Overview

By constructing the first transnational and interlingual conceptual history of ethnicity, Ethnos of the Earth reveals the pivotal role this concept played in the making of the international order. Rather than being a primordial or natural phenomenon, ethnicity is a contingent product of the twentieth-century transition from a world of empires to a world of nation-states. As nineteenth-century concepts such as 'race' and 'civilisation' were repurposed for twentieth-century ends, ethnicity emerged as a 'filler' category that was plugged into the gaps created in our conceptual organisation of the world. Through this comprehensive conceptual reshuffling, the governance of human cultural diversity was recast as an essentially domestic matter, while global racial and civilisational hierarchies were pushed out of sight. A massive amount of conceptual labour has gone into the 'flattening' of the global sociopolitical order, and the concept of ethnicity has been at the very heart of this endeavour.

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9781009512442

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Reviews

'Sometimes seemingly innocent concepts turn out to be pregnant with political significance. In an intellectual tour de force, Jaakko Heiskanen shows how the concept of ethnicity was invented to dismantle old racial and civilizational hierarchies in the transition from empires to states only to become complicit in the perpetuation of these in the modern international order. This book contributes new and important insights into the birth of the modern international system and should thus be of interest to students of international relations, international law, and global history.' Jens Bartelson, Author of Becoming International (Cambridge University Press, 2023) 'Meticulously researched and skilfully executed analysis of the emergence of the concept of ethnicity and its political function. Heiskanen's argument that 'ethnicity' absorbed a cluster of concepts that did not fit a state-based international order, thereby hiding the hierarchies of imperial orders, is compelling. An impressive and important contribution to conceptual history and critique of Western IR.' Felix Berenskötter, King's College London

Author Information

Jaakko Heiskanen is Lecturer in International Relations at Queen Mary University of London. His research is located at the intersection of international relations, nationalism studies, and conceptual history.

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