ABSTRACT
This chapter provides an overview of constructivist scholarship that demonstrates how sovereignty is a socially constructed and contested concept that produces different political communities. It identifies how scholars have analyzed the concept of humanitarianism either as an example of norm diffusion or as subject to certain internal critiques, although this scholarship ultimately neglects to account for humanitarianism as historically embedded within and constitutive of broader structures of international politics, including sovereignty. The notion that political authority is an extension of legal sovereignty has held sway over many different theoretical approaches to international relations. Examining how different constructions of moral obligation constitute and are constituted by changing conceptions of sovereignty provides insight into how the boundaries of moral communities are constructed—and thus contributes to improving our understanding of the history of humanitarianism. The chapter also presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in this book.
