Citizenship, humanity, and cosmopolitan harm conventions

This article lays the foundations for a sociology of cosmopolitan harm conv entions which protect the vulnerable everywhere from avoidable suffering an d distress. It builds on the study of international society associated with the "English School" and seeks to develop its account of how states cooper ate to reduce harm in their external relations. The English School argues t hat the principal harm conventions in international society are designed to maintain order between states. There is only limited agreement about how i nternational order should act to prevent harm to individuals and non-sovere ign associations. Several international legal conventions do outlaw harm wh ich is justified in terms of the superiority of some cultures or races over others, and perhaps modern international society is making progress beyond earlier forms of world political organization by insisting that transnatio nal, or cross-border, harm should be a central moral concern for the world political system as a whole. But to do so, it needs to transcend the forms of harm that particular groups inflict on others and the more diffuse types of harm which are caused by global capitalism and industrialization. A mor al commitment to new forms of domestic and international political communit y which have this ambition lies at the heart of a sociology of cosmopolitan harm conventions with an emancipatory intent.