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Global Assemblage In International Relations

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Ever since the Romantic era at least, the nation has become the dominant form of political identification as nationalist movements around the world - at first in Europe and then beyond - have progressively liberated indigenous populations from imperialist subjugation. Correspondingly, the nation-state has “commanded the attention of the historian through most of the modern age” and still today, “history continues to be written in national languages for national audiences” (Iggers and Wang, 2008: 366-67). Similar is true of International Relations (IR), where the nation-state remains the cornerstone of realist theory and where much attention is given to the problem of “failed states” and the need for “nation building” in areas of the world such …show more content…

Global assemblages can take many forms, ranging from neoliberal reforms of public service sectors, to global standards in finance and accounting, to responses to global terrorism, to the global trade in human body parts. Global assemblages are distinctive, however, because they all follow a logic that is fundamentally global, rather than national, such that when they do take effect in national contexts they serve to redefine previously existing social and institutional arrangements, thus prompting ‘a shift in the core dynamics of social, cultural, and economic life’ (2005: …show more content…

Globalization may turn out not to be the ‘universalizing’ force that many envisage: global trade has only recently returned to levels last seen in 1913, for instance - the eve of the Great War. In drawing together people of different and usually contending worldviews, globalization could yet prove to be a recipe for more international conflict rather than a means of reconfiguring different nations along similar lines based on ‘global assemblages’. History, as ever, will deliver the final

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