Description
This paper discusses the final book of Andrew Linklater, soon to be published posthumously, and argues that the book makes a fundamental contribution for a future-fit International Relations (IR), amidst epoch-making civilizational transformations of world order, by providing the foundation for an analysis of the social forces that bind and divide humanity. The book crowns Linklater’s trilogy on harm, violence, and civilization in world politics, with an analysis of how the shifting historical patterns of world orders cannot be understood without analysing the role of collective symbols (e.g. flags, monuments, foundational myths) in forging the emotional bonds that constitute political communities and mediate their relations with those considered outsiders. Linklater's original theoretical synthesis of Norbert Elias's process sociology, Durkheimian social theory, and the English School provides a unique framework to trace how these symbolic codes have evolved over the longue durée, shaping standards of civilization and the tension between symbolic particularism and universalism. By placing symbols at the centre of a grand narrative of the shifting patterns of human interdependence from the Neolithic to the Anthropocene, the book provides the theoretical and conceptual tools for a future-fit IR capable of grappling with the challenges characterising the 21st century, namely the resurgence of identity politics and the challenges in forging civilizational solidarities amidst ecological breakdown.
