Seeing like a state in a society of states : the social role of science and technology in the northward expansion of the international society

Abstract

This thesis argues that the emergence and expansion of the European-origin international society (EIS) has taken place through two dominant organizational processes. The first is the social organization and expansion of the international society. It is primarily associated with the stabilization and change of the hegemonic definitions of who are and can become legitimate holders of sovereignty in the international society. The second process is a material one associated with the negotiation, stabilization and change of specific, hegemonic techno-scientific mechanisms for the appropriation of sovereign authority over new terrains by the already members of the international society. The thesis sets out to describe the co-production of the two sets of fundamental and constitutional international institutions that I claim have been associated with this progress of the material as well as social expansion of the EIS. I conceptualize the international institutional framework these institutions makeup as 'the double-constitutional structure of the EIS'. The empirical focus in the study of the composition and change of the different elements of this structure is on how sovereign power has been constituted and mobilized for, what, in hindsight, can be regarded as failed attempts to appropriate specific Arctic regions through human settlement during the previous half a millennium. I conceptualize the case studies of these processes as cases of, in hindsight, failed attempts to geographically and materially expand the international society. Their analysis is organized according to what can be regarded as four international-system-wide revolutions in the epistemic authority structure of the EIS. Through the comparative analysis of the cases and these time periods I empirically illustrate what I theoretically conceptualize as the social role of science and technology in the northward expansion of the international society.