Deadline: 16.05.2008.

International conference organised by SPIRIT- IR team
& AFSP- International Studies Section / November 27th-28th 2008 Sciences Po Bordeaux

As a social science, IR pertains to two realms: The realm of scientific discourse and the realm of political practice that simultaneously enriches and affects scientific analysis.  
 
The notion of “international community”, at once elusive and inescapable, perfectly illustrates the difficulties and ambiguities resulting from this double positioning. On the one hand, it is permanently invoked in common sense discourses held by politicians, militants and media, while being regularly used in diplomatic and legal language, too. On the other hand the vast majority of IR scholars hardly resort to the concept. Some theoreticians prefer the notion of “international society” (English School). Others confine it to a regional perspective (Karl Deutsch’s security community) or to a utopian horizon (Andrew Linklater’s dialogic community). Others still ignore it (realists) or stigmatize it as an ideological discourse masking the vested interests of those great powers satisfied by the existing order (Edward H. Carr).
 
And what if we took the notion of « international community » seriously?
 
Let’s for instance compare the notion of “international community” with the sociological notion of “community”. What is the classical opposition “society” vs. “community” worth? Is it the adjective “international” placed next to “community” that undermines the notion’s heuristic validity, or is it the very pre-notion of “community” as such, as well as its opposition to “society”, that are overrated? Moreover, what should we make of the teleological perspective underpinning this opposition: As far as international relations are concerned, couldn’t this perspective be reversed, given that an international community, being presumably a post-national, or post-sovereign, entity, entails the existence of higher values than those shared by a society of states?
 
Let’s now have a look at the critical stance claiming that the pre-notion of “international community”, formed by and for the political practice, plays a legitimization function of specific national interests presented as universal objectives by various actors looking for respectability. Sure enough, empirical corroborations of this hypothesis are easy to find: the Bush administration call for the support of the international community in its fight against global terrorism is anything but fortuitous.
 
However, if it is true that a notion emerges because it reflects, more or less, a new reality, then it seems reasonable to posit that the notion of “international community” accounts for certain empirical facts that other concepts do not express properly, notably the fact that in certain domains such as human rights or environmental governance there might exist common interests beyond the national interests.
 
All the more so as international reality also is a discursive construction, which is tantamount to saying that the distinction between political discourse and scientific discourse becomes fictitious. What about the idea of the social construction of an international community as a result of its repeated invocation by political discourses? Although the idea of an international community as a political programme stirring people into action is probably too farsighted, the hypothesis of an international community progressively emerging thanks to an international public opinion or a global civil society in the wake of the current globalization process does not sound completely absurd. For instance via an indirect process, such as a Kantian purpose of nature, a Hegelian cunning of reason, or an Eliasian civilizing process, likely to shape the behaviour of the social actors by constraining them to act according to the demands and values of the international community they are invoking in their discourses.
 
The purpose of the international symposium “Taking ‘International Community’ Seriously?”, organized by IR team of SPIRIT - Research Centre in political science and International Relations of the French CNRS at the IEP Bordeaux- and the French Political Science Association (AFSP) - International Studies Section, is to provide some answers to these questions. The following three thematic clusters are proposed:
 
1. International community as a polysemic (pre-)notion
2. International community as a multiform reality
3. International community as a Kantian horizon
 
Organisation Committee : IR Team of SPIRIT and SEI executive Committee
Mailing address : d.compagnon@sciencespobordeaux.fr
 
How to propose a paper : send to the above e-mail address an abstract of the proposed paper (maximum 400 words) stating precisely the title, name and institutional affiliation of the author(s), topic and argument of the paper, and how the paper will fit one of the three above-mentioned themes.
 
Timetable :
Deadline for reception of paper proposals: Friday 16 May 2008
Answer to proposals : 16 June 2008
Dissemination of conference programme: 1er July 2008
Registration: from 1er September to 30 October 2008
Deadline for reception of full text of papers : 1er November 2008
Conference: Thursday 27 November and Friday 28 November 2008