Charles Taylor Book Award Honorable Mention 2018: Stefanie Fishel, for The Microbial State: Global Thriving and the Global State

Honorable Mention: Stefanie Fishel (University of Alabama) The Microbial State: Global Thriving and the Global State (University of Minnesota Press, 2017)

This concise, sophisticated book presents an imaginative reinterpretation of the body politic in international relations theory. It engages with new materialism literature and interpretive methodology by displacing realist international relations metaphors that are rooted in Eurocentric conceptions of power. It moves beyond conceptualizing the state as being analogous to a notion of the autonomous individual body. This outdated state-as-person metaphor is used daily to justify all manner of violence, which The Microbial State challenges in its reconceptualization. Concentrating on what metaphors do in and to international relations theory, Fishel proposes new microbial metaphors with which to rethink the state idea and practice.

Selection Committee:

Sarah Marie Wiebe, chair (University of Hawai’i, Mānoa)

Nick Cheesman (Australia National University)

Kristen Monroe (University of California, Irvine)