of culture that is outdated elsewhere in the social sciences. Second, in sticking to a reified concept of culture, the literature has not (yet) come up with the kind of dynamic and specific framework for empirical analysis that we are looking for. Instead, it is bogged down in the debate begun in the 1950s on whether behaviour should or should not be treated as part of culture. In order to rectify this, we refashion the concept of strategic culture as a dynamic interplay of potential grand strategy, on the one hand, and specific practices such as doctrines, civil–military relations and procurement on the other. The key source of inspiration for this reconceptualization is the so-called ‘practice turn’ in anthropology and sociology (e.g. Bourdieu, Swidler, Schatzki).

Beware of organicism: the narrative self of the state

Alexander Wendt holds that states are ‘purposive actors with a sense of Self’. He draws on hermeneutic scholarship from Paul Ricoeur (1991) to Erik Ringmar to argue that this self is a narrative structure.

Untimely Russia: Hysteresis in Russian-Western Relations over the Past Millennium

This article draws on Pierre Bourdieus sociology to explain how a lack of fit between a repertoire of bodily practices accumulated through history, on the one hand, (here, Russian habitus) and the field in which it is employed, on the other, (here, diplomacy) can take shape in world politics. Such “hysteresis” provides a longue durée reading that challenges both the realist idea that similar outcomes are due to invariant structures and the constructivist idea that structures “socialize” states. Social stability stems from agency, more specifically, from habitus. Our empirical examples are breaking points in Russian relations with neighbors: the Rus’ and the Eurasian steppe empires (ca. 800–1500), Muscovys diplomatic interactions with Europe, and Russias bid to join European international society and situation during the twentieth century. In each case, Moscows relentless quest for equal status prompted quixotic practices that were often dismissed by Western countries and hampered the security of both parties.