Suchergebnisse

Understanding the origins of capitalism in terms of feudal crisis, agrarian class structures and economic development in Europe has been an enduring concern of a growing body of scholarship focusing on changes in social property relations. This work has been distinctive in highlighting long-term patterns of social property relations central to shaping late medieval and early modern Europe, variegated patterns of serfdom within feudalism, class conflicts intrinsic to the emergence of agrarian capitalism, and thus capitalist 'transition' through different paths of development. Most recently, the implications of a focus on social property relations have been drawn out in its relevance for International Relations (IR), expressly in terms of tracing specificities within the age of absolutism that shaped the expansion of the states-system and its relation to modernity. This article outlines and engages with past and present debates linked to the social property relations approach. It raises several problematics through an engagement with the theorising of political modernity by Antonio Gramsci and on this basis offers pointers towards future lines of enquiry from which further reflection on the conditions of historical and contemporary state formation and restructuring may proceed.

This review article explores several latest endeavours that theorise the state and globalisation. The aim is to reflect further on some of the wider follies that lie within the ambition of debates on the state and globalisation. By uniting common themes throughout the review – revolving around issues of state capacity in the post-colonial world, the relationship between globalisation and international relations, and the very meaning of globality – the review raises a series of questions for further research on the state and globalisation. Most significantly, it seeks to question the future of critical theorising on the state and globalisation within international studies. It does so by arguing that there remain serious question-begging assumptions about capitalism that lie at the core of present general theories of the state and globalisation that, if overlooked, might also blunt the precepts of critical international theorising.