Culture in a Reactionary World

Mon 25 November 2024

Emmanuel College

Visions of world order from the political right have often been articulated in terms of civilization or civilizations: large cultural formations that, on these accounts, shape the long-term dynamics of international politics. This talk unpacks and examines two such theories, by Adda Bozeman and Samuel Huntington. Near contemporaries in American academic and political life, Bozeman and Huntington articulated overlapping accounts of world politics in which civilizations played central roles in shaping war and peace, past and present. In both cases, albeit in different ways, their ideas proved influential, in both academic and political life. We will explore these views and consider their implications for understanding the global reach of the contemporary right.

Joseph MacKay is this term's Derek Brewer Visiting Fellow at Emmanuel College, and is a Fellow in the Department of International Relations at the Australian National University. He works on the history of international theory and the history of international ordering. He holds a PhD in political science from the University of Toronto and was previously a postdoctoral fellow at the Harriman Institute, Columbia University. His research has appeared in the Review of International Studies, International Studies Quarterly, International Theory, the Journal of Global Security Studies, and Social Science History, and with co-authors in the Journal of Peace Research, the European Journal of International Security, and International Peacekeeping, among other venues. His 2023 book, The Counterinsurgent Imagination: A New Intellectual History, is published with Cambridge University Press.