Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Figures
- Tables
- Contributors
- Acknowledgments
- Part I Introduction
- Part II Admission into the Great-Power Club
- 2 Managing Rising Powers: The Role of Status Concerns
- 3 Status Considerations in International Politics and the Rise of Regional Powers
- 4 Status Is Cultural: Durkheimian Poles and Weberian Russians Seek Great-Power Status
- Part III Status Signaling
- Part IV International Institutions and Status
- Part V Status, Authority, and Structure
- Part VI Conclusions
- Index
- References
4 - Status Is Cultural: Durkheimian Poles and Weberian Russians Seek Great-Power Status
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 June 2014
Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Figures
- Tables
- Contributors
- Acknowledgments
- Part I Introduction
- Part II Admission into the Great-Power Club
- 2 Managing Rising Powers: The Role of Status Concerns
- 3 Status Considerations in International Politics and the Rise of Regional Powers
- 4 Status Is Cultural: Durkheimian Poles and Weberian Russians Seek Great-Power Status
- Part III Status Signaling
- Part IV International Institutions and Status
- Part V Status, Authority, and Structure
- Part VI Conclusions
- Index
- References
Summary
Like its etymological twin − the state, status emerges within a specific cultural context or, to better capture the importance of relations between polities, a civilizational context. According to Durkheim and Mauss, “[a] civilization constitutes a kind of moral milieu encompassing a certain number of nations, each national culture being only a particular form of the whole.” Status-seeking between any groups of polities takes place in a specific social context. What Durkheim and Mauss had in mind was Christendom.
The historical fact that the state system grew out of Christendom and a Christian legal code (first ius gentium, then ius inter gentes) has repercussions not only for those left status-less, but also for how status was conferred within the system. Conflict over status played itself out as a discussion of which king was closest to God. Earthly powers were ordered in a hierarchy of descending closeness to God, with France on top, then other Christian rulers, then non-Christian rulers (and, we may add, people who were seen to be without rulers altogether). This hierarchical order carried over into early modernity and beyond, most recently as a “standard of civilization.”
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Status in World Politics , pp. 85 - 112Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2014
References
, , and , “Note on the Notion of Civilization,”Social Research 38, no. 4 (Winter 1971), 811Google Scholar
, The Moral Purpose of the State: Culture, Social Identity, and Institutional Rationality in International Relations (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1999)Google Scholar
, “From International System to International Society: Structural Realism and Regime Theory Meet the English School,”International Organization 47, no. 3 (Summer 1993), 327–352CrossRefGoogle Scholar
and , Governing the Global Polity: Practice, Rationality, Mentality (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2010)CrossRefGoogle Scholar
and , “Untimely Russia: Hysteresis in Russian–Western Relations over the Past Millennium,”Security Studies 20, no. 1 (May 2011), 115–137CrossRefGoogle Scholar
, A Suburb of Europe: Nineteenth-Century Polish Approaches to Western Civilization (Budapest: Central European Press, 1999)Google Scholar
, Uses of the Other: The “East” in European Identity Formation (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1999)Google Scholar
and , Character and Social Structure: The Psychology of Social Institutions (New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, 1964), 55Google Scholar
, Neostoicism and the Early Modern State, ed. and (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982), 252CrossRefGoogle Scholar
, War in the Modern Great Power System, 1495–1975 (Lexington: University of Kentucky Press, 1983)Google Scholar
, The Rise and Fall of Great Powers: Economic Change and Military Conflict from 1500 to 2000 (London: Hyman, 1987), 18–20Google Scholar
, “The Dutch in the Baltic, 1544–1721,” in In Quest of Trade and Security: The Baltic in Power Politics, 1500–1990, Vol I: 1500–1890, eds. , , and (Lund: Lund University Press, 1994), 61–136Google Scholar
and , Force and Statecraft: Diplomatic Problem of Our Time (New York: Oxford University Press, 1990), 23Google Scholar
, Sweden as a Great Power 1611–1697: Government, Society, Foreign Policy (London: Edward Arnold, 1968)Google Scholar
and , India in the World Order: Searching for Major-Power Status (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press: 2003), 29–34Google Scholar
, The Anarchical Society: A Study of Order in World Society (London: Macmillan, 1977)CrossRefGoogle Scholar
, “Vattel: Pluralism and its Limits,” in Classical Theories of International Relations, eds. and (Houndmills: Macmillan, 1994), 233–255Google Scholar
, “The Great Powers,” in The Theory and Practice of History, eds. and (Indianapolis, IN: Bobbs-Merrill, 1973), 65–101Google Scholar
, Rules, Norms, and Decisions: On the Conditions of Practical and Legal Reasoning in International Relations and Domestic Affairs (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), 83CrossRefGoogle Scholar
, Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft. Grundriss der verstehenden Soziologie. Studienausgabe, fifth ed. (Tübingen: J. C. B. Mohr, 1976), 521Google Scholar
, Lecons de Sociologie. Physique des moeurs et du droit, ed. (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1950)Google Scholar
, United States Protocol: The Guide to Official Diplomatic Etiquette (Lanhan: Rowman & Littlefield, 2010), xviGoogle Scholar
and , “Paradigm Lost? Reassessing Theory of International Politics,”European Journal of International Relations 11, no. 1 (March 2005), 9–61CrossRefGoogle Scholar
, “The Russian-Soviet Empire: A Test for Neorealism,”Review of International Studies 27, no. 5 (December 2001), 213–235CrossRefGoogle Scholar
, Foreign Policy and Democratic Politics: The American and British Experience (Boston: Little, Brown, 1967)Google Scholar
, East Central Europe between the Two World Wars (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1974)Google Scholar
, “Poland’s Place in Europe in the Concepts of Piłsudski and Dmowski,”East European Politics and Societies 4, no. 3 (September 1990), 451–469CrossRefGoogle Scholar
, France and Her Eastern Allies 1919–1925: French Czechoslovak-Polish Relations from the Paris Peace Conference to Locarno (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1962), 383Google Scholar
, Europe between the Superpowers: The Enduring Balance (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1979), 31Google Scholar
, When the Soviet Union Entered World Politics (Berkeley: University of Califormia Press, 1994), 16Google Scholar
, The Great Powers, Lithuania, and the Vilna Question, 1920–1928 (Leiden: E.J. Brill, Studien zur Geschichte Osteuropas XI, 1966), 1–45, 118Google Scholar
, The Free City: Danzig and German Foreign Policy 1919–1934 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1968)Google Scholar
, Poland’s Place in Europe: General Sikorski and the Origin of the Oder-Neisse Line, 1939–1943 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1983), 26Google Scholar
, The League of Nations: Its Life and Times 1920–1946 (Leicester: Leicester University Press, 1988), 102Google Scholar
, Europe between the Superpowers: The Enduring Balance (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1979), 393Google Scholar
, The Twilight of French Eastern Alliances, 1926–1936: French-Czechoslovak-Polish Relations from Locarno to the Remilitarization of the Rhineland (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1988), 362Google Scholar
, Polen und Europa: Studien zur Polnischen Aussenpolitik 1931–1939 (Leipzig: J. C. B. Mohr, 1957), 273–397Google Scholar
, Poland and the Western Powers 1938–1939: A Study in the Interdependence of Eastern and Western Europe (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1968), 148, 256CrossRefGoogle Scholar
, Facing the Dictators: The Memoirs of Anthony Eden, Earl of Avon (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1962), 95Google Scholar
, A Cultural Theory of International Relations (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), 64CrossRefGoogle Scholar
, “The Imperial Heritage of Peter the Great in the Foreign Policy of His Early Successors,” in Imperial Russian Foreign Policy, ed. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), 23Google Scholar
, Peter the Great’s Administrative and Judicial Reforms: Swedish Antecedents and the Process of Reception (Stockholm: Nordiska Bokhandeln, 1979)Google Scholar
, The Making of Russian Absolutism 1613–1801, second ed. (London: Longman, 1990), 72, 112Google Scholar
, “Losing my Best Days: Charles Whitworth, First British Ambassador to Russia,”History Today 51, no. 6 (2000), 40–46Google Scholar
, “The Role of the Baltic in Russian Foreign Policy,” in Imperial Russian Foreign Policy, ed. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), 36Google Scholar
, A Discourse Concerning the Just Causes of the War between Sweden and Russia: 1700–1721 (Dobbs Ferry, NY: Oceana, 1973)Google Scholar
, “Russia and the European States System,” in The Expansion of International Society, eds. and (Oxford: Clarendon, 1984), 70Google Scholar
, “Die Friedensschlüsse von Nystad (1721) und Teschen (1779) als Etappen des Vordringen Russland nach Europa,” in Historisches Jahrbuch (Munich-Freiburg: Görres, 1978), 270–288Google Scholar
, British Public Opinion and The First Partition of Poland (Edinburgh: Oliver and Boyd, 1945), 18–19Google Scholar
, The Foreign Ministers of Alexander I: Political Attitudes and the Conduct of Russian Diplomacy, 1801–1825 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1969), 19Google Scholar
, “Entry into International Society Reconceptualised: The Case of Russia,”Review of International Studies 37, no. 2 (April 2011), 463–484CrossRefGoogle Scholar
, “Governmentality,” in Power: Essential Works of Foucault 1954–1984, Vol. 3, ed. (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 2000), 209–210Google Scholar
, Russia Under Western Eyes: From the Bronze Horseman to the Lenin Mausoleum (Cambridge, MA: Belknap, 1999)Google Scholar
, In the Vanguard of Reform: Russia’s Enlightened Bureaucrats, 1825–1861 (DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 1982), 3, 175Google Scholar
, “The Perception of Power: Russia in the Pre-1914 Balance,”World Politics 39, no. 3 (April 1987), 353–381CrossRefGoogle Scholar
, “Russia as a Great Power,” in Russia as a Great Power: Dimensions of Security Under Putin, eds. et al. (London: Routledge 2005), 13–28Google Scholar
, “Russia: Responses to Relative Decline,” in International Order and the Future of World Politics, eds. and (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), 146–154Google Scholar
and , “Status Seekers: Chinese and Russian Response to U.S. Primacy,”International Security 34, no. 4 (Spring 2010), 63–95CrossRefGoogle Scholar
, “Russischer Nationalismus heute – zwischen Osten und Westen,”Transit 21, no. 2 (2001), 90–109Google Scholar
, Understanding Conflict Between Russia and the EU: The Limits of Integration (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006), 42CrossRefGoogle Scholar
, The New Asian Hemisphere: The Irresistible Shift of Global Power to the East (New York: Public Affairs, 2008)Google Scholar
and “The Myth of the Autocratic Revival: Why Liberal Democracy Will Prevail,”Foreign Affairs 88, no. 1 (January/February 2009), 77–93Google Scholar
- 27
- Cited by