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The Other in European self-definition: an addendum to the literature on international society*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 October 2009

Iver B. Neumann  and
Jennifer M. Welsh
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Extract

The dominant role of the realist paradigm in international relations theory has left little room for the study of the role of cultural variables in world politics. The two central tenets of the realist theoretical game-plan—the primacy of the sovereign state system, and the autonomy of that system, from domestic political, social and moral considerations—focus our attention on the vertical division of the world into sovereign states, rather than on the horizontal forces and ties that cut across state frontiers. The result is the metaphor for the interaction of states as the mechanical one of the billiard table, with power politics as the primary dynamic.

Type
Research Article
Information
Review of International Studies , Volume 17 , Issue 4 , October 1991 , pp. 327 - 348
Copyright
Copyright © British International Studies Association 1991

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References

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17 There are precedents for the existence of a positive Other, most notably in eighteenth-century Enlightenment thinking. Hence, for example, Rousseau pointed to the merits of the ‘noble savage’. Where relations with ‘the Turk’ are concerned, an alternative European tradition stretching back to Cusanus has held that if the two parties could only engage in dialogue, positive results would surely follow.

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89 Immigration statistics help to convey the magnitude of Europe's ‘resident Other’ population. For example, of the French foreign population in 1982 (the most recent census), 1.76m were European; 1.12m were North African; 138k were French W. African; 294k Asian; 124k Turks; and 51k were from the Americas. In a recent documentary anthology, Alec Hargreaves expands upon the North African portion of these statistics to reveal some of the social, political and educational problems associated with the clash of European and Islamic cultures: ‘As the geographical sources of emigration to France widened, so too did the cultural differences between the sending and receiving countries. Despite language and other differences, France shared a long heritage of Christian belief with her European neighbours, which, even in the more secular world of the twentieth century, was reflected in many aspects of ordinary life.’ Cf. Hargreaves, , Immigration in Postwar France (London, 1987), p. 4Google Scholar. For a more personalised account of the tensions between France and its North African population, see Kramer, Jane, Unsettling Europe (New York, 1980), Chapter 4.Google Scholar

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