Jens Bartelson

Biography

Jens Bartelson received his doctorate from the University of Stockholm in 1993, and was a fellow at SCAS in 1997. His fields of interest include international political theory, the history of political thought, political philosophy and social theory. Jens Bartelson has written mainly about the concept of the sovereign state and the philosophy of world community. He is the author of Visions of World Community (Cambridge University Press, 2009), The Critique of the State (Cambridge University Press, 2001), A Genealogy of Sovereignty (Cambridge University Press, 1995), as well as of articles in journals such as International Studies Quarterly, Political Theory, Review of International Studies, European Journal of International Relations, European Journal of International Law, and International Sociology.

Ongoing research

Ways of Warmaking

How do conceptions of war condition actual practices of warfare? The concept of war has undergone a series of significant changes from the sixteenth century to the present, and many of these changes have had a profound impact not only on warfare, but on the rest of our sociopolitical world as well.

In this project, Bartelson explores the relationship between changing conceptualizations of war and the different ways in which war has been conducted from the early modern period to the present. Making historical sense of this connection is necessary in order to understand how practices of warfare shape identities of the agents involved and the boundaries separating them. Here conceptual history provides a unique method for understanding the relationship between conceptual and political change, by focusing on how conceptual change affects the way agents think, speak, and act. From our definitions of the concept of war follow justifications of warfare that make it possible to promote, conduct, restrict or condemn forms of violence thus framed. Our moral and political responses to warfare are therefore always conditioned by prior acts of definition and classification. Hence the importance of analyzing how war has been construed as a meaningful activity across time, as well as how these understandings in turn have conditioned historically specific practices of warfare.

Selected bibliography

– Visions of World Community, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009).

– The Future of Political Community (with Gideon Baker) (London: Routledge, 2009).

– ‘Sovereignty Before and After the Linguistic Turn’, in Rebecca Adler-Nissen & Thomas Gammeltoft-Hansen eds. Sovereignty Games. Instrumentalizing State Sovereignty in Europe and Beyond, (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008), pp. 33-45.

– ‘Philosophy and History in the Study of Political Thought’ Journal of the Philosophy of History, Vol. 1(No. 1: 2007), pp. 101-124.

– The Critique of the State, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001)

– A Genealogy of Sovereignty, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995).