John M Hobson
Dados Biográficos
| ID | 3673761 |
|---|---|
| NOME | John M Hobson |
| PRENOMES | John M |
| SOBRENOME | Hobson |
| ASSINATURA | HOBSON J M |
| AFILIAÇÕES | University of Sheffield |
| VERIFICADO | Não |
| TOTAL DE OBRAS | 40 |
| TOTAL DE CITAÇÕES | 730 |
| TOTAL COMO AUTOR | 38 |
| TOTAL COMO EDITOR | 2 |
| PRIMEIRO ANO DE PUBLICAÇÃO | 2000 |
| ANO MAIS RECENTE DE PUBLICAÇÃO | 2025 |
| ÍNDICE H | 12 |
The once and future world order
Globalizing International Theory
Multicultural Origins of the Global Economy
Westerners on both the left and right overwhelmingly conflate globalisation with Westernisation and presume that the global economy is a pure Western-creation. Taking on the traditional Eurocentric Big Bang theory, or the 'expansion of the West' narrative, this book reveals the multicultural origins of globalisation and the global economy, not so as to marginalise the West but to show how it has long been embedded in complex interconnections and …
Multicultural Origins of the Global Economy
Modern Japanese Political Thought and International Relations
In an ever more globalized world, sustainable global development requires effective intercultural co-operations. This dialogue between non-western and western cultures is essential to identifying global solutions for global socio-political challenges. Modern Japanese Political Thought and International Relations critiques the formation of non-western International Relations by assessing Japanese political concepts to contemporary IR discourses si…
Navigating Beyond the Eurofetishist Frontier of Critical IR Theory
This article argues that Critical IR theory’s (CIRT) claims to reflexivity, its engagement with “difference,” and its emancipatory stance are compromised by its enduringly Eurocentric gaze. While CIRT is certainly critical of the West, nevertheless its tendency toward “Eurofetishism”—by which Western agency is reified at the expense of non-Western agency—leads it into a “critical Eurocentrism.” While this Eurofetishism plays out differently acros…
A critical-sympathetic introduction to Linklater’s odyssey
This article provides an ‘engaged’ introduction to this forum on Andrew Linklater’s recently published book, Violence and Civilization in the Western States-Systems . I call this ‘engaged’ because I seek to adjudicate between the critics and Linklater’s book in the hope of building a bridge over troubled water. Given that the key word that underpins many of this forum’s contributions is Eurocentrism, I explore whether, and if so to what extent, L…
The 'R-Word' and 'E-Word' Definitional Controversies
In this piece, I reply to the principal criticisms made by my five interlocutors regarding my conception of Eurocentrism. This entails two key aspects with the first section discussing the ‘E-Word definitional controversy’, where I argue, in the light of the forum, that there are various competing definitions of Eurocentrism in postcolonialism which yield commensurable competing non-Eurocentric antidotes. While I defend my own position, I am inte…
The Eastern Origins of the Rise of the West and the “Return” of Asia
Confronting the global colour line
Race is a mercurial concept: debates over its ontology, epistemological status, and legitimacy are necessary precisely because race is a moving target; its manifestations vary in history and geography. This chapter discusses some of these debates via a quick tour of the philosophy of race. It argues students of the global colour line which should consider using the categories racialisation and racialised identity over the category race. When it c…
Race and Racism in International Relations
Re-viewing the Eurocentric Conception of World Politics
This article responds to the five forum pieces that critically engage my 2012 book The Eurocentric Conception of World Politics, the central argument of which is that ever since 1760 international theory has not provided ideologically neutral, universalist explanations of world politics but has been charged, or even mandated, with the provincial objective of defending, promoting or celebrating Western civilization as the highest referent of the w…
The Twin Self-Delusions of IR
This article deconstructs the twin ‘self-delusions’ of IR to reveal, first, the conventional axiom that the discipline enquires into juridically-equal sovereign state relations under international anarchy masks the dark hierarchical face of IR which promotes, defends and reifies, analytically and/or normatively, Western civilisation over non-Western states, and, second, the conventional axiom that IR operationalises a positivist and/or value-free…
Part 1 – Revealing the Eurocentric foundations of IPE
In this article and in Part 2 I advance a 'critical historiography' of IPE which excavates to the deepest foundations of the discipline. For while I very much welcome Benjamin Cohen's seminal historiographical intervention, nevertheless it obscures two foundational properties of IPE. First, identifying 1970 as the birth-year of IPE produces a distorted image of the discipline's purpose and historiography that can begin to be remedied by rehabilit…
Part 2 – Reconstructing the non-Eurocentric foundations of IPE
In Part 1 (this issue), I deconstructed IPE, past and present, to reveal the Eurocentric foundations of the discipline. This second part completes my critical historiography by revealing how Open Economy Politics, which dominates the latest phase of American IPE, is Eurocentric. However, some readers will, quite rightly, want to know why Eurocentrism poses a problem for IPE and what an alternative non-Eurocentric approach might look like. Accordi…
The Eurocentric Conception of World Politics
John Hobson claims that throughout its history most international theory has been embedded within various forms of Eurocentrism. Rather than producing value-free and universalist theories of inter-state relations, international theory instead provides provincial analyses that celebrate and defend Western civilization as the subject of, and ideal normative referent in, world politics. Hobson also provides a sympathetic critique of Edward Said's co…
Selected Writings of John A. Hobson 1932-1938
John A. Hobson is widely recognised as the most important British New Liberal thinker of politics and political economy of the twentieth century. The Selected Writings of John A. Hobson showcases an exciting and previously unpublished collection of Hobson's writings and lectures from 1932-1938 that Hobson presented at the South Place Ethical Society in the last decade of his life. The lectures and the introduction produce a fresh reading of Hobso…
The Big Bangs of IR
International relations as we know them emerged through the peace of Westphalia, and the discipline of International Relations emerged in 1919 and developed through a First Great Debate between idealists and realists. These are the established myths of 1648 and 1919. In this article we demonstrate how historical and historiographical scholarship has demolished these myths, but that the myths regardless are pervasive in the current textbooks that …
What’s at Stake in the Neo-Trotskyist Debate? Towards a Non-Eurocentric Historical Sociology of Uneven and Combined Development
This article seeks to appraise the direction that historical sociology has undertaken within Millennium in the last four decades while simultaneously laying out the groundwork for a ‘thirdwave’ historical sociology of international relations. In particular, I intervene in the current neo-Trotskyist debate concerning whether the concept of uneven and combined development (U&CD) should be historically generalised or merely confined to the modern ca…
Back to the future of nineteenth-century Western international thought?
The postmodern [European] state ... needs to get used to the idea of double standards. Among themselves, the postmodern states operate on the basis of laws and open co-operative security. But when dealing with more old-fashioned kinds of state outside the [Western] post-modern limits, Europeans need to revert to the rougher methods of an earlier era – force, preemptive attack, deception, whatever is necessary for those who still live in the ninet…
What is History in International Relations
To some extent, history has always been a core feature of the international imagination. On both sides of the Atlantic, leading figures in the discipline such as E. H. Carr, Hans Morgenthau, Martin Wight, Hedley Bull and Stanley Hoffman have all employed history as a means of illuminating their research. Indeed, Wight made searching the desiderata of international history the sine qua non of international theory, the best that could be hoped for …
The Eastern origins of Western civilisation
Reconstructing International Relations Through World History
Back to the future of ‘one logic or two’
This article argues that while the attempt by Alex Callinicos to construct a non-reductionist approach for theorizing the international is brave, it falls short of the target due, in part, to the failure to look in the right place for a non-reductionist Marxism. In taking us ‘back to the future’ of the debate on ‘one logic or two?’ (‘economics’ or ‘geopolitics and economics’), the quest can at best result only in the construction of a thin materi…
Sovereignty Post-9/11
The Eurocentric Conception of World Politics
John Hobson claims that throughout its history most international theory has been embedded within various forms of Eurocentrism. Rather than producing value-free and universalist theories of inter-state relations, international theory instead provides provincial analyses that celebrate and defend Western civilization as the subject of, and ideal normative referent in, world politics. Hobson also provides a sympathetic critique of Edward Said's co…
The Big Bangs of IR
International relations as we know them emerged through the peace of Westphalia, and the discipline of International Relations emerged in 1919 and developed through a First Great Debate between idealists and realists. These are the established myths of 1648 and 1919. In this article we demonstrate how historical and historiographical scholarship has demolished these myths, but that the myths regardless are pervasive in the current textbooks that …
Is critical theory always for the white West and for Western imperialism? Beyond Westphilian towards a post-racist critical IR
In appraising critical IR theory after twenty-five years, this article begins by asking whether critical theory implicitly reinforces the ‘superiority’ of Western civilisation and naturalises Western imperialism. In revealing the Eurocentrism of much of critical IR theory the article proceeds to reconstruct it by steering it in fresh non-Eurocentric directions. This is not to say that extant critical theory is moribund since it undoubtedly has mu…
The Enduring Place of Hierarchy in World Politics
Conventional wisdom maintains that since 1648 the international system has comprised states-as-like units endowed with Westphalian sovereignty under anarchy. And while radical globalization theorists certainly dispute the centrality of the state in modern world politics, nevertheless most assume that the state retains its sovereignty under globalization. In contrast we argue that hierarchical sub-systems (and hence unlike units) have been common …
What is History in International Relations
To some extent, history has always been a core feature of the international imagination. On both sides of the Atlantic, leading figures in the discipline such as E. H. Carr, Hans Morgenthau, Martin Wight, Hedley Bull and Stanley Hoffman have all employed history as a means of illuminating their research. Indeed, Wight made searching the desiderata of international history the sine qua non of international theory, the best that could be hoped for …
Navigating Beyond the Eurofetishist Frontier of Critical IR Theory
This article argues that Critical IR theory’s (CIRT) claims to reflexivity, its engagement with “difference,” and its emancipatory stance are compromised by its enduringly Eurocentric gaze. While CIRT is certainly critical of the West, nevertheless its tendency toward “Eurofetishism”—by which Western agency is reified at the expense of non-Western agency—leads it into a “critical Eurocentrism.” While this Eurofetishism plays out differently acros…
Part 1 – Revealing the Eurocentric foundations of IPE
In this article and in Part 2 I advance a 'critical historiography' of IPE which excavates to the deepest foundations of the discipline. For while I very much welcome Benjamin Cohen's seminal historiographical intervention, nevertheless it obscures two foundational properties of IPE. First, identifying 1970 as the birth-year of IPE produces a distorted image of the discipline's purpose and historiography that can begin to be remedied by rehabilit…
What’s at Stake in the Neo-Trotskyist Debate? Towards a Non-Eurocentric Historical Sociology of Uneven and Combined Development
This article seeks to appraise the direction that historical sociology has undertaken within Millennium in the last four decades while simultaneously laying out the groundwork for a ‘thirdwave’ historical sociology of international relations. In particular, I intervene in the current neo-Trotskyist debate concerning whether the concept of uneven and combined development (U&CD) should be historically generalised or merely confined to the modern ca…
Globalisation Makes of States What States Make of It
Across the social sciences the last decade has witnessed a proliferating interest in the relationship between the state and globalisation. By the early 1990s a range of writers working within what we label a structuralist approach asserted that globalisation is, if not challenging the viability of the sovereign state, then at least forcing it to adapt its policies to conform to the new global reality‐being 'hollowed out', as the phrase had it. Th…
Part 2 – Reconstructing the non-Eurocentric foundations of IPE
In Part 1 (this issue), I deconstructed IPE, past and present, to reveal the Eurocentric foundations of the discipline. This second part completes my critical historiography by revealing how Open Economy Politics, which dominates the latest phase of American IPE, is Eurocentric. However, some readers will, quite rightly, want to know why Eurocentrism poses a problem for IPE and what an alternative non-Eurocentric approach might look like. Accordi…
The Twin Self-Delusions of IR
This article deconstructs the twin ‘self-delusions’ of IR to reveal, first, the conventional axiom that the discipline enquires into juridically-equal sovereign state relations under international anarchy masks the dark hierarchical face of IR which promotes, defends and reifies, analytically and/or normatively, Western civilisation over non-Western states, and, second, the conventional axiom that IR operationalises a positivist and/or value-free…
Reimagining Weber
This article `reimagines' Max Weber, who is conventionally thought to be one of realism's founding fathers. While Weber's work had various ambiguities and tensions, we suggest that his conception of IR had much in common with liberalism, and especially the English School. Nevertheless, our `reimagining' of Weber augments in a sustained and particular way an area of analysis that has not been consistently or sufficiently developed within the Engli…
Reconstructing International Relations Through World History
Back to the future of ‘one logic or two’
This article argues that while the attempt by Alex Callinicos to construct a non-reductionist approach for theorizing the international is brave, it falls short of the target due, in part, to the failure to look in the right place for a non-reductionist Marxism. In taking us ‘back to the future’ of the debate on ‘one logic or two?’ (‘economics’ or ‘geopolitics and economics’), the quest can at best result only in the construction of a thin materi…
The 'R-Word' and 'E-Word' Definitional Controversies
In this piece, I reply to the principal criticisms made by my five interlocutors regarding my conception of Eurocentrism. This entails two key aspects with the first section discussing the ‘E-Word definitional controversy’, where I argue, in the light of the forum, that there are various competing definitions of Eurocentrism in postcolonialism which yield commensurable competing non-Eurocentric antidotes. While I defend my own position, I am inte…
Re-viewing the Eurocentric Conception of World Politics
This article responds to the five forum pieces that critically engage my 2012 book The Eurocentric Conception of World Politics, the central argument of which is that ever since 1760 international theory has not provided ideologically neutral, universalist explanations of world politics but has been charged, or even mandated, with the provincial objective of defending, promoting or celebrating Western civilization as the highest referent of the w…
A critical-sympathetic introduction to Linklater’s odyssey
This article provides an ‘engaged’ introduction to this forum on Andrew Linklater’s recently published book, Violence and Civilization in the Western States-Systems . I call this ‘engaged’ because I seek to adjudicate between the critics and Linklater’s book in the hope of building a bridge over troubled water. Given that the key word that underpins many of this forum’s contributions is Eurocentrism, I explore whether, and if so to what extent, L…
The Eastern Origins of the Rise of the West and the “Return” of Asia
Eurocentrism and Neorealism in the `Fall of Mann
Michael Mann's pioneering work provides insights not just into world history and historical sociology but also promises much for the discipline of International Relations (IR). However, I argue that Mann's theory suffers from a number of internal inconsistencies which, in turn, threaten the integrity of his overall model. Specifically, I claim that importing various neorealist insights into his work threatens Mann's commitment to historical socio…
Historical Sociology of International Relations
Part I. Introduction: 1. What's at stake in 'bringing historical sociology back into international relations?' John M. Hobson 2. Historical sociology: back to the future of international relations? Stephen Hobden Part II. Historical Sociologies of International Relations: 3. The two waves of Weberian historical sociology in international relations John M. Hobson 4. Neo-Weberian historical sociology and the question of epochal transformations Rand…
Bringing the State Back in, Kicking the State Back Out
The State and International Relations
This book, first published in 2000, provides students with an overview of the main theories of the state found in International Relations. Many International Relation scholars are proclaiming the state to be 'dead', while others lament the lack of an adequate theory of the state in International Relations. John Hobson seeks to resolve this confusion by introducing readers to state theory, arguing that existing theories of the state are limited, a…
The State and International Relations (Themes in International Relations)
Everyday Politics of the World Economy
How do our everyday actions shape and transform the world economy? This volume of original essays argues that current scholarship in international political economy (IPE) is too highly focused on powerful states and large international institutions. The contributors examine specific forms of 'everyday' actions to demonstrate how small-scale actors and their decisions can shape the global economy. They analyse a range of seemingly ordinary or subo…
The ‘second state debate’ in International Relations
This article argues that conventional understanding of how IR theory conceptualizes the state is in need of revision. By relocating IR theories of the state within the ‘second state’ debate, we find that neorealism underestimates the power of the state in world politics, while neoliberal institutionalism exaggerates its power. Moreover, liberalism, constructivism, Marxism, postmodernism, and ‘second-wave’ Weberian historical sociology, all endow …
Reimagining Weber
This article `reimagines' Max Weber, who is conventionally thought to be one of realism's founding fathers. While Weber's work had various ambiguities and tensions, we suggest that his conception of IR had much in common with liberalism, and especially the English School. Nevertheless, our `reimagining' of Weber augments in a sustained and particular way an area of analysis that has not been consistently or sufficiently developed within the Engli…
Globalisation Makes of States What States Make of It
Across the social sciences the last decade has witnessed a proliferating interest in the relationship between the state and globalisation. By the early 1990s a range of writers working within what we label a structuralist approach asserted that globalisation is, if not challenging the viability of the sovereign state, then at least forcing it to adapt its policies to conform to the new global reality‐being 'hollowed out', as the phrase had it. Th…
Bringing the State Back in, Kicking the State Back Out
Disappearing taxes or the ‘race to the middle’? Fiscal policy in the OECD
At least in the Anglo-Saxon countries – Australia, Britain, and the United States – we have grown accustomed to the all too familiar refrain, almost always proclaimed by right-wing governments – that under globalisation, taxes are 'disappearing' and that 'there is no alternative' but to slash spending on education and welfare. Ironically, many academics – especially radicals and Marxists – endorse this proposition; 'ironically' that is, because t…
Historical Sociology of International Relations
Part I. Introduction: 1. What's at stake in 'bringing historical sociology back into international relations?' John M. Hobson 2. Historical sociology: back to the future of international relations? Stephen Hobden Part II. Historical Sociologies of International Relations: 3. The two waves of Weberian historical sociology in international relations John M. Hobson 4. Neo-Weberian historical sociology and the question of epochal transformations Rand…
The Eastern Origins of Western Civilisation
John Hobson challenges the ethnocentric bias of mainstream accounts of the Rise of the West. It is often assumed that since Ancient Greek times Europeans have pioneered their own development, and that the East has been a passive by-stander in the story of progressive world history. Hobson argues that there were two processes that enabled the Rise of the 'Oriental West'. First, each major developmental turning point in Europe was informed in large…
The Eastern origins of Western civilization
The Enduring Place of Hierarchy in World Politics
Conventional wisdom maintains that since 1648 the international system has comprised states-as-like units endowed with Westphalian sovereignty under anarchy. And while radical globalization theorists certainly dispute the centrality of the state in modern world politics, nevertheless most assume that the state retains its sovereignty under globalization. In contrast we argue that hierarchical sub-systems (and hence unlike units) have been common …
Mann, the state and war
Michael Mann's two-volume magnum opus , The Sources of Social Power , is, in my opinion, one of the most impressive works of scholarship produced in the last fifty years. Indeed, the striking mix of empirical sensitivity and sweeping historical narrative within a sophisticated theoretical framework is such that the informal label of Mann as the ‘modern-day Max Weber’ is – despite his effacious modesty – richly deserved. That said, I do see some s…
Eurocentrism and Neorealism in the `Fall of Mann
Michael Mann's pioneering work provides insights not just into world history and historical sociology but also promises much for the discipline of International Relations (IR). However, I argue that Mann's theory suffers from a number of internal inconsistencies which, in turn, threaten the integrity of his overall model. Specifically, I claim that importing various neorealist insights into his work threatens Mann's commitment to historical socio…
The Eastern origins of Western civilisation
Reconstructing International Relations Through World History
Back to the future of ‘one logic or two’
This article argues that while the attempt by Alex Callinicos to construct a non-reductionist approach for theorizing the international is brave, it falls short of the target due, in part, to the failure to look in the right place for a non-reductionist Marxism. In taking us ‘back to the future’ of the debate on ‘one logic or two?’ (‘economics’ or ‘geopolitics and economics’), the quest can at best result only in the construction of a thin materi…
Sovereignty Post-9/11
Is critical theory always for the white West and for Western imperialism? Beyond Westphilian towards a post-racist critical IR
In appraising critical IR theory after twenty-five years, this article begins by asking whether critical theory implicitly reinforces the ‘superiority’ of Western civilisation and naturalises Western imperialism. In revealing the Eurocentrism of much of critical IR theory the article proceeds to reconstruct it by steering it in fresh non-Eurocentric directions. This is not to say that extant critical theory is moribund since it undoubtedly has mu…
What is History in International Relations
To some extent, history has always been a core feature of the international imagination. On both sides of the Atlantic, leading figures in the discipline such as E. H. Carr, Hans Morgenthau, Martin Wight, Hedley Bull and Stanley Hoffman have all employed history as a means of illuminating their research. Indeed, Wight made searching the desiderata of international history the sine qua non of international theory, the best that could be hoped for …
Back to the future of nineteenth-century Western international thought?
The postmodern [European] state ... needs to get used to the idea of double standards. Among themselves, the postmodern states operate on the basis of laws and open co-operative security. But when dealing with more old-fashioned kinds of state outside the [Western] post-modern limits, Europeans need to revert to the rougher methods of an earlier era – force, preemptive attack, deception, whatever is necessary for those who still live in the ninet…
Selected Writings of John A. Hobson 1932-1938
John A. Hobson is widely recognised as the most important British New Liberal thinker of politics and political economy of the twentieth century. The Selected Writings of John A. Hobson showcases an exciting and previously unpublished collection of Hobson's writings and lectures from 1932-1938 that Hobson presented at the South Place Ethical Society in the last decade of his life. The lectures and the introduction produce a fresh reading of Hobso…
The Big Bangs of IR
International relations as we know them emerged through the peace of Westphalia, and the discipline of International Relations emerged in 1919 and developed through a First Great Debate between idealists and realists. These are the established myths of 1648 and 1919. In this article we demonstrate how historical and historiographical scholarship has demolished these myths, but that the myths regardless are pervasive in the current textbooks that …
What’s at Stake in the Neo-Trotskyist Debate? Towards a Non-Eurocentric Historical Sociology of Uneven and Combined Development
This article seeks to appraise the direction that historical sociology has undertaken within Millennium in the last four decades while simultaneously laying out the groundwork for a ‘thirdwave’ historical sociology of international relations. In particular, I intervene in the current neo-Trotskyist debate concerning whether the concept of uneven and combined development (U&CD) should be historically generalised or merely confined to the modern ca…
Part 1 – Revealing the Eurocentric foundations of IPE
In this article and in Part 2 I advance a 'critical historiography' of IPE which excavates to the deepest foundations of the discipline. For while I very much welcome Benjamin Cohen's seminal historiographical intervention, nevertheless it obscures two foundational properties of IPE. First, identifying 1970 as the birth-year of IPE produces a distorted image of the discipline's purpose and historiography that can begin to be remedied by rehabilit…
Political science (30 obras) · Sociology (26 obras) · Law (24 obras) · Politics (21 obras) · Epistemology (17 obras) · Law (16 obras) · Philosophy (16 obras) · International relations (13 obras) · International Relations and Foreign Policy (13 obras) · Philosophy (12 obras)