عنوان

Beyond nineteenth-century liberal internationalism :

Number

TLets633487

Title Proper

Beyond nineteenth-century liberal internationalism :

General Material Designation

[Thesis]

First Statement of Responsibility

Yamanaka, Hitomi

Title Proper by Another Author

rethinking the work of E.H. Carr

Name of Publisher, Distributor, etc.

Keele University

Date of Publication, Distribution, etc.

2010

Dissertation or thesis details and type of degree

Ph.D.

Body granting the degree

Keele University

Text preceding or following the note

2010

Text of Note

This thesis re-evaluates E. H. Carr's approaches to the issues of international relations,presenting his critique of the hegemonic status of Western liberalism as the guiding threadinforming his thought. In the discipline of IR, his concern to displace nineteenth-centuryliberal internationalism has been regarded simply as part of a realist attack on the'Utopianism' of the inter-war period, associated with his long established reputation as aRealist who denounced the under-estimation of the role of power in international politics.However, this picture of Carr is to a significant extent misleading, and there is a need forthe nature of his thought to be understood in a wider historical and intellectual context.Taking a historical and context-sensitive approach, this thesis explores his unmasking ofthe claim that liberal principles, regarded as absolute and universal by those who had beenstrongly influenced by the liberal tradition, were not genuine principles at all; they werethe ideological reflection of a particular interest at a particular time, essentially that of the'haves', who wished to maintain the status quo. To expose and then transcend this logic,Can, in tackling the individual political issues and advancing the prescriptions forresolving them, introduced a realist-relativist approach to expose the ever-changing realityof international relations and defended a progressive attitude towards the transformation ofworld politics. The thesis illuminates how they developed through a dialectical processguided by his central question of how the Western liberal tradition should be superseded ina historically progressive way, seeking to navigate our way out of some of the sterileconceptual blind alleys that dominated IR theory until fairly recently and also contribute tounderstanding the contemporary world in a more subtle and historically sensitive way.

Yamanaka, Hitomi

Keele University

Electronic name

p

[Thesis]

276903

a

Y