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Hierarchies in World Politics

Monday December 11, 2017, at 13:30
Room 24.019 (Ground Floor). Mercè Rodoreda building 24
Research seminar

Ayse Zarakol (University of Cambridge)

Globalizing processes are gathering increased attention for complicating the nature of political boundaries, authority and sovereignty. Recent examples of global financial and political turmoil have also created a sense of unease about the durability of the modern international order and the ability of our existing theoretical frameworks to explain system dynamics. In light of the inadequacies of traditional international relations (IR) theories in explaining the contemporary global context, a growing range of scholars have been seeking to make sense of world politics through an analytical focus on hierarchies instead. Until now, the explanatory potential of such research agendas and their implications for the discipline went unrecognized, partly due to the fragmented nature of the IR field. To address this gap, this ground-breaking book brings leading IR scholars together in a conversation on hierarchy and thus moves the discipline in a direction better equipped to deal with the challenges of the twenty-first century.

Ayşe Zarakol is Reader in International Relations in the POLIS Department and a Fellow at Emmanuel College.  Dr. Zarakol's primary research interests are in international security (with an emphasis on approaches rooted in social theory and historical sociology). More specifically, she works on the evolution of East and West relations in the international order, declining and rising powers, and politics of non-Western regional powers.  She has secondary research interests in the evolution of the modern state and the international system. She is the author of After Defeat: How the East Learned to Live with the West (Cambridge Studies in International Relations, no.118, Cambridge University Press, 2011; published with a new introduction in Turkish as Yenilgiden Sonra: Doğu Batı ile Yaşamayı Nasıl Öğrendi (Koç Üniversitesi Yayınları, 2012). Her articles have appeared in journals such as International Organization, International Theory, International Studies Quarterly, European Journal of International Relations, Review of International Studies, among many others. Her research has been supported by a number of academic and government institutions in the UK, North America and Europe, such as the Council on Foreign Relations and the European Research Council. Her most recent book is Hierarchies in World Politics (Cambridge Studies in International Relations, no.144, Cambridge University Press, 2017). 

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