International Systems in World History: Remaking the Study of International Relations [Paperback]

Barry Buzan (Author), Richard Little (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0198780656 | ISBN-13: 978-0198780656 | Publication Date: June 22, 2000

This book tells the story of mankind's evolution from a scattering of hunter-gatherer bands to today's integrated global international political economy. Seeking to emulate and challenge the cross-disciplinary influence of the world systems model, the book recasts the study of international relations into a macro-historical perspective, shows how its core concepts work across time, and sets out a new theoretical agenda and a new intellectual role for the discipline.

Editorial Reviews

Review

'This is an outstandingly good book, which succeeds on many different levels.The book is exceptionally well structured and well written. There is so much in this book for so many types of scholars of International Relations. I am certain that this book will be seen over time not only as one of the most intellectually impressive mergers of theory and history in the field, but also as a massive advance on US-style neo-realism. I thoroughly enjoyed reading this book, not least because I became fascinated with the argument, and found myself nodding in admiration as the authors pulled off the feat of bringing all the elements together into a powerful and intellectually impressive discussion of the types of international system found in world history. This is one of the most important books published in the last decade and for intellectual sophistication it leave neo-realism US-style standing, but also drowning.' International Affairs 76:4 (2000) 833-4.

About the Author

Barry Buzan is Research Professor of International Studies at the University of Westminster and Project Director of the European Security Group at the Copenhagen Peace Research Institute. Prior to this he was Professor of International Relations at the University of Warwick. He has been visiting professor at the International University of Japan and has also been an Olof Palme visiting professor and adviser on foreign affairs to the Swedish government. He is the author of numerous books on International Relations and from 1988-90 was the Chairman of the British International Studies Association.

Richard Little is Professor of International Politics in the Department of Politics at the University of Bristol. Before this he was at the Open University and Lancaster University and has held fellowships at the University of Auckland in New Zealand and the Australian National University. He was editor of the Review of International Studies from 1990-94 and is currently Vice Chair of the B

Product Details

• Paperback: 472 pages
• Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA (June 22, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0198780656
• ISBN-13: 978-0198780656
• Product Dimensions: 9.6 x 6.7 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.8 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #348,537 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars IR contribution to the understanding of world history, January 5, 2002

By 

César González Rouco (Madrid, Madrid Spain) - See all my reviews

This review is from: International Systems in World History: Remaking the Study of International Relations (Paperback)

As the two authors recognize, this work is an International Relations [”IR”] textbook, and written as such; but they hope “to attract interest and comment from historical sociologists, archeologists, world historians and anyone trying to understand humankind as a whole” [precisely, with the purpose of understanding as much as possible of our world,...The authors, after researching what world history has to offer to IR theory, also examine what IR theory has to offer world history: “The most obvious answer to that questions is the idea of international system itself. As we hope we have demonstrated, this idea, and its associated concepts of dominant units, scale, interaction capacity, process, and structure, provide an extraordinarily useful theoretical framework for studying world history. These concepts can produce a “thick” conception of international system that has the potential to provide a rich and distinctive account of world history that captures main features that are missed or obscured by existing approaches. The concept in our toolkit are well suited to the broad-brush approach that world history requires and offers as much as, if not more than, any of the available alternatives”.

I have rated it four starts. Considering its content, I think it should be five; considering its readability, two (sometimes falling to one, sometimes raising to three).

P.S. I think that reproducing a Synopsis of this book (that may be found in the web page corresponding to the same book offered by Amazon.co.uk) is worth it: “This text tells the 60,000 year story of how humankind evolved from a scattering of hunter-gatherer bands to highly integrated global international political economy. It traces the evolution of ever-wider economic, societal and military-political international systems, and the interplay between these systems and the tribes, city states, empires, and modern states into which humans have organised themselves. Buzan and Little marry a wide range of mainstream International Relations theories to a world historical perspective. They mount a stinging attack on International Relations as a discipline, arguing that its Eurocentrism, historical narrowness, and theoretical fragmentation have reduced almost to nothing both its cross-disclipinary influence and its ability to think coherently about either the past or the future. Seeking to emulate and challenge the cross-disciplinary influence of the world systems model, the book recasts the study of International Relations into a macro-historical perspective, shows how its core concepts work across time, and sets out a new theoretical agenda and a new intellectual role for the discipline”.

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A highly structured world history from an IR point of view, September 10, 2004

By 

Mette Skak (Associate Professor of Political Science, University of Aarhus, Denmark) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: International Systems in World History: Remaking the Study of International Relations (Paperback)

I have used this book several times when teaching at my university in Denmark with stunning success among the students. Nowadays young people lack knowledge about history - some times they don't know much about the most basic of issues - but many of them are quite aware of their shortcomings and for students of political science with some training in theories of international relations (=IR) this book really gives them a highly organized, coherent view of historical development.

One caveat: This is not a book for beginners! The authors are political scientists both notoriously strong on issues of theory, not historians, and their reasoning correspondingly abstract, at times dry as a bone to read.

Nevertheless, following the thorough introduction to the methodology and approach of the book - the English school beefed up with economics and other issue-areas placed into a most structured, Buzantine (ha,ha) analytical framework - the book does offer a sweeping empirical world history, dividing history into three basic eras: prehistory, antiquity and modernity. The core concept of the book is that of international system which the authors claim is of relevance beyond political science. Indeed, they want the other social sciences including history itself to embrace this concept as the mother-concept of all social science macroanalysis. Even if they may fail to convince scholars outside the IR community I personally consider the book one of the most important macroanalytical works on international relations - a diachronic perspective on all of empiricall IR. It deals a heavy blow to Eurocentric, ahistorical neorealism although it has a very Waltzian systemic outlook.

0 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Great condition good price., October 27, 2009

By 

Martin Zepeda "saneroner" (Cheney, Wa) - See all my reviews
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Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: International Systems in World History: Remaking the Study of International Relations (Paperback)

This book was about a hundred dollars at my college bookstore but found it here for less than half even with shipping. Will buy again in the future foir sure.