ABSTRACT

This innovative volume brings together specialists in international relations to tackle a set of difficult questions about what it means to live in a globalized world where the purpose and direction of world politics are no longer clear-cut. What emerges from these essays is a very clear sense that while we may be living in an era that lacks a single, universal purpose, ours is still a world replete with meaning. The authors in this volume stress the need for a pluralistic conception of meaning in a globalized world and demonstrate how increased communication and interaction in transnational spaces work to produce complex tapestries of culture and politics. Meaning and International Relations also makes an original and convincing case for the relevance of hermeneutic approaches to understanding contemporary international relations.

chapter 1|7 pages

Introduction

chapter 2|12 pages

Meaning and international relations

Some thoughts

chapter 5|14 pages

Meaning and social transformations

Ideology in a post-ideological age

chapter 6|21 pages

Eurosomnia

Europe's ‘spiritual vitality’ and the debate on the European idea

chapter 7|20 pages

Whose meaning(s)?!

A feminist perspective on the crisis of meaning in international relations

chapter 8|11 pages

The search for meaning in global conjunctions

From ethnographic truth to ethnopolitical agency

chapter 9|22 pages

When meaning travels

Muslim translocality and the politics of ‘authenticity’