The Politics of Globality since 1945: Assembling the Planet

This timely, comprehensive and interdisciplinary volume advances an original argument about the complex roots and multiple politics of globality. It shows that technological innovations and decisive developments since 1945 – from the nuclear revolution to anthropogenic climate change and debates about the Anthropocene – have prompted reflections on the global condition of humanity and helped reshape political communities by making the world (appear) small, manageable and interconnected.

The contributors stress how human beings have transformed both their habitat and their view of human-earth relations since 1945. Such changes have been accompanied by important shifts in political visions, prompted new forms of human association, encouraged legal and institutional reform and spurred ideas about ecological humility. At the same time, the spatially all-encompassing nature of globality have also informed projects of human mastery and a range of practices historically associated with militarization and a strongly statist conception of national security. This volume reflects on these paradoxical relationships, their history and contemporary relevance.

Contributing to the overlapping concerns of four burgeoning fields of study across the humanities and the social sciences - globality and globalization studies; geopolitics and political geography; Anthropocene studies; global governance and political theory – the book will be of great use to scholars and graduates working in these areas.

Rens van Munster is senior researcher at the Danish Institute for International Studies (DIIS). Located at the intersection of IR theory and critical security studies, his research critically interrogates practices of security and risk management, with a particular focus on the politics and governance of catastrophes. He has published widely in leading IR journals and is the (co-)author of several books. His most recent publications include the co-edited volumes, with Casper Sylvest, Documenting World Politics: A Critical Companion to IR and Non-Fiction Film (Routledge, 2015) and Nuclear Realism: Global Political Thought during the Thermonuclear Revolution (Routledge, 2016)

Casper Sylvest is associate professor at the Department of History, University of Southern Denmark. Combining the study of politics, history, law and technology, most of his work has examined realist and liberal visions of international and global politics during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. He has published widely in leading historical and IR journals and has recently co-edited, with Rens van Munster, Documenting World Politics: A Critical Companion to IR and Non-Fiction Film (Routledge, 2015) and Nuclear Realism: Global Political Thought during the Thermonuclear Revolution (Routledge, 2016)