Each year, the International Ethics Section of the International Studies Association will award one prize of $200 for the best book published in the field of international ethics. The award recognizes a book that excels in originality, significance and rigor in the broadly defined field of international ethics. The subject matter of the book can be, but is not limited to, international descriptive ethics, international normative ethics, metaethics, comparative ethics, international religious ethics, international political theory, and international legal theory.
ABOUT THE AWARD- Eligibility: Eligible books can be either single or multi-authored. Edited collections will not be eligible. Textbooks, translations and memoirs are not eligible. Books not clearly falling into one of the above categories may be considered if all three members of the Selection Committee agree that it is worthy of consideration.
- Nominations: Authors can self nominate if they so wish; To be considered for the award, one copy of each nominated book should be sent to the three members of the selection committee.
- Submitting Books: Books must be received by 1 September of the year preceding the convention. Books nominated will not be returned. Books to be considered must be published within a two year period preceding the year of the competition: For instance, to be considered for the 2011 prize, books must be published in either 2009 or 2010. ‘Published’ means that the year listed in the book itself must be one of these two.
- Deadline: Books must be received by 1 September of the year preceding the ISA convention.
- Questions: Any questions about the book award can be directed to the Chair of the Selection Committee, Dr Anthony F Lang, Jr., at al51@st-andrews.ac.uk.
COMMITTEE:
Anthony F Lang, Jr.
School of International Relations
University of St Andrews
al51@st-andrews.ac.uk
Department of Politics
University of Glasgow
cian.odriscoll@lbss.gla.ac.uk
Michael J. Struett
School of Public and International Affairs
North Carolina State University
mjstruet@ncsu.edu
Past Book Prize Committees
International Ethics Section Book Prize 2010
This prize is awarded for best book published in 2008 or 2009 in the field of international ethics. This year’s competition received 27 eligible book submissions.
Book Prize Winner
Tarik Kochi, The Other’s War: Recognition and the Violence of Ethics (Birbeck Law Press, 2009)
Link: http://www.informaworld.com/openurl?genre=book&isbn=978-0-415-48270-7
The book makes an argument for recasting the ethics of war away from the just war tradition toward a Hegelian inspired conception of recognizing the other in violent encounters. He argues that war is an act of ordering the world and positing a particular set of norms (ethical, legal, and political). In light of this, he suggests that an alternative approach is to posit not a supposed peaceful or juridical ordering of war, but a recognition of the justice in the other’s war. This leads him to Hegel, through which he proposes such a process of recognition. One of the book prize committee members noted that this is “one of the most impressive books I have read in several years.”
Dr. Tarik Kochi is Lecturer in Law & International Security at the University of Sussex.
Notable Books
The Book Prize Committee would like to acknowledge in addition the following books for their superior scholarship and contribution to the field of international ethics.
Elisabeth Dauphinee, The Ethics of Researching War: Looking for Bosnia (Manchester University Press, 2009)
Link: http://www.manchesteruniversitypress.co.uk/catalogue/book.asp?id=1203978
The book proposes an ethically sensitive methodology for conducting research on war and violence. The author draws upon her research experience on conflict in Bosnia, focusing on how her interviews and discussions with victims and perpetrators of violence challenged some of her conceptions of ethics. She critically revisits themes such as representation and responsibility in a broadly postmodernist attempt to explore the complexities of researching warfare.
Toni Erskine, Embedded Cosmopolitanism: Duties to Stranger and Enemies in a World of ‘Dislocated Communities’ (Oxford University Press, 2008)
Link: http://www.oup.com/uk/catalogue/?ci=9780197264379
This book explores the normative tension between cosmopolitan and communitarian accounts of justice in the international order. Rather than rest comfortably on this distinction, however, Erskine develops an account of embedded cosmopolitanism that seeks to explore how everyday life has both local and global elements, which results in a theory that does not collapse but constitutes an alternative approach to that tension. With chapters devoted to the political philosophy of Michael Walzer and Feminist Theory, Erskine draws upon a wide range of theoretical influences in developing her account. She concludes with a discussion of enemies and warfare, using a hard case to deepen her theoretical contribution.
Patrick Hayden, Political Evil in a Global Age: Hannah Arendt and International Theory (Routledge, 2009)
Link: http://www.routledge.com/books/details/9780415451062/
This book uses the thought of Hannah Arendt to critically investigate the concept of evil in the current international order. Rather than rely on some of the more popular tropes about evil that focus primarily on terrorism or religious conflict, Hayden suggests that statelessness, genocide, and poverty manifest a type of political evil that requires renewed attention. Using Arendt’s concept of the political as a tool to critically investigate these practices, Hayden points toward alternative formulations of global politics that are more sensitive to the ways in which standard practices generate truly evil outcomes.
Chukwumerije Okereke, Global Justice and Neoliberal Environmental Governance: Ethics, Sustainable Development, and International Co-operation (Routledge, 2008)
Link: http://www.routledge.com/books/details/9780415412308/
This book uses debates about justice, particularly intergenerational justice, to challenge neoliberal international political economic structures of world order. Okereke focuses on how such neoliberal projects fail to take account of justice in terms of the global environment. He makes this concrete through an examination of regimes on the law of the sea, global waste management and protecting the atmosphere. The author concludes that neoliberal governance fails to provide a just international order in terms of the distributive nature of environmental harm and productivity.
Ayelet Shachar, The Birthright Lottery: Citizenship and Global Inequality (Harvard University Press, 2009)
Link: http://www.law.utoronto.ca/faculty_content.asp?profile=50&perpage=243&cType=facMembers&itemPath=1/3/4/0/0
The book explores the normative foundations of citizenship through a critical engagement with the question of membership and borders. Shachar draws upon moral and legal theory to critique the ways in which birthright determines membership, raising key questions about an often unquestioned assumption in world politics. In asking about citizenship, she is able to suggest alternative approaches to the political and morally fraught question of immigration. The use of both legal cases and moral theory gives this book a solid foundation in terms of real world politics.
