Reading world society phenomenologically: an illustration drawing upon the cultural heritage of humankind

Despite being one of three primary conceptual pillars of the English School, world society has been overshadowed by attention devoted to international society's origins, agents, structure, expansion, institutions, regional development, and normative depth as captured by the pluralist-solidarist debate. Given empirical developments in world politics, however, world society has attracted incremental attention. This paper reads world society phenomenologically: initially, it does not exist independently of the intentionality and perception of agents. But programmatic initiative, normative diffusion, and cognitive commitments to worldly spaces spur the development of social relations and hence the emergence of world society in discrete issue areas. To illustrate, I draw upon cultural heritage, assaults on which have spurred construction of a global international architecture and associated practices to protect, conserve, and protect cultural heritage, while later developments have sought to (re) produce the very globality such practices presume.