Globalisation and Political Community: Beyond Universalism and Particularism

Abstract

The contemporary wave of globalization and its critical events, from the war on terror to the global recession, have given new impetus to rethinking the idea of political community. Traversing diverse thematic areas and research orientations, contemporary debates on political community probe the possibility of the transformation of the international system of sovereign states into a universal community that would transcend the particularistic pluralism, prescribed by the principle of sovereignty. These debates are not restricted to the discipline of International Relations and resonate with the attempts to rethink the very ideas of community, universality and pluralism in various quarters of philosophy and social sciences. What is at stake in these debates is moving beyond the increasingly obsolete dualism between the universalist affirmation of a cosmopolitan political order and the particularistic valorization of the diversity of political forms of life. While traditional universalist designs have recently come under attack as hegemonic or imperial projects of world domination, particularistic pluralism that continues to affirm the principle of state sovereignty appears incapable of addressing the key issues in global politics. The task of the proposed panel is to re-engage with the historical and current debates on community in political and IR theory in order to rethink the concepts of universality, difference and pluralism and develop new non-exclusionary and democratic visions of political community in the context of globalization. The panel brings together researchers from different disciplinary backgrounds, whose work addresses the problematic of political community from a historical, conceptual or empirical perspective. We are particularly interested in papers exploring the interface between the discussions of political community in IR theory and philosophy, history, anthropology and other social sciences. Confirmed Papers Susanna Lindberg (University of Tampere): The Elemental Ground of the World Community Mika Ojakangas (University of Jyväskylä): The Political Community of Whosoever Sergei Prozorov (University of Helsinki): The Singular Subject of Universality: Rethinking Community in World Politics

Title	Details
How to Govern the Universalising Community: Peter Sloterdijk’s Concept of Co-Immunism	View Paper Details
Humanity as a Political Community in Norbert Elias’s Historical Sociology: A Realist Cosmopolitanism?	View Paper Details
Rethinking the Concept of the World in World Politics	View Paper Details
The Elemental Ground of the World Community	View Paper Details
Political Community of Whosoever	View Paper Details