Inventing International Society is a narrative history of the English School of International Relations. After E.H. Carr departed from academic international relations in the late 1940s, Martin Wight became the most theoretically innovative scholar in the discipline. Wight found an institutional setting for his ideas in The British Committee, a group which Herbert Butterfield inaugurated in 1959. The book argues that this date should be regarded as the origin of a distinctive English School of International Relations. In addition to tracing the history of the School, the book argues that...

This volume looks outward to the new century and to the dynamics of this first truly global age. It asks the fundamental question: how might human societies live? The contributors believe that there is nothing more political than ethics. By exploring in the newest context some of the oldest questions about duties and obligations within and beyond humanly constructed boundaries, the essays help us ponder the most profound question in world politics today: who will the twenty-first century be for?

There is a stark contradiction between the theory of universal human rights and the everyday practice of human wrongs. This timely volume brings together leading scholars to evaluate this paradox. The contributors ask whether human rights abuses are a result of the failure of governments to live up to a universal human rights standard, or whether the search for moral universals is a fundamentally flawed enterprise. The book evaluates the philosophical basis of human rights, and reflects on the structures that affect the development of a global human rights culture.

There is a stark contradiction between the theory of universal human rights and the everyday practice of human wrongs. This timely volume brings together leading scholars to evaluate this paradox. The contributors ask whether human rights abuses are a result of the failure of governments to live up to a universal human rights standard, or whether the search for moral universals is a fundamentally flawed enterprise. The book evaluates the philosophical basis of human rights, and reflects on the structures that affect the development of a global human rights culture.

Inventing International Society is a narrative history of the English School of International Relations. After E.H. Carr departed from academic international relations in the late 1940s, Martin Wight became the most theoretically innovative scholar in the discipline. Wight found an institutional setting for his ideas in The British Committee, a group which Herbert Butterfield inaugurated in 1959. The book argues that this date should be regarded as the origin of a distinctive English School of International Relations. In addition to tracing the history of the School, the book argues that...