Description
Building on previous applications by Go (2008, 2013), and Nexon and Neumann (2018), this paper proposes a field-theoretic understanding of International Orders. Existing applications have usually endowed hegemons with a state-like role in managing the terms of exchange of various forms of capital – in the Bourdieusian sense – at the international level. After critiquing their exclusion of forms of international ordering which do not involve hegemonic states, as well as questioning the compatibility of these approaches with Bourdieu’s own conceptualisation of the state, the paper proceeds to provide an alternative that restores the balance between the hierarchy assumed by hegemonic order theories, and the anarchy presumed by their alternatives. In a first, Hobbesian turn, the international social space is conceptualised as a supreme meta-field created by upwards projections of power, and related attempts to shape international practice, by state nobilities; this anarchic social space is then seen to display various forms of possible order through varying configurations of capital, and distinct hierarchies of doxic, orthodox and heterodox practice. The decline and transformation of such orders is tied to reconfigurations of the meta-fields of power and practice through growing hysteresis. The framework is illustrated by contrasting the current Liberal International Order with its defunct Cold-War predecessor.
