Culture and International Relations: Narratives, Natives and Tourists

Culture is a popular and powerful, though often unacknowledged, idea in international relations. However, where it was once used to foster mutual understandings, in the post-Cold War era it became synonymous with ways of life that clashed. Culture and International Relations provides an historical survey of the development of the idea of culture form the perspective of international relations (IR). It crucially demonstrates that, far from being a neglected subject in IR, culture has been important throughout the discipline's history. The author identifies two distinct concepts of culture-the humanist and the anthropological-and uses a contextual methodology to track its changing meaning across the twentieth century from cultural internationalism to the clash of cultures. This innovative volume examines the implications of culture for IR and controversially challenges the current dominant ideology of culture in the international relations, arguing that-contrary to popular belief, and someprominent international theory-it is not obvious that everyone has culture or even that culture exists. Throwing light on how we should think about people and their differences in the contemporary world, this book will be relevant to everyone working in international relations.