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Critical international theory has the task of providing orientation to human beings in better understanding their conditions of existence, how those conditions came to assume their contemporary characteristics, and what immanent potential they might hold for emancipatory transformation.
List of contents
Introduction1. The problem of orientation in critical international theory
Orientation, grand narratives, and critical international theory
The Eurocentric critique of world politics
The possibility of a historical-sociological approach to grand narratives
2. A philosophical-transcendental grand narrative
A theory of moral and social evolution
Universal communication community
The cosmopolitan constitutionalization of world politics
Orientation in history
3. The materialist-emergentist conception of history
Humans in nature
Objective ethics
A general theory of human development
Orientation and emancipation
4. Class struggles and utopian limitations
The critique of capitalism
The interweaving of multiple forms of class struggle
Utopianism and social monopolies
5. Towards a reconstruction of historical-sociological grand narratives
Process sociology and critical theory
Symbol emancipation and the triad of controls
On the concept of civilisation
Civilising processes as grand narrative
6. Critical orientation in world politics
From the triad to the tetrad of controls
Class struggles in inter-societal relations
Socialisation and planned interdependence
Concluding remarks
Bibliography
About the author
André Saramago is Assistant Professor of International Relations at the Faculty of Economics of the University of Coimbra and Researcher at the Centre for Social Studies of the University of Coimbra. His research focuses on the intersection of critical international theory, historical sociology, and environmental politics. He is the editor of
Non-Human Nature in World Politics: Theory and Practice (with Joana Castro Pereira, 2020), and his research has been published in journals such as
Historical Social Research, European Journal of International Relations, and
International Relations.
