Cosmopolitanism and International Relations Theory
| Published date | 01 April 2012 |
| Date | 01 April 2012 |
| Author | Chris Brown |
| DOI | 10.3366/jipt.2012.0030 |
| Subject Matter | Review Essays: Critical Engagement |
RICHARD BEARDSWORTH, COSMOPOLITANISM AND
INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS THEORY (CAMBRIDGE: POLITY
PRESS, 2011), 224 PP., £16.99/$24.95 PAPER
CHRIS BROWN
[On Diogenes, who coined the term ‘cosmopolitan’] ‘If only more contemporary self-
styled cosmopolitans drank water from their hands, ate human flesh, hugged statues
and masturbated in public. .. . Diogenes’s “cosmopolitanism” is much more of an anti-
political stance than some sort of banal internationalism’. (Simon Critchley, The Book
of Dead Philosophers. London: Granta Books, 2008: 31)
Richard Beardsworth has written an impressively scholarly book, devoted to
defending contemporary cosmopolitans from Critchley’s charge that they are
banal internationalists; my aim in this critical engagement is not to challenge
his scholarship, but to question some of the assumptions upon which it is based.
First, a brief description of the book; wishing himself to promote a normative
and principled, but feasible and practical cosmopolitanism as a viable take on
contemporary international relations he sets up a series of dialogues between
modern cosmopolitan thinkers and three schools of International Relations
(IR) theory – realism, Marxism and postmodernism. After first setting out the
‘spectrum’ of cosmopolitanism (cultural, moral, normative, institutional, legal
and political) he then offers chapters on the realist, Marxist and postmodern
critiques of cosmopolitanism, in each case paired with a cosmopolitan response
to these several critiques. Each chapter consists of detailed and accurate readings
and critiques of key authors – read as a series of literature reviews this book
will be enormously valuable to students at all levels, although one might have
hoped that the author’s own voicewould have come through a little more clearly;
Beardsworth clearly does have a thesis and a voice, but he is so concerned to
allow others to be heard that one sometimes forgets that this is so. Still, within
its limits, this is a valuable book which makes an important contribution to
contemporary international political theory.
Journal of International Political Theory, 8(1–2) 2012, 112–115
DOI: 10.3366/jipt.2012.0030
© Edinburgh University Press 2012
www.eupjournals.com/jipt
112
To continue reading
Request your trial