Noel Parker
University of Copenhagen, Department of Political Science, Faculty Member
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Power and Marginality in the International System: A Historical Perspective Pertti Joenniemi and Noel Parker The Changing Scope for the Marginal It was argued in Chapter 1 that a political entityEurope or any other possesses a certain... more
Power and Marginality in the International System: A Historical Perspective Pertti Joenniemi and Noel Parker The Changing Scope for the Marginal It was argued in Chapter 1 that a political entityEurope or any other possesses a certain geometry deploying its components in ...
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* T.W. Adomo, * Louis Athusser, * Hannah Arendt, * Raymond Aron, * Simone de Beauvoir, * Daniel Bell, * Reinhard Bendix, * Isaiah Berlin, * Dietrich Bonhoeffer, * Pierre Bourdieu, * Ferdinand Braudel, * James Burnham, * Auguste Comte, *... more
* T.W. Adomo, * Louis Athusser, * Hannah Arendt, * Raymond Aron, * Simone de Beauvoir, * Daniel Bell, * Reinhard Bendix, * Isaiah Berlin, * Dietrich Bonhoeffer, * Pierre Bourdieu, * Ferdinand Braudel, * James Burnham, * Auguste Comte, * Robert Dahi, * Karl Deutsch, * Wilhelm Dithey, * Milovan Djilas, * Ernie Durkheim, * Roland Dworkan, * Norbert Elias, * Frantz Fanon, * Michel Foucault, * Sigmund Freud, * Betty Friedan, * Milton Firedman, * Richard Buckmaster Fuller, * J.K.Galbraith, * Clifford Geertz, * Ernest Geilner, * Andre Gorz, * Anthony Giddens, * Irving Goffman, * Antonio Gramsti, * Jurgen Huberman, * H.I.A. Hart, * Friedrich Hayel, * A. Hirshman, * Paul Hirst, J.A. Hobson, * Ivan Ilich, Carl Jung, * Maynard Keynes, * Melanie Klein, * Thomas Kulhn, * Ernesto Lacha and Chantal Mouffe, * R.D. Lang, Harold Ladd, * Charles-Edouard Le Courbusier, * V.I. Lenin, * Claude Levi-Strausse, * Georg Lukacs, * Rosa Luxembourg, * Jean-Francois Lyotard, * Alaistair McIntyre, * Marshall McLuhan, * C.R. Macpherson, * Ernest Mandel, * Karl Mannheim, * Mao Zedong, * Herbert Marcuse, * Jacques Martain, * T.H. Marshall, * Karl Marx, * Margaret Mead, * Robert Michels, * C. Wright Mills, * Gaetano Mosca, * Robert Nozick, * Michael Oakeshott, * Mancur Olson, * Vilfredo Paneto, * Talbort Parsons, * Carol Paterman, * Jean Piaget, * Ann Philips, * Karl Popper, * Nicoi Poulantzas, * John Rawls, * Paul Samuelson, * Joseph A. Schumpeter, * Georg Simmel, * Peter Singer, * B.F. Skinner, * Quenton Skinner, * Tomas Stasz, * R.H. Tawney, * Rene Thorn, * E.P. Thompson, * Paul Tilich, * Charles Tilly, * Alvin Toffler, * Leon Trotsky, * Thorstein Veblen, * Immanuel Wallerstein, * Michael Waltzer, * Max Weber, * Peter Winch, * Ludwig Wittgenstein, * Iris Marion Young.
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Research Interests: Philosophy and Grammar
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Those content to scan the contents list of Jane Burbank and Frederick Cooper’s Empires in world history: power and the politics of difference would altogether miss its object. It begins predictably enough: ‘Imperial rule in Rome and... more
Those content to scan the contents list of Jane Burbank and Frederick Cooper’s Empires in world history: power and the politics of difference would altogether miss its object. It begins predictably enough: ‘Imperial rule in Rome and China’, and then ’After Rome: Empire, Christianity and Islam’ followed by ‘Eurasian Connections: the Mongol Empires’. But Burbank and Cooper are after a bigger prize throughout their, by turns, properly analytic and selectively detailed history. The title ‘. . . in world history . . .’ gives more than a hint of what is special about this book: the conceptual apparatus deployed is intended to situate empires in world history. Burbank and Cooper examine empires as constantly evolving entities that develop and adopt practices which are dependent upon existing circumstances in order to sustain their maintenance and growth. It is through the process of their developing these so-called ‘repertoires’ that empires survive and prosper (or not), and come to impact world history. The sub-title (albeit a touch byzantine) refers to the most interesting of their ‘themes’: a slightly muted claim that empires have a better track record in the management of difference than the state-form we have become so accustomed to. Let us take Europe after Rome as a classic example of what is different about this approach. Their first theme in chapter 4 (‘Eurasian connections: the Mongol empires’) concerns the replacement of polytheism by monotheism, which addresses the question of ‘how to solve [the] problems inherent in the structure of empire: to capture the imaginations of people across a broad and differentiated space and how to keep intermediaries in line’ (2010, p. 90). But there are three instances of recourse to this: Western Europe (with Charlemagne’s hijacking of Roman authority), Byzantium (where a version of Christianity developed in closest proximity to the state), and (plainly outside ‘Europe’, and furthermore a largely successful rival to it) Islam. Monotheistic religion was a distinctive feature in the repertoire of each empire. So empires as monotheisms effectively replace ‘Europe’, which is often used as shorthand for ‘Western’ Europe, as the historical object of interest. When it comes down to it, the monotheistic shift in imperial repertoires was most successfully managed in the former African parts of the Roman Empire. Yet, on the other hand, as much as monotheism ‘provided a moral framework transcending locality’, it also ‘opened the door to schism’ (2010, p. 90) – doubly dangerous where, as in Western Europe again, it was combined with a princely aristocracy. Europe in its classic period of the ‘great leap forward to modernity and industrialization’ becomes, in Burbank and Cooper’s story, a Europe attempting Journal of Political Power Vol. 4, No. 3, December 2011, 451–455
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... the rationale of Nordic independence for a century and more. Mouritzen (1995) thus saw Sweden's abandonment of its central role as the “fall” of the Nordic model in foreign policy per se. Holbraad, at the end of a... more
... the rationale of Nordic independence for a century and more. Mouritzen (1995) thus saw Sweden's abandonment of its central role as the “fall” of the Nordic model in foreign policy per se. Holbraad, at the end of a study of the ...
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This article analyses the ingredients of empire as a pattern of order with geopolitical effects. Noting the imperial form's proclivity for expansion from a critical reading of historical sociology, the article argues that... more
This article analyses the ingredients of empire as a pattern of order with geopolitical effects. Noting the imperial form's proclivity for expansion from a critical reading of historical sociology, the article argues that the principal manifestation of earlier geopolitics lay not in the nation but in ...
Research Interests: Sociology, Human Geography, Law, Globalization, Geopolitics, and 4 morePolitical Science, Nationalism, Empire, and Globe
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... DOI: 10.1080/2158379X.2011.628565 Noel Parker a * pages 355-374. ... In that sense, it tries to understand how Europe's dynamic of empire evolved into an American one – the better to grasp the nature of the affinity between the... more
... DOI: 10.1080/2158379X.2011.628565 Noel Parker a * pages 355-374. ... In that sense, it tries to understand how Europe's dynamic of empire evolved into an American one – the better to grasp the nature of the affinity between the two (see also Parker 200947. Parker, Noel. 2009. ...
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This book begins with an idea of something which easily goes unnoticed: forces and processes at work on the disregarded margins of highly visible orders, such as in Europe and the other visible blocs of our world, which may challenge, or... more
This book begins with an idea of something which easily goes unnoticed: forces and processes at work on the disregarded margins of highly visible orders, such as in Europe and the other visible blocs of our world, which may challenge, or even reshape, those apparently given realities. The expectation that we could find forces and processes on the margins underpinned our project. Properly considered, that thought suggests that if we look carefully at the margins of larger, substantial entities, such as the socio-political order called “Europe,” we can find interactions between the margins and the center. As I seek to demonstrate in this introduction, we can anticipate that, in such interactions, margins will exhibit three surprising types of effect: dynamics peculiar to their marginality; independent scope vis-a-vis the ostensibly dominant center or centers; and/or a potential to impact on the center(s), perhaps even to the extent of “reshaping” it.
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1. Critical Border Studies: Broadening and Deepening the 'Lines in the Sand' Agenda 2. Theory of the / : The Suture and Critical Border Studies 3. Carl Schmitt and the Concept of the Border 4. Picking and Choosing the... more
1. Critical Border Studies: Broadening and Deepening the 'Lines in the Sand' Agenda 2. Theory of the / : The Suture and Critical Border Studies 3. Carl Schmitt and the Concept of the Border 4. Picking and Choosing the 'Sovereign' Border: A Theory of Changing State Bordering Practices 5. Sloterdijk in the House! Dwelling in the Borderscape of Germany and The Netherlands 6. Cartopolitics, Geopolitics and Boundaries in the Arctic 7. Off-shoring and Out-sourcing the Borders of EUrope: Libya and EU Border Work in the Mediterranean 8. Mixed Legacies in Contested Borderlands: Skardu and the Kashmir Dispute 9. Towards a Multiperspectival Study of Borders
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THE GEOPOLITICS OF EUROPE S IDENTITY Copyright© Noel Parker, ed., 2008. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations... more
THE GEOPOLITICS OF EUROPE S IDENTITY Copyright© Noel Parker, ed., 2008. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or ...
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While concepts of a postinternational politics properly highlight the constant variance of entities in play in international relations, the approach lacks an ontology that shows how such an unstable variety of types of players can coexist... more
While concepts of a postinternational politics properly highlight the constant variance of entities in play in international relations, the approach lacks an ontology that shows how such an unstable variety of types of players can coexist in a common field in the first place. This article draws upon Deleuze's philosophy to set out an ontology in which the continual reformulation of entities in play in “postinternational” society can be grasped. This entails a strategic shift from speaking about the “borders” between sovereign states to referring instead to the “margins” between a plethora of entities that are ever open to modifications of identity. The concept of the margin possesses a much wider reach than borders, and focuses continual attention on the meetings and interactions between a range of indeterminate entities whose interactions may determine both themselves and the types of entity that are in play.
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Denmark's and Britain's Marginality Strategies Compared Noel Parker Introduction: Shifts of Power in Europe The idea pursued in this chapter is that, observed on the large historical canvas, Denmark and Britain... more
Denmark's and Britain's Marginality Strategies Compared Noel Parker Introduction: Shifts of Power in Europe The idea pursued in this chapter is that, observed on the large historical canvas, Denmark and Britain can be seen to have reacted in compara-ble ways to a marginal position in ...
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Copyright © Noel Parker 1999 The right of Noel Parker to be identified as author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. First published in 1999 by Polity Press in association with... more
Copyright © Noel Parker 1999 The right of Noel Parker to be identified as author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. First published in 1999 by Polity Press in association with Blackwell Publishers Ltd Editorial office: Polity ...
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Apart from specialists in literature and Victorian cultural history, not many people refer to Thomas Carlyle as an authoritative literary critic. He is not many people’s idea of a historian either — though his The French Revolution: A... more
Apart from specialists in literature and Victorian cultural history, not many people refer to Thomas Carlyle as an authoritative literary critic. He is not many people’s idea of a historian either — though his The French Revolution: A History was republished in a new edition in the recent bicentenary year.1 Yet, he was an enormous figure in the nineteenth-century intellectual world and he has continued to intrigue a considerable band of analysts and students. Erudite, severe, dogmatic and latterly bigoted almost to the point of insanity, he was a sage, a prophet of ills in the modern world of urbanisation, democracy and mass culture. He was not afraid to put himself on the line in questions of literature, history, politics or philosophy. And his writings set the terms for an entire Victorian generation of intellectuals
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ABSTRACT There is a manifest need to secure the European Critical Electricity Infrastructure. Our analysis of the ECEI system and its dynamic behaviour inevitably led to the conclusion that the reliability and quality of electricity... more
ABSTRACT There is a manifest need to secure the European Critical Electricity Infrastructure. Our analysis of the ECEI system and its dynamic behaviour inevitably led to the conclusion that the reliability and quality of electricity service provision to the European citizen are not adequately secured if all actors are allowed to run their activities at subsystem levels in the “old ways” of the pre-liberalisation era. The established lack of supply security applies to the short term as well as to the long term security of electricity service provision. There are multiple reasons for this conclusion: the emerging European Critical Electricity Infrastructure (ECEI) – including the European electricity market – is a fundamentally different construct from the old situation of interconnected national grids. Even if the latter situation seems comparable with the current ECEI in terms of geographical scale and scope, the complexity of the ECEI is beyond comparison, as it reaches far beyond physical network complexity. With the liberalisation process, many new players have entered the playing field, new roles have been introduced, the rules of the game have changed and are still changing. The complexity of the multi-actor network is unprecedented, and its behaviour is highly unpredictable. On the one side, this unpredictability is a consequence of the multitude of actors involved, our lack of insight in their intentional relationships, their strategic behaviour and learning behaviour. On the other side, the evolution of the multi-actor network and the socio-economic subsystem in which it is embedded are subject to many uncertainties pertaining to market development and evolving regulation, technological innovation and institutional change. Given our lack of experience with liberalised electricity markets in Europe, it is evident that we are not able to identify all the risks that are generated by the dynamic interactions between the physical and socio-economic subsystems that constitute the ECEI.
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While concepts of a postinternational politics properly highlight the constant variance of entities in play in international relations, the approach lacks an ontology that shows how such an unstable variety of types of players can coexist... more
While concepts of a postinternational politics properly highlight the constant variance of entities in play in international relations, the approach lacks an ontology that shows how such an unstable variety of types of players can coexist in a common field in the first place. This article draws upon Deleuze's philosophy to set out an ontology in which the continual reformulation of entities in play in “postinternational” society can be grasped. This entails a strategic shift from speaking about the “borders” between sovereign states to referring instead to the “margins” between a plethora of entities that are ever open to modifications of identity. The concept of the margin possesses a much wider reach than borders, and focuses continual attention on the meetings and interactions between a range of indeterminate entities whose interactions may determine both themselves and the types of entity that are in play.
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Entries consist of a short biographical section on each theorist, an essay describing their main contributions and influences on modern political and social theory listings of their main works an a brief further reading section plus a... more
Entries consist of a short biographical section on each theorist, an essay describing their main contributions and influences on modern political and social theory listings of their main works an a brief further reading section plus a glossary of key terms. ... Cross referencing with ...
Research Interests: Philosophy and Recherche
This article analyses the ingredients of empire as a pattern of order with geopolitical effects. Noting the imperial form's proclivity for expansion from a critical reading of historical sociology, the article argues that... more
This article analyses the ingredients of empire as a pattern of order with geopolitical effects. Noting the imperial form's proclivity for expansion from a critical reading of historical sociology, the article argues that the principal manifestation of earlier geopolitics lay not in the nation but in ...
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Are there long-term structural/historical conditions that alter the importance of the marginal, and the possibilities confronting those who find themselves there? By correlating the principle underpinning the political order, together... more
Are there long-term structural/historical conditions that alter the importance of the marginal, and the possibilities confronting those who find themselves there? By correlating the principle underpinning the political order, together with the dominant forms and sites of power, to the world-...
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... the rationale of Nordic independence for a century and more. Mouritzen (1995) thus saw Sweden's abandonment of its central role as the “fall” of the Nordic model in foreign policy per se. Holbraad, at the end of a... more
... the rationale of Nordic independence for a century and more. Mouritzen (1995) thus saw Sweden's abandonment of its central role as the “fall” of the Nordic model in foreign policy per se. Holbraad, at the end of a study of the ...
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List of Tables List of Figures Acknowledgements Foreword Notes on the Contributors PART I: WHAT MAKES THE MARGINS MARGINAL? Integrated Europe and its 'Margins': Action and Reaction N.Parker European Integration through the... more
List of Tables List of Figures Acknowledgements Foreword Notes on the Contributors PART I: WHAT MAKES THE MARGINS MARGINAL? Integrated Europe and its 'Margins': Action and Reaction N.Parker European Integration through the Kaleidoscope: The View from the Central and Eastern European Margins H.E.Hartnell European Integration, Market Liberalization and Regional Disparities V.Lintner Economic Development on the Periphery of the European Union L.Budd PART II: MANAGING ECONOMIC FORCES AT THE MARGINS EU Trade and Aid Strategy in the Southern and Eastern Mediterranean M.Toksoz Multi-national Investment on the Periphery of the EU C.Flockton Transnational Planning on the German-Polish Border A.Kennard PART III: THE POLITICAL POSSIBILITIES OF MARGINALITY European Union Governance and National Territorial Politics: Rewriting Marginality in Spain and Portugal J.Magone Euroscepticism in the Ideology of the British Right C.G.Flood Home at Last?: Czech Views of Joining the EU P.Bugge Histo...
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THE GEOPOLITICS OF EUROPE S IDENTITY Copyright© Noel Parker, ed., 2008. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations... more
THE GEOPOLITICS OF EUROPE S IDENTITY Copyright© Noel Parker, ed., 2008. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or ...
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The article analyzes in the work of two leading 18th-century thinkers' two dominant strategies to decide the relationship between religion and politics in modern thought as it has been derived from the 18th-century Enlightenment:... more
The article analyzes in the work of two leading 18th-century thinkers' two dominant strategies to decide the relationship between religion and politics in modern thought as it has been derived from the 18th-century Enlightenment: exclusion and/or inclusion subject to the requirements of politics. It begins by setting out how the underlying problem was experienced from the Enlightenment's historical moment, taking stock as it does so of how their take on it compares with our own. It then juxtaposes the two thinkers: one who sought to exclude religion from politics, Voltaire; and one, Rousseau, who was willing to include it. Voltaire's radical exclusion maps to a certain organization of the concepts of truth/knowledge/belief, all separated from power and government. Rousseau departed from the Enlightenment view of truth and knowledge, and focussed instead upon the personal and social function of belief, including as a key to membership of the political community. This led ...
Contents: Introduction: empires and the international - in history or throughout history, Noel Parker Part I Mechanisms of Empire and a "the Internationala (TM): Empires, past and present: the relevance of empire as an analytic... more
Contents: Introduction: empires and the international - in history or throughout history, Noel Parker Part I Mechanisms of Empire and a "the Internationala (TM): Empires, past and present: the relevance of empire as an analytic concept, Hendrik Spruyt Imperial administration: comparing the Byzantine Empire and the EU, Magali Gravier Empires and the sovereign state order a revisionist history, Noel Parker. Part II Newer Articulations of Empire in International Politics: Empire, specialness: exploring the intersections between imperial and special relationships, Kristin M. Haugevik Imperial discourse in a post-imperial Russia: where will it float to?, Andrey Makarychev American liberalism and the imperial temptation, Paul Musgrave and Dan Nexon Afterword, Yale H. Ferguson Index.
General preface to "What is Europe" Introduction Part I The growth of democracy Essay 1: Scientific revolutions and ideas of democracy Essay 2: The conditions for the development of democracy Part II Essay 3: Democracy and... more
General preface to "What is Europe" Introduction Part I The growth of democracy Essay 1: Scientific revolutions and ideas of democracy Essay 2: The conditions for the development of democracy Part II Essay 3: Democracy and individual freedom Essay 4: The state under the rule of Law Part III Public opinion and the role of criticism Essay 5: The role and the realities of public opinion Essay 6: Democracy as a critique of politics Part IV The institutions of democracy Essay 7: The democratic institutions of European countries Essay 8: Democracy and the construction of Europe
In his most approachable work, The Coming of the French Revoiution,2 Georges Letebvre, the authoritative marxist historian of the Revolution, sub-divided it thus: an aristocratic revolution (the reform effort by the monarchy) which... more
In his most approachable work, The Coming of the French Revoiution,2 Georges Letebvre, the authoritative marxist historian of the Revolution, sub-divided it thus: an aristocratic revolution (the reform effort by the monarchy) which failed; a bourgeois revolution which succeeded, with the help of a popular urban revolution; and a peasant rural revolution, which was suppressed by the bourgeois state. All the players in this history are social classes, operating through political transformation or insurgency. But the overall course of history is with the bourgeoisie, who were to impose their ascendancy upon the political structure and the aristocratic status hierarchy.
How did the French try to understand their revolution? How have writers of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries portrayed so unprecedented an upheaval?Dr. Parker examines contemporary representations of the Revolutionpolitical rhetoric,... more
How did the French try to understand their revolution? How have writers of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries portrayed so unprecedented an upheaval?Dr. Parker examines contemporary representations of the Revolutionpolitical rhetoric, journals, theatre, festivals, pictures and printsconcentrating on two special themes. First, the creators of these representations were part of an attempt to found anew the social order. Second, they sought to adapt their forms of culture so as to constitute through them the united community that was to be the agent of this historic new order.The second half of the book considers a representative selection of the many histories and theoretical writings on the Revolution from France, England and Germany: from Barnave and de Stael; to the nineteenth-century founders of social science and romantic historians, such as Michelet; to post-war comparative political writers and post-structuralist marxists influenced by Gramsci and Foucault.By bringing toget...
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While concepts of a postinternational politics properly highlight the constant variance of entities in play in international relations , the approach lacks an ontology that shows how such an unstable variety of types of players can... more
While concepts of a postinternational politics properly highlight the constant variance of entities in play in international relations , the approach lacks an ontology that shows how such an unstable variety of types of players can coexist in a common field in the first place. This article draws upon Deleuze's philosophy to set out an ontology in which the continual reformulation of entities in play in " postinternational " society can be grasped. This entails a strategic shift from speaking about the " borders " between sovereign states to referring instead to the " margins " between a plethora of entities that are ever open to modifications of identity. The concept of the margin possesses a much wider reach than borders, and focuses continual attention on the meetings and interactions between a range of indeterminate entities whose interactions may determine both themselves and the types of entity that are in play.
The starting point of the ‘Lines in the Sand?’ programme is expressed in our title, the idea of lines in a shifting medium. The most common use of the expression today is to reject further concessions. The expression is intoned in... more
The starting point of the ‘Lines in the Sand?’ programme is expressed in our title, the idea of lines in a shifting medium. The most common use of the expression today is to reject further concessions. The expression is intoned in political debate to argue that the other side has already been given too much ground, and that, as the speaker will then demand, ‘It is time to draw a line in the sand.’ There are puzzles about the origins of this expression –
not least that the original biblical text (John 8:6) refers not to ‘sand’, but to ‘ground’. Those who use it seem, nonetheless, to lean on the majestic fixity in God himself drawing a line which no one dares to cross. Yet perhaps it is not by chance that the line in the expression has been relocated from the more solid medium of ‘ground’ to the shifting one of ‘sand’. For it is precisely that which must haunt our discussion of borders: the pathos of merely human acts to draw fixed and tangible territorial lines and to expect
that no one will dare to cross them. What follows is a polemical memorandum that seeks to capture the open and wide-ranging discussions arising from workshops oriented around this core thematic. Our aim is to outline what we consider to be some of the most pressing questions and problems facing those engaged in the multi-disciplinary study of borders in contemporary political life.
not least that the original biblical text (John 8:6) refers not to ‘sand’, but to ‘ground’. Those who use it seem, nonetheless, to lean on the majestic fixity in God himself drawing a line which no one dares to cross. Yet perhaps it is not by chance that the line in the expression has been relocated from the more solid medium of ‘ground’ to the shifting one of ‘sand’. For it is precisely that which must haunt our discussion of borders: the pathos of merely human acts to draw fixed and tangible territorial lines and to expect
that no one will dare to cross them. What follows is a polemical memorandum that seeks to capture the open and wide-ranging discussions arising from workshops oriented around this core thematic. Our aim is to outline what we consider to be some of the most pressing questions and problems facing those engaged in the multi-disciplinary study of borders in contemporary political life.