Understanding International Relations, Third Edition

Conclusion
To summarize a rather complex discussion; in the twenty-first century we
are seeing the emergence, at both the international and the domestic level,
of a new politics of identity. A feature of twenty-first-century life in many of
The International Politics of Identity
203

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the advanced industrial societies is the demand for respect and esteem made
by groups of one kind or another who consider themselves to have been
marginalized and undervalued by the dominant, patriarchal, heterosexualist,
white culture. ‘Multiculturalism’ is one response to this situation, as is a
politics based on uniting the fragments in a ‘Rainbow Coalition’ which
would challenge the status quo on behalf of all oppressed groups. The prob-
lem with this latter strategy is clear. Although each of the fragments opposes
the dominant culture, this does not mean that their demands are compatible
with each other; Quebecois nationalists routinely deny that aboriginal
Bands would have the right to secede from Quebec, while popular cultural
representatives of African–American men, such as rap artists, routinely
spread misogynist and homophobic attitudes. ‘Multi-faith’ education in
schools attempts to instil respect for all religions, but while some liberal
Christians may be happy with the thought that their faith is one among
many valid possibilities, few other religions take such a relaxed attitude
towards the truth of their basic tenets.
If the issue domestically has been the challenge of handling a shift from a
politics based on universal categories to a politics based on identity, at the
international level problems have been generated in the other direction. As
the theorists of international society have argued, the old international
order was based on an ‘ethic of coexistence’, in which political, social and
cultural differences are preserved if not positively valued; this order increas-
ingly faces the challenge of movements which seek to impose common
standards worldwide, most obviously in connection with human rights. The
international politics of this process, which has increasingly attempted to
make the individual not the state the focus of international law, is the
subject of the next chapter.
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Further reading
Globalization, the English School and the Democratic Peace thesis are referenced
elsewhere in this book – in Chapters 9, 3 and 4 respectively.
Raymond Garthoff, The Great Transition: American–Soviet Relations and
the End of the Cold War (1994), and Don Oberdorfer, The Turn: How the Cold
War Came to an End (1991), are useful histories of the end of the Cold War. On
the wider meaning of this event, see the essays in Michael Hogan (ed.) The End
of the Cold War: Its Meaning and Implications (1992) and Alex Danchev (ed.)
Fin De Siècle: The Meaning of the Twentieth Century (1995). Cynthia Enloe’s
The Morning After: Sexual Politics at the End of the Cold War (1993) also
places these events in perspective. Richard Ned Lebow and Thomas Risse-
Kappen (eds) International Relations Theory and the End of the Cold War

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205
(1995) – part of which appeared in International Organization, vol. 48, Spring
1994 – is the best collection on its subject. Václav Havel, ‘What I Believe’,
Summer Meditations on Politics, Morality and Civility in a Time of Transition
(1993), is a moving account of what the end of communist rule could have
meant, and perhaps does still mean for some.
Of Will Kymlicka’s many works on multiculturalism, Politics and the
Vernacular: Nationalism, Multiculturalism and Citizenship (2001) is very use-
ful as is, with a more limited reference point, Kymlicka and Opalski (eds) Can
Liberal Pluralism be Exported? Western Political Theory and Ethnic Relations
in Eastern Europe (2001). On the impact of globalization on diasporas, Arjun
Appadurai, Modernity at Large: Cultural Dimensions of Globalization (1996),
is outstanding.
James Mayall, Nationalism and International Society (1990), is a valuable
overview of the subject; F. H. Hinsley, Nationalism and the International
System (1974), still usefully provides the historical framework. E. H. Carr,
Nationalism and After (1968), represents the ‘nationalism is outmoded’ view-
point, now itself outmoded. Of A. D. Smith’s many books, Nationalism and
Modernity (1998) is perhaps the most relevant. Benedict Anderson, Imagined
Communities, 2nd edn (1991), is a much-misunderstood modern classic –
imagined is not the same as imaginary. Michael Brown et al. (eds) Nationalism
and Ethnic Conflict (1997) collects mainstream US essays on the subject; Yosef
Lapid and Friedrich Kratochwil (eds) The Return of Culture and Identity in
International Relations Theory (1996) is more eclectic. Kevin Dunn and
Patricia Goff (eds) Identity and Global Politics (2004) is an interesting recent
collection.
There is a shortage of good work on the general subject of religion and IR. The
Millennium Special Issue on ‘Religion and International Relations’ (2000) is an
uneven collection but useful for an extended bibliography. Fred Dallmayr,
Dialogue Among Civilisations (2002), is the first volume in a promising new
series, ‘Culture and Religion in IR’, but is itself a little too touchy-feely to be
much use. John Micklethwait and Adrian Wooldridge, The Right Nation (2004),
is very good and non-polemical on the Christian right in the US. Holly
Burkhalter, ‘The Politics of AIDS’ (2004), demonstrates the influence of evangel-
ical Christianity on US policy towards AIDS in Africa. Ellis and Ter Haar give a
good overview of African religion in Worlds of Power: Religious Thought and
Political Practice in Africa (2004). P. Geschiere, The Modernity of Witchcraft:
Politics and the Occult in Postcolonial Africa (1997), is a useful anthropological
study. Post-9/11, studies of Islam have, predictably, multiplied. Bernard Lewis,
What Went Wrong? The Clash between Islam and Modernity in the Middle East
(2002), is the most useful of his recent volumes. Malise Ruthven, A Fury for God:
The Islamicist Attack on America (2004), is excellent, and his Islam: A Very
Short Introduction (2000) does what it says. Paul Berman, Terror and Liberalism
(2004), traces the link between radical Islam and fascism. Roger Scruton, The
West and the Rest: Globalization and the Terrorist Threat (2002), and John Gray,
Al Qaeda and What it Means to be Modern (2004), are stimulating think-pieces.

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Fukuyama’s works are cited in the text. For a very hostile liberal reaction, see
Ralf Dahrendorf, Reflections on the Revolution in Europe (1990). Critical, but
less outraged, are Fred Halliday, ‘An Encounter with Fukuyama’ (1992), and
Chris Brown, ‘The End of History?’ in Danchev (1995). Huntington’s essays
are referenced in the text: his book The Clash of Civilizations and the
Remaking of World Order (1996) is less convincing than the original shorter
pieces. His later work, Who Are We? (2004) takes up the theme of identity in a
US context, arguing that the American Anglo–Protestant core identity is under
threat from the refusal of Hispanic immigrants to assimilate. Kishore
Mahbubani, ‘The West and The Rest’ (1992), and Eisuke Sakakiba, ‘The End
of Progressivism: A Search for New Goals’ (1995), offer not dissimilar reflec-
tions on the same theme. Chris Brown, ‘History Ends, World Collide’ (1999), is
a more extended discussion of some of the themes of this chapter.
Joanne Bauer and Daniel A. Bell (eds) The East Asian Challenge for Human
Rights (1999) judiciously presents the ‘Asian Values’ debate. Daniel Bell, East
Meets West: Democracy and Human Rights in East Asia (2000), is the best sin-
gle volume on the subject, engagingly written as a series of dialogues. 
F. Zakaria, ‘Culture is Destiny: A Conversation with Lee Kwan Yew’ (1994), is
a good source for the thinking of the most respectable and articulate
spokesman for the Asian case. Mahathir Bin Mohamed and Shintaro Ishihara’s
modestly titled The Voice of Asia: Two Leaders Discuss the Coming Century
(1996) gives the case against the West. Arlene Tickner (2003) provides a valu-
able examination of concepts such as nationalism, the state and sovereignty
from a non-Western perspective in ‘Seeing International Relations Differently:
Notes from the Third World’. See also Chris Brown, ‘Cultural Diversity and
International Political Theory’ (2000b).

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