Benjamin De Carvalho

Biographic Data

ID4085607
NAMEBenjamin De Carvalho
GIVEN NAMESBenjamin
FAMILY NAMEDe Carvalho
SIGNATUREDE CARVALHO B
AFFILIATIONSNorwegian Institute of International Affairs
ORCID0000-0002-8313-333X
VERIFIEDYes
TOTAL WORKS59
TOTAL CITATIONS187
AUTHOR COUNT56
EDITOR COUNT3
FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR2004
LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR2026
H-INDEX6

  • The Status of Culture and the Culture of Status in International Relations

    Open AccessBenjamin De Carvalho, Halvard LeiraARTICLEPerspectives on Politics2026

    Culture has long inhabited a rather peculiar place in International Relations (IR), as witnessed by recent attempts to bring culture “back into” IR (Andrew Phillips and Christian Reus-Smit, eds., Culture and Order in World Politics , 2020). Even after the opening up of the discipline at the end of the Cold War, and with strategic culture being the obvious exception to the rule, culture has typically been seen as something that a discipline center…

  • The sword is a mighty pen: Changing concepts of treason and the state beyond Hobbesian origin myths

    Open AccessBenjamin De CarvalhoARTICLEEuropean Journal of International…2026References: 65

    What if the notion of the state was not first conceived of in political theory, nor traceable to Thomas Hobbes, but gradually articulated through humdrum statutory formulations? Through a study of treason statutes in the wake of the English Reformation of the 1530s, this article traces how the state was first framed as an abstract, impersonal entity against changing notions of treason. Thus, the article challenges established narratives that trac…

  • Sixty years of Nordic International Relations

    Open AccessBenjamin De Carvalho, Kristin Haugevik et al.ARTICLECooperation and Conflict2025References: 86

    In this contribution, the editors introduce the 60th anniversary Special Issue of Cooperation and Conflict . Emerging during the early Cold War, Cooperation and Conflict has over the years come to provide a forum for broad and pluralist theorizing within the discipline of International Relations (IR). The contributions in this Special Issue reflect on these intellectual trajectories, tracing how Nordic scholarship has simultaneously shaped and be…

  • Treason and Political Community: Exclusion, Belonging, and Loyalty

    Open AccessBenjamin De CarvalhoARTICLEInternational Political Sociology2025Cited by: 1References: 39

    Recent years have witnessed a surprising resurgence of treason accusations in public discourse, despite their rarity in legal prosecutions, particularly within democratic states. This article examines the effects of treason accusations, shifting focus from their causes to their role in shaping political communities and the meaning of allegiance. Deploying the term treason has important effects, as it contributes to delegitimizing groups of people…

  • The importance of being civilized: Opera houses as status symbols in International Relations

    Open AccessHalvard Leira, Benjamin De CarvalhoARTICLECooperation and Conflict2024Cited by: 7References: 6

    (Ouverture) By making the case for opera houses as symbols of civilized status in International Relations (IR), this article addresses the discrepancy between the waning popularity of opera and the veritable boom in new opera houses we are witnessing across the globe. We foreground the multivocality of status symbols—they may be intended to communicate more than one meaning, by and to more than one audience. Whether intended as vehicles of urban,…

  • The Historicity of International Politics: Imperialism and the Presence of the Past

    Open AccessGeorge Lawson, Thomas F Müller et al.BOOKThe Historicity of International…2023

    The past is constantly present, not least in the study of imperialism and imperial forms of power in international politics. This volume shows how historical trajectories have shaped international affairs covering a wide range of imperial and (post-) colonial settings in international politics, substantiating the claim that imperial and colonial legacies - and how they have transformed over time - are foundational to the historicity of internatio…

  • Privateering, Colonialism and Empires: On the Forgotten Origins of International Order

    Open AccessBenjamin De Carvalho, Halvard LeiraCHAPTERThe Historicity of International…2023

    This chapter discusses the historical practice of privateering, in particular its role in the making and breaking of empires. Focusing on privateering allows us to highlight both the persistence of past institutions and the extent to which the present breaks with the past. Privateering disrupts tidy dichotomies, such as between mediaeval and modern, public and private and state and empire. Today, privateering is most obviously present through its…

  • Whose Revisionism, Which International Order? Social Structure and Its Discontents

    Open AccessJorg Kustermans, Benjamin De Carvalho et al.ARTICLEGlobal Studies Quarterly2023Cited by: 7References: 9

    While the distinction between status quo and revisionist states is well established in International Relations, only more recently have scholars begun to refine the concept of revisionism itself, emphasizing that revisionism comes in different forms. A number of typologies have been introduced to capture this diversity. In this article, we offer a critique of these typologies, highlighting how many of these works elide the rule-governed and conte…

  • The Intercity Origins of Diplomacy: Consuls, Empires, and the Sea

    Halvard Leira, Benjamin De CarvalhoARTICLEDiplomatica2021

    City diplomacy is a fairly new topic in the study of diplomacy, and, many would argue, a fairly recent empirical phenomenon. A counterpoint to this could be to reference how the alleged origin of diplomacy in Greek antiquity was city-centered, as were the earliest forms of Renaissance diplomacy in Italy. In this essay we want to probe the connections between cities and diplomacy through problematizing what has counted as diplomacy. Our starting p…

  • Routledge Handbook of Historical International Relations

    Benjamin De Carvalho, Julia Costa López et al.BOOKRoutledge Handbook of Historical…2021

  • Studiet av internasjonal politikk etter 11. september 2001

    Open AccessHalvard Leira, Benjamin De CarvalhoARTICLEInternasjonal politikk2021References: 9

    Det er ingen tvil om at hendelsesforløp som ble igangsatt 11. september 2001 har vært med på å prege global politikk i de to tiårene som har gått. Men ble terrorangrepene mot USA 11. september 2001 definerende for hvordan vi forstår internasjonal politikk og hvordan vi studerer det? Basert på en gjennomgang av studiet av internasjonal politikk over de siste 20 årene argumenterer vi i denne artikkelen at svaret her er mer tvetydig. Tvetydig fordi …

  • Routledge Handbook of Historical International Relations

    Benjamin De Carvalho, Julia Costa López et al.BOOKRoutledge Handbook of Historical…2020

  • Status and the Rise of Brazil: Global Ambitions, Humanitarian Engagement and International Challenges

    Paulo Esteves, Maria Gabrielsen Jumbert et al.BOOKStatus and the Rise of Brazil2019

  • Everyday sovereignty: International experts, brokers and local ownership in peacebuilding Liberia

    Open AccessBenjamin De Carvalho, Niels Nagelhus Schia et al.ARTICLEEuropean Journal of International…2019Cited by: 4References: 54

    The present article investigates how sovereignty is performed, enacted and constructed in an everyday setting. Based on fieldwork and interviews with international embedded experts about the elusive meaning of ‘local ownership’, we argue that while sovereignty may, indeed, be a model according to which the international community ‘constructs’ rogue or failed polities in ‘faraway’ places, this view overlooks that these places are still spaces in w…

  • The Function of Myths in International Relations: Discipline and Identity

    Halvard Leira, Benjamin De CarvalhoCHAPTERThe Sage Handbook of the History,…2018

  • Engasjementspolitikk på autopilot: Fredsbygging, fredsbevaring og fredsmegling under Børge Brende

    Open AccessBenjamin De Carvalho, Morten Skumsrud AndersenARTICLEInternasjonal politikk2018Cited by: 1References: 2

    FN er og har lenge vaert

  • Forum: In the Beginning There was No Word (for it): Terms, Concepts, and Early Sovereignty

    Open AccessJulia Costa López, Benjamin De Carvalho et al.ARTICLEInternational Studies Review2018Cited by: 15References: 35

    It is difficult to overstate the importance of the concept sovereignty for international relations (IR). And yet, understanding the historical emergence of sovereignty in international relations has long been curtailed by the all-encompassing myth of the Peace of Westphalia. While criticism of this myth has opened space for further historical inquiry in recent years, it has also raised important questions of historical interpretation and methodol…

  • Moral authority and status in International Relations: Good states and the social dimension of status seeking

    Open AccessWilliam C Wohlforth, Benjamin De Carvalho et al.ARTICLEReview of International Studies2018Cited by: 28References: 26

    We develop scholarship on status in international politics by focusing on the social dimension of small and middle power status politics. This vantage opens a new window on the widely-discussed strategies social actors may use to maintain and enhance their status, showing how social creativity, mobility, and competition can all be system-supporting under some conditions. We extract lessons for other thorny issues in status research, notably quest…

  • Construction Time Again: History in Constructivist IR Scholarship

    Halvard Leira, Benjamin De CarvalhoARTICLEERIS – European Review of…2017

    In this article we seek to understand how succeeding generations of constructivists have invoked history to exact narratives of change within IR. We make the case that there is a move from a first generation where history served primarily to undermine generalised and ahistorical mainstream arguments through a second generation where history was providing data to undercut specific mainstream stories, replacing them with their own largely progressi…

  • Tidsskriftet Internasjonal Politikk 80 år! Fornyet fokus på Skandinavia, Norden og tverrfaglighet

    Open AccessBenjamin De Carvalho, Minda Holm et al.ARTICLEInternasjonal politikk2017

    Publisert: mars 2017Citation: Benjamin de Carvalho, Minda Holm & Niels Nagelhus Schia (2017). «Tidsskriftet Internasjonal Politikk 80 år! Fornyet fokus på Skandinavia, Norden og tverrfaglighet». Internasjonal Politikk, 75, 1: 1–4. http://dx.doi.org/10.23865/ip.v75.715

  • The making of the political subject: Subjects and Territory in the Formation of the State

    Open AccessBenjamin De CarvalhoARTICLETheory and Society2016Cited by: 7References: 43

    The article explores the historicity of political subjecthood, making the case that through a process of subjectification “subjects of the king” gradually became the political subjects of the state. This in turn contributed to reconstitute the state as an abstract notion that nevertheless was real through the allegiance owed to it by its subjects. Addressing the making of subjecthood in relation to state formation helps fill an important lacuna i…

  • The modern roots of feudal empires: The donatary captaincies and the legacies of the Portuguese Empire in Brazil

    Open AccessBenjamin De CarvalhoCHAPTERLegacies of Empire2015

    Introduction The history of the Portuguese Empire in Brazil and its influence on contemporary Brazil is a story of multiple legacies. In this chapter I explore these through a study of the initial Portuguese policy of settlement of the Brazilian colony. Eager to defend its colonial lands in Brazil from foreign powers, between 1534 and 1536 the Portuguese Crown divided the land of the colony in longitudinal tracks, or slices, going from the coast …

  • Private Force and the Making of States, c. 1100–1500

    Benjamin De CarvalhoCHAPTERRoutledge Handbook of Private…2015

  • Legacies of Empire: Imperial Roots of the Contemporary Global Order

    Open AccessTarak Barkawi, Iver B Neumann et al.BOOKLegacies of Empire2015

    The nation-state is a fairly recent historical phenomenon. Human history over the past two to four millennia has been dominated by empires, and the legacies of these empires continues to shape the contemporary world in ways that are not always recognised or fully understood. Much research and writing about European colonial empires has focused on relations between them and their colonies. This book examines the phenomenon of empire from a differe…

  • Jens Bartelson: Sovereignty as Symbolic Form

    Open AccessBenjamin De CarvalhoARTICLEInternasjonal politikk2015