The standard of civilisation: between legal indeterminacy and political economy

Capitalism as Civilisation: A History of International Law articulates the kind of international legal history that reflects the field’s co-constitutive relation to global capitalism. This is done through the lens of the standard of ‘civilisation’ – a concept that Ntina Tzouvala shows to be both flexible and plastic and yet consistent in mediating the needs of capitalist expansion. A key insight of Capitalism as Civilisation is that ‘civilisation’ has functioned as an argumentative pattern that has been decisive for the allocation of rights and duties among different communities. Tzouvala illustrates how the adaptability and non-static nature of ‘civilisation’, and more precisely its oscillation between a ‘logic of improvement’ and a ‘logic of biology’, have contributed to its longevity and its continuing relevance for contemporary modes of capitalist accumulation. In brief, the ‘logic of improvement’ has conveyed a promise of equal participation in international law, insofar as non-Western communities would be willing to adopt the institutions and structures of Western capitalist modernity. At the same time, the ‘logic of biology’ consistently denied that very promise on account of inherent – and thus insurmountable – difference. As I will attempt to show in this review, Tzouvala uses these findings to make a broader intervention on the relationship of international law to global political economy, drawing the contours of a materialist legal theory.