Posthuman International Relations

Complexity, Ecologism and Global Politics

Erika Cudworth, Stephen Hobden

In this bold intervention, Cudworth and Hobden draw on recent advances in thinking about complexity theory to call for a profound re-envisioning of the study of international relations. As a discipline, IR is wedded to the enlightenment project of overcoming the ‘hazards’ of nature, and thus remains constrained by its blinkered ‘human-centred’ approach. Furthermore, as a means of predicting major global-political events and trends, it has failed consistently. Instead, the authors argue, it is essential we develop a much more nuanced and sophisticated analysis of global political systems, taking into account broader environmental circumstances, as well as social relations, economic practices and formations of political power. Essentially, the book reveals how the study of international politics is transformed by the understanding that we have never been exclusively human.

Contents

• Introducing Complexity and Posthumanism to International Politics
2. Complexity Theory in the Study of the Social World
3. Complex International Systems
4. Emergent Features in International Systems
5. Complex Ecologism
6. The Politics of Posthumanism
7. For a Posthuman International Relations
• Bibliography
 

About the Authors

Erika Cudworth is Senior Lecturer in International Politics and Sociology at the University of East London. She is author of The Modern State: Theories and Ideologies (with Tim Hall and John McGovern) and Social Lives with Other Animals: Tales of Sex, Death and Love.

Stephen Hobden is a Senior Lecturer in International Politics at the University of East London. He is the author of International Relations and Historical Sociology: Breaking Down Boundaries (1998), and edited, together with John Hobson, Historical Sociology of International Relations (2002).