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The untimely historical sociologist

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  08 September 2017

George Lawson
George Lawson*
Affiliation:
Associate Professor, International Relations, LSE
*
* Correspondence to: George Lawson, Associate Professor, IR Department, London School of Economics and Political Science, Houghton Street, London WC2A 2AE, UK. Author’s email: G.Lawson@lse.ac.uk
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Abstract

This article examines the historical sociology that informs Andrew Linklater’s Violence and Civilization in the Western States-Systems. On the sociological side, it critically assesses Linklater’s use of Elias and Wight, arguing that his ‘higher level synthesis’ is internally incompatible. On the historical side, the article argues that the occlusion of the transnational interactions that, in great measure, drive historical development means that Linklater’s analysis is inadequate for its stated purpose: to chart the development of civilising processes within the Western state-systems.

Keywords

Martin WightNorbert EliasRise of the WestRelationalismMethodological NationalismAndrew Linklater
Type
Forum: Linklater’s Violence and Civilization in the Western States-Systems
Information
Review of International Studies , Volume 43 , Issue 4 , October 2017 , pp. 671 - 685
Copyright
© British International Studies Association 2017 

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References

1 No footnote can do justice to these prolific fields of activity. I therefore highlight just one work that I take to be exemplary of each: on global history, see Bayly, C. A., The Birth of the Modern World, 1780–1914 (Oxford, Blackwell, 2004)Google Scholar; on postcolonial scholarship, see Chakrabarty, Dipesh, Provincializing Europe (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2000)Google Scholar.

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5 Linklater, Violence and Civilization, p. 5.

6 A detailed account of Linklater’s synthesis of Elias and Wight can be found in Linklater, The Problem of Harm, especially ch. 6.

7 Linklater, Violence and Civilization, pp. 5, 8, 12.

8 Other factors, ranging from the role of ‘monopolies of power’ to ‘incentives for cooperation’, drop in and out of the narrative, but are not theorised consistently. I come back to this point in the following section.

9 Linklater, Violence and Civilization, p. xii.

10 Ibid., p. 12. The qualifications are important. Linklater presents a nuanced narrative in which the relationship between civilising and decivilising processes is dynamic, and levels of civility do not increase in a straightforward fashion. I return to this point below.

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61 Linklater, Violence and Civilization, p. 55.

62 Ibid., pp. 440, 447.

63 Ibid., p. 305.

64 Ibid., p. 188. For Wight, the key event is the Council of Constance, 1414–18; for Elias it is the gradual shift to individual self-control represented by the spread of ideas such as politesse, civilité, and courtoisie. See Wight, Systems of States, p. 151; Elias, Civilizing Process, pp. 39, 62, 102.

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82 An excerpt from Constantine Cavafy’s poem, Waiting for the Barbarians makes the point well: ‘The barbarians are coming today. What laws can the senators make now? Once the barbarians are here, they’ll do the legislating.’ Quite often, they did.

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91 Ibid., p. 77.

92 Ibid., p. 147. The term ‘simpler civilisations’ is taken from Wight, who uses it when discussing the Greek and Roman states-systems.

93 Linklater, Violence and Civilization, p. 147.

94 Ibid., p. 171.

95 Here Linklater’s debts to Elias are stark, particularly his focus on Erasmus, who is a central figure in The Civilizing Process. Like Linklater, Elias argues that the ‘nucleus’ of civilising ideas circulating in courtly society was extended to wider publics through the writings of (mostly humanist) intellectuals.

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97 Ibid., p. 127.

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