The Big Picture as a Goodbye to International Relations?

This chapter argues that the development of ‘the international’ into a collective singular serves as a powerful obstacle for understanding world politics. It traces how this has happened and why exactly this is problematic. Regarding the works of Barry Buzan, it demonstrates how these can be characterised as in many ways partaking in the more unquestioned, ‘singularized’ use of ‘the international’, but that based on a basic English School setting, he has moved beyond that. This moving beyond is particularly strong since the early 2000s, that is the period in which many of his works start to be about the ‘big picture’ beyond international society, starting with From International to World Society? and more recently resulting in Making Global Society .