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System or Society?*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 October 2009

Alan James
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Extract

The choice of name given to or adopted by a collectivity is often immaterial. It probably does not matter much whether a new football team, for example, is called the Braves or the Valiants. All that is needed is some distinctive terminology, by whch the group in question can easily be identified. Sometimes, however, a name may be meant to reflect some substantive qualities, aspirations, or associations which are already connected with or claimed by the collectivity. The names adopted in 1947 by the two successor states to Britain's empire on the Indian sub-continent, for instance, were seen to be significant. Both India and Pakistan had their own reasons for wishing to be so called. Burma's 1989 translation into Myanmar was perhaps indicative of the same kind of consideration.

Type
Research Article
Information
Review of International Studies , Volume 19 , Issue 3 , July 1993 , pp. 269 - 288
Copyright
Copyright © British International Studies Association 1993

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References

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3 The present writer associates this phrase, indelibly, with the late Professor C. A. W. Manning. However, it does not necessarily follow, and in fact is most unlikely, that he subscribed to the idea of an objective international reality.

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