Comprising a plurality of perspectives, this timely Handbook is an essential resource for understanding past and current challenges to democracy, justice, social and gender equality, identity and freedom. It shows how critical international relations (IR) theory functions as a broad-based and diverse critique of society.

The origins of international conflict are often explained by security dilemmas, power-rivalries or profits for political or economic elites. Common to these approaches is the idea that human behaviour is mostly governed by material interests which principally involve the quest for power or wealth. The authors question this truncated image of human rationality. Borrowing the concept of recognition from models developed in philosophy and sociology, this book provides a unique set of applications to the problems of international conflict, and argues that human actions are often not motivated by a pursuit of utility maximisation as much as they are by a quest to gain recognition. This unique approach will be a welcome alternative to the traditional models of international conflict.

Recognition is a fundamental aspect of all social interactions; between individuals, groups, local communities and sovereign states. Recognition refers to those sociological processes whereby two or more entities (such as states), groups (such as ethnic or cultural communities) or individuals interact with one another and come to understand themselves, and the other, as mutually free individuals: as social agents whose identities, interests and outlooks are equally bound together. Without the foundational act of recognition, relations can become unequal and antagonistic, leading to social pathologies, denigration and even open conflict. This volume brings together leading international scholars of recognition theory in world politics to discuss the potential for recognition to pacify relations between states, groups and individuals and to develop recognition processes in the global community. It examines the implications of recognition theory in helping to understand the problem of conflict and the possibilities for forging a form of global ethical community. This book was published as a special issue of Global Discourse.

This new handbook provides a comprehensive and multidisciplinary overview of the theoretical and empirical aspects of state recognition in international politics. Although the recognition of states plays a central role in shaping global politics, it remains an under-researched and widely dispersed subject. Coherently and innovatively structured, the handbook brings together a group of international scholars who examine the most important theoretical and comparative perspectives on state recognition, including debates about pathways to secession and self-determination, the broad range of actors and strategies that shape the recognition of states and a significant number of contemporary case studies. The handbook is organised into four key sections: Theoretical and normative perspectives Pathways to independent statehood Actors, forms and the process of state recognition Case studies of contemporary state recognition This handbook will be of great interest to students of foreign policy, international relations, international law, comparative politics and area studies. Chapter 19 of this book is freely available as a downloadable Open Access PDF at http://www.taylorfrancis.com under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives (CC-BY-NC-ND) 4.0 license.

This book focuses on one of the most highly charged relationships of the Euro crisis, that between Greece and Germany, from 2009 to 2015. It explores the many ways in which Greeks and Germans represented and often insulted one another in the media, how their self-understanding shifted in the process, and how this in turn affected their respective appraisal of the EU and that which divides us or keeps us together as Europeans. These stories illustrate the book’s broader argument about mutual recognition, an idea and norm at the very heart of the European project. The book is constructed around a normative pivot. On one hand, the authors suggest that the tumultuous affair between the two peoples can be read as “mutual recognition lost” through a thousand cuts. On the other, they argue that the relationship has only bent rather than broken down, opening the potential for a renewed promise of mutual recognition and an ethos of “fair play” that may even re-source the EU as a whole. The book’s engaging story and original argument may appeal not only to experts of European politics and democracy, but also to interested or emotionally invested citizens, of whatever nationality.

This book challenges the common perception that global politics is making progress on indigenous issues and argues that the current global care for indigeneity is, in effect, violent in nature. Examining the inclusion of indigenous peoples in the United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues and the Arctic Council, the authors demonstrate how seemingly benevolent practices of international political and legal recognition are tantamount to colonialism, the historical wrong they purport to redress. By unveiling the ways in which contemporary neoliberal politics commissions a certain type of indigenous subject—one distinguished by resilience in particular—the book offers a pioneering account of how international politics has tightened its grip on indigeneity.

The notion of recognition, drawing on the philosophy of Hegel, has become increasingly central to international debates in recent years, yet there have been few attempts to critically examine new theoretical positions and empirical analyses of its possible meanings, limits and manifestations. Recognition and global politics examines the potential and limitations of the discourse of recognition as a strategy for reframing justice and injustice within contemporary world affairs. Drawing on resources from social and political theory and international relations theory as well as other areas including feminist theory, postcolonial studies and social psychology, this ambitious collection explores a range of political struggles, social movements and sites of opposition that have shaped certain practices and informed contentious debates in the language of recognition. How have recognition-based claims been deployed in relation to international, transnational and global politics? The contributors speak to central issues in current debates about cosmopolitanism, genocide, human rights, global capitalism, multiculturalism, rebellion and the environment. This innovative volume will push the boundaries of the debate on recognition into new areas, opening up provocative lines of inquiry and critique.

Recognition is a basic human need, but it is not a panacea to all societal ills. This volume assembles contributions from International Relations, Political Theory and International Law in order to show that recognition is a gradual process and an ambiguous concept both in theory and political practice.

The bibliography lists the literature and State practice on the question of recognition in international law for the last two hundred years. It contains books and articles, ie. contributions to journals and other collected works such as Festschriften and Encyclopaedias, as well as (published and unpublished) theses, pamphlets, compilations of diplomatic documents and case notes. As many of the monographs on recognition in international law will not be available in all libraries, book reviews have been included in the bibliography in order to enable the user to decide whether it may be advisable to order a certain work by inter-library loan. Its 4,500 entries are arranged systematically according to subject categories in fourteen main sections. Each main section is further subdivided with ever-increasing specificity into sub-sections on codification, codification attempts, general studies, studies of certain recognition questions and studies of specific recognition cases. The bibliography employs a broad meaning of recognition. It is not restricted to the question of status of an authority or entity in international law but encompasses also the question of relations with it. As many of the recognition cases must be considered, and can only be understood, against their historic, political and sometimes even economic background, the bibliography includes not only purely legal treaties but also publications of a primarily historical, political or economic content which incidentally deal with aspects of recognition in international law. This is reflected by the titles of the 730 journals from more than 50 countries in 20 different languages which have been used to compile the bibliography. The bibliography contains both an author and a comprehensive subject index to enable users to locate works of a particular writer or a specific problem.