The notion of 'the West' is commonly used in politics, the media, and in the academic world. To date, our idea of 'the West' has been largely assumed and effective, but has not been examined in detail from a theoretical perspective. Uses of 'the West' combines a range of original and topical approaches to evaluate what 'the West' really does, and how the idea is being used in everyday political practice. This book examines a range of uses of 'the West', and traces how 'the West' works in a broad array of conceptual and empirical contexts, ranging from the return of geopolitics - via a critical review of the debates surrounding Samuel Huntington's Clash of Civilization thesis - to the question of the future of 'the West'. Analysis extends further to the repercussions of the war on terror on Western democracy and the processes of delineating the Western from the non-Western, as well as observations of the institutional transformations of Western order.
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motw/Uses of 'The West'_ Security an - Gunther Hellmann.pdf

Uses of the West: Political Practices and Global Orders

Günther Hellmann, Benjamin Herborth

United Kingdom and Ireland, United Kingdom

Cambridge UK New York, 2017

Cambridge, 2016

PS, 2016

producers:
Acrobat Distiller 10.1.10 (Windows)

Memory of the World Librarian: Slowrotation

Cover 1
Half title 3
Title 5
Copyright 6
Contents 7
List of Figures 9
List of Tables 10
Notes on Contributors 11
1 Introduction: Uses of the West 13
Part I: Theorizing the West 23
2 Foreign Policy Identity Crises and Uses of ‘the West’ 25
3 ‘The West’ versus Other Western ‘We’s’: A Discourse Analysis in Reverse 49
4 Between Polarisation and Appeasement: Democracy and Its ‘Other’ 72
5 After ‘the Clash’: Uses of ‘the West’ after the Cold War 95
Part II: The West in Use 121
6 Aesthetics, Power, and Insecurity: Self-Interrogative Imaging and the West 123
7 Everyday Exceptions: The Paradox of a Perpetual State of Emergency 148
8 Re-constituting NATO: Foundational Narratives of Transatlantic Security Cooperation in the 1950s and 1990s 168
9 Transatlantic Policies towards China and Russia: Self-Conceptions and Contradictions of a Universalizing West 191
10 Russia Becoming Russia: A Semi-periphery in Splendid Isolation 215
Part III: Transformations of the Western Institutional Order 241
11 Defending ‘the West’?: The Transformation of National Security in the European Union 243
12 How the ‘End of the Cold War’ Ended 266
13 Conclusion: The Ways of the West and the Road Ahead 292
Index 313

The term 'the West' is commonly used in politics, the media, and in the academic world. To date, our idea of 'the West' has been largely assumed and effective, but has not been examined in detail. Uses of 'the West' critically evaluates what 'the West' does, and how the idea is being used in everyday political practice.

Edited By Gunther Hellmann And Benjamin Herborth. Includes Bibliographical References And Index.

2025-10-27