Vulnerable in International Society
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Who are the vulnerable, and what makes them so? Through an innovative application of English School theory, this book suggests that people are vulnerable not only to natural risks, but also to the workings of international society. This replicates the approach of those studies of natural disasters that now commonly present a social vulnerability analysis, showing how people are differentially exposed by their social location. Could international society have similar effects? This question is explored through the cases of political violence, climate change, human movement, and global health. These cases provide rich detail on how, through its social practices of the vulnerable, international society constructs the vulnerable in its own terms, and sets up regimes of protection that prioritize some forms at the expense of others. What this demonstrates above all is that, even if only a 'practical' association, international society inevitably has moral consequences in the way it influences the relative distribution of harm.
As a result, these four pressing policy issues now present themselves as fundamentally moral problems. Revising the arguments of E. H. Carr, the author points out the essentially contested normative nature of international order. However, instead of as a moral clash between revisionist and status quo powers, as Carr had suggested, the problem is instead one about the contested nature of vulnerability, insofar as vulnerability is an expression of power relations, but also gives rise to a moral claim. By providing a holistic treatment in this way, the book makes practical sense of the vulnerable, while also seeking to make moral sense of international society.
Ian Clark was educated at the University of Glasgow and at the Australian National University. He taught at Cambridge University from 1984 until his move to Aberystwyth in 1998. He held a Leverhulme Major Research Fellowship 2002-4 and an ESRC Professorial Fellowship 2007-10. During 2012, he was a Visiting Fellow at the University of Melbourne. He has published many books and his most recent project has been a multi-volume study of international legitimacy: Legitimacy in International Society (OUP 2005); International Legitimacy and World Society (OUP 2007); and Hegemony in International Society (OUP 2011). He is a co-author of Special Responsibilities: Global Problems and American Power (CUP 2012). He is a Fellow of the British Academy, a Founding Fellow of the Learned Society of Wales, and an Honorary Fellow of Selwyn College, Cambridge. He is currently E. H. Carr Professor of International Politics, Aberystwyth University.