Materialism, culture and the standard of civilization

Abstract

First published online: 09 June 2021 ; Ntina Tzouvala's book Capitalism as Civilisation: A History of International Law (CaC) is a remarkable feat in international legal scholarship, not only for its core insight that the 'standard of civilization', far from being a relic of the past, remains ubiquitous and all-pervasive, but also for the way that the book engages with different theoretical and methodological approaches to international law without being polemical and, yet, still holding its own. CaC attempts to understand international law not in isolation but as part of its broader history, structure and, most importantly, embeddedness in political economy. Tzouvala demonstrates that 'civilization' is deeply anchored into international law's 'grammar and syntax', making the relative decline in the use of the term largely inconsequential. Moreover, treating "civilization" as an 'argumentative pattern' allows Tzouvala to explore the contradictions, indeterminateness and persistence of "civilization" both historically and in contemporary practise.