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⁵ These terms are taken from Lawson, George and Hobson, John M., ‘What is history in International Relations?’, Millennium: Journal of International Studies, 37:2 (2008), pp. 415–435 Google Scholar.

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¹⁶ Sociologism is the belief that ‘sociology should become the new queen of the sciences of man, the magistra of philosophy, ethics, historiography, jurisprudence, political science, art theory, and the like’. Szacki, Jerzy, History of Sociological Thought (London: Aldwych, 1979), p. 278 Google Scholar.

¹⁷ The point is not to suggest that there is only one form of enlightenment thought, rather that claims about the ‘discovery’ of society are based on a particular reading of the enlightenment. See Baker, ‘Enlightenment and the institution of society’.

¹⁸ This article is the first effort to address the consequences of the historicity of social thought for international theory. For earlier analyses of different empirical domains see Owens, Patricia, Economy of Force: Counterinsurgency and the Historical Rise of the Social (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Owens, , ‘From Bismarck to Petraeus: the question of the social and the social question in counterinsurgency’, European Journal of International Relations, 19:1 (2013), pp. 135–157 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Owens, , ‘Human security and the rise of the social’, Review of International Studies, 38:3 (2012), pp. 547–567 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Owens, , ‘The supreme social concept: the un-worldliness of modern security’, New Formations, 71 (2011), pp. 14–29 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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