7 - Bringing geography back in

Summary

Throughout the previous chapters I have registered a steady drumbeat of dissatisfaction with the combination of neglect and resistance that marks the attitude of most classical English school writers towards the subglobal/regional level. Sub-global and regional manifestations of international social structure have either been marginalised by a focus on global scale and universal principles, or resisted because seen as threats to the development of global scale international society. Wight's and Watson's explorations of historical states-systems do not count because most of those systems were substantially self-contained, and not part of a global scale interstate-system.

I am not the only dissatisfied customer of the classical English school tradition in this regard. Zhang (2002: 6) notes that:

A cursory survey of the existing literature reveals a strange silence on the part of International Society scholars on regionalism. Deliberations by scholars of the English School on regional levels of international society in the twentieth century are until very recently muted, if not entirely invisible. Such silence is best reflected in an important essay on regionalism in 1995 by Andrew Hurrell. The comprehensive survey of Regionalism in Theoretical Perspective conducted by Hurrell contains no specific mentioning of either the English school or International Society perspective. It is remarkable that Hedley Bull is mentioned only once towards the end of his book as ‘that arch-regional sceptic’ (Fawcett and Hurrell 1995: 327). Even critical International Society as summarized nicely by Dunne (1995) does not seem to have made much dent on the studies of regionalism.