Mittwoch, 19. Mai 2010, ab 18 Uhr c.t.

Campus Westend, Hörsaalzentrum HZ 3

Professor Mohammed Ayoob (Michigan State University)

Subaltern Approach(es) to Order and Justice
A Preliminary Exploration

CV

Mohammed Ayoob is Distinguished Professor of International Relations at the Michigan State University. He holds a joint appointment in James Madison College and the Department of Political Science. Previously he held faculty appointments at the Australian National University and Jawaharlal Nehru University in India, as well as visiting appointments at Columbia, Sydney, Princeton, Oxford, and Brown Universities and at Bilkent University in Ankara, Turkey. A specialist on conflict and security in the Third World, he also works on the intersection of religion and politics in the Muslim world. He has acted as a consultant to the International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty, the High Level Panel on Threats, Challenges and Change appointed by the UN Secretary General. His books include „The Third World Security Predicament: State Making, Regional Conflict, and the International System“ (Lynne Rienner, 1995), „and Southeast Asia: Indian Perceptions and Policies“ (Routledge, 1990) and „The Politics of Is-lamic Reassertion“ (St. Martins, 1981). His latest book is titled „The Many Faces of Political Islam: Reli-gion and Politics in the Muslim World“ (University of Michigan Press, 2008).

Abstract

The importance of the subaltern vision of order and justice lies in the fact that the large majority of states in the international system can be categorized as subaltern for they are weak, vulnerable, and, therefore, open to external penetration. While this is a function of the early stage of state-making in which they find themselves, their vulnerabilities owe substantially to their colonial experience and the workings of an in-ternational system that concentrates power in the hands of a small number of states that form a de facto concert that controls the international security and economic agendas. According to the subaltern pers-pective, international order must be acceptable to the large majority of (subaltern) states otherwise it will continue to remain precarious and unstable. While the hegemonic standpoint emphasizes order among states and justice within them, the subaltern perspective stresses order within states and justice among them. This tension has manifested itself, although not always very neatly, in such diverse arenas of inter-national politics as humanitarian intervention, nuclear proliferation, and the emergence of political Islam as the principal ideology of resistance against global hegemony.