THE CHAOS INTERNATIONAL SERIES
Books of transnationalist sociology
The Chaos International series offers frames of reference that can exceed a simple event-based and descriptive approach to international relations. In an accessible and clear style, its works analyze new transnational issues and re-establish the process of globalization in its complexity.
Disorder, violence, chaos… thusly are we tempted to disqualify that which is occurring today on the world stage. This international chaos often leaves the observer helpless, if not distraught, over what seems to evade understanding. Still, contrary to Anglo-Saxon countries, and in particular to the United States – France dedicates few studies that are truly devoted to a scientific analysis of international relations. Moreover, few books stand out with an approach that is not systematically and exclusively state-centered and diplomatic0-strategic.
Accordingly, the Chaos International series intends to encourage and to diffuse works dealing with original objects that even today remain largely unexplored. In this case, it is a question of analyses that simultaneously reconcile a solid theoretical framework and a substantial field study based on interviews, quantitative and qualitative investigations, etc. An editorial process such as this one thus allows young promising researchers to discover or to rediscover the writings of recognized experts.
Certain themes retain particular attention. Contrary to the realist school whose studies focus exclusively on the state actor and the diplomatic and strategic dimension, the collection – of a resolutely transnationalist orientation – will favor research bearing on:
– Non-state actors: private actors (individuals in networks, firms, banks, insurance companies, experts, rating agencies, NGOs (Non-governmental organizations)), public actors like UN agencies or more generally speaking, IOs (International Organizations), infra-state actors (cities, regions), etc.
– Their interactions (for example by studying the partnership NGOs/firms) and those that link them to states.
– Domains that remain under valued and precisely where from now on private actors play an essential role in international politics: Global Public Goods, (Finance, Trade, Environment, Public health, Information, Communication, Cultural property, Migratory phenomenons, Human security).
To reach these goals, the Chaos International series obeys a very strict charter:
1) Publication of concise texts (250 pages maximum)
2) Publications of exceedingly clear texts, elegant in style and scientifically irreproachable, all the while remaining accessible. In other words, it does not accept jabber.
3) The texts will be – without excess – paired with notes and a solid bibliography as well as, if need be , annexes allowing readers who wish to delve more deeply into the question.
With the Chaos International series, the Centre of Transnational Study and Research, Chaos International commits to publications of academic productions on major international issues that are both clear and accessible to non-specialists, without for as much losing the essential, that is to say the epistemological quality of the works.
