scholarly journals Threads and Boundaries: Rethinking the Intellectual History of International Relations

2018 ◽  
pp. 97-125 ◽  
Author(s):  
Or Rosenboim
Keyword(s):  
International Relations ◽  
Intellectual History ◽  
History Of

Part VI Actors, Ch.40 Epistemic Communities

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Haas Peter M
Keyword(s):  
International Relations ◽  
Intellectual History ◽  
Environmental Law ◽  
World Politics ◽  
Epistemic Community ◽  
Epistemic Communities ◽  
Causal Beliefs ◽  
International Environmental Law ◽  
History Of

This chapter begins with a definition and intellectual history of epistemic communities. ‘Epistemic communities’ is a concept developed by ‘soft’ constructivist scholars of international relations concerned with agency. Soft constructivists in general focus on the role of various types of norms, principled beliefs, causal beliefs, and discourses in establishing roles and rules in international relations: that is, determining the identities, interests, and practices that shape the identification of actors in international relations. The chapter then applies this definition to the study of international environmental law and discusses whether or not international lawyers constitute an epistemic community. It concludes with a discussion of some of the recent challenges to the influence of epistemic communities in world politics more broadly, and thus the future of international environmental law.

War and Peace in International Rivalry. By Paul F. Diehl and Gary Goertz. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2000. 319p. $49.50.

2001 ◽  
Vol 95 (2) ◽  
pp. 515-516
Author(s):  
John Vasquez
Keyword(s):  
International Relations ◽  
Intellectual History ◽  
University Of Michigan ◽  
War And Peace ◽  
International Rivalry ◽  
Ann Arbor ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Peace And War ◽  
The Way

When the intellectual history of international relations in- quiry is written for our time, War and Peace in International Rivalry may very well be seen as a seminal book. Along with Frank Wayman, Diehl and Goertz have been at the forefront of a major conceptual breakthrough in the way peace and war are studied. This book is their major statement of the subject and presents their most important findings.

American Foreign Policy

2017 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Policy ◽  
International Relations ◽  
Intellectual History ◽  
American Foreign Policy ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
The World ◽  
History Of ◽  
Late Nineteenth ◽  
Clash Of Civilisations

This book brings together international relations scholars, political theorists, and historians to reflect on the intellectual history of American foreign policy since the late nineteenth century. It offers a nuanced and multifaceted collection of essays covering a wide range of concerns, concepts, presidential doctrines, and rationalities of government thought to have marked America’s engagement with the world during this period: nation-building, exceptionalism, isolationism, modernisation, race, utopia, technology, war, values, the ‘clash of civilisations’ and many more.

STRATEGY AS INTELLECTUAL HISTORY

2018 ◽  
Vol 16 (3) ◽  
pp. 1007-1021 ◽  
Author(s):  
JOEL ISAAC
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
International Relations ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Intellectual History ◽  
Political Thought ◽  
History Of Political Thought ◽  
Economic Competition ◽  
Conceptual Frame ◽  
History Of ◽  
Strategic Thought

The world of grand strategy is not one to which intellectual historians have devoted a great deal of attention. Matters of interstate economic competition and imperial rivalry have, of course, long been at the center of histories of early modern political thought. Yet, when these currents in the history of political thought narrow into nineteenth-centuryrealpolitik, and then turn toward the professionalized contemporary discourses of international relations and war studies, intellectual historians have, for the most part, left the matter to the experts. The strategic maxims of Clausewitz and Liddell Hart may fascinate IR theorists, political scientists, and military historians, but they seldom fire the imaginations of tender-minded historians of ideas. The two books under review challenge such preconceptions. They ask us to consider the history of Cold War strategic thought in a wider conceptual frame. Buried in the history of strategy, they suggest, are some of the central themes of postwar social and political thought.

The history of international thought and International Relations theory: from context to interpretation

2017 ◽  
Vol 31 (3) ◽  
pp. 241-260 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ian Hall
Keyword(s):  
International Relations ◽  
Intellectual History ◽  
International Relations Theory ◽  
Ir Theory ◽  
History Of Political Thought ◽  
The Past ◽  
Disciplinary History ◽  
History Of ◽  
Made In ◽  
International Thought

Over the past two decades, historians of international thought have markedly improved our understanding of the disciplinary history of International Relations (IR) and its wider intellectual history. During that period, ‘contextualism’ has become a leading approach in the field, as it has been for half a century in the history of political thought. This article argues that while the application of contextualism in IR has improved our understanding of its disciplinary history, its assumptions about the proper relationship between historians and theorists threaten to marginalise the history of international thought within IR. It argues that unless the inherent weaknesses in contextualism are recognised, the progress made in the field will go unrecognised by a discipline that sees little reason to engage with its history. It suggests that historians of international thought adopt an extensively modified version of contextualism that would allow them to rebuild bridges back into IR, especially IR theory.

scholarly journals Globalization, deglobalization and knowledge production

2021 ◽  
Vol 97 (5) ◽  
pp. 1579-1597 ◽  
Author(s):  
Navnita Chadha Behera
Keyword(s):  
International Relations ◽  
Intellectual History ◽  
Knowledge Production ◽  
Knowledge Creation ◽  
Knowledge Dissemination ◽  
Many Worlds ◽  
The West ◽  
The World ◽  
History Of ◽  
Rising Power

Abstract Although globalization processes have brought the world closer through the exchange of knowledge, ideas and practices, advances in knowledge dissemination have not been mirrored by expansion in sites and modes of knowledge production. This article probes this disjuncture and asks how deglobalization might chart different pathways by delving into the intellectual history of the making of International Relations (IR). Focusing its gaze on the structuring principles of knowledge creation and modes of knowing rather than specific issues and problematiques of IR, it analyses the historical impact of western Enlightenment thinking through centuries-long imperialism, which continues to limit the agency of many states in the re-making of their life-worlds. The article describes deglobalization as a longue durée historical response that offers different possibilities for countering or challenging the discursive hegemony of the ‘West’. It discusses a ‘nationalist’ response by China—a rising power and a more dispersed, global academic endeavour seeking to decolonize IR's modes of knowledge production to better account for the diverse ground realities of its many worlds.

Involutionary Politics

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stefanie R. Fishel
Keyword(s):  
International Relations ◽  
Intellectual History ◽  
Walt Whitman ◽  
Leaves Of Grass ◽  
New Era ◽  
New Words ◽  
The World ◽  
History Of ◽  
Specialized Language

I left no one at the door, I invited all; The thief, the parasite, the mistress—these above all I called—­ —Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass International Relations needs a bigger vocabulary. This claim does not mean that we need a more specialized language or theoretical jargon, but rather new words and concepts that explain the world with greater clarity. It means, as in the epigraph by Whitman above, we open our door to those who have been excluded or ignored at both a disciplinary level and a worldly one. We can invite guests from other disciplines or redraw the intellectual history of International Relations (IR) and reuse it for a new era of global or, more hopefully, planetary politics. This could begin simply with giving up the title “International Relations.” This discipline and the world it explains are more than, and less than, relations between nations. The familiar IR view of states and their corresponding nations obfuscates the challenges facing human communities in what has become an epoch named after human alterations to our planetary ecosystems, dubbed the Anthropocene....

National History as a History of Compacts

2018 ◽  
Vol 45 (1) ◽  
pp. 63-93
Author(s):  
Andrei Dan Sorescu
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
International Relations ◽  
Intellectual History ◽  
Historical Context ◽  
National Agency ◽  
Contractual Relationship ◽  
European Public ◽  
Law Of Nations ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Given

This article aims to show that concepts originating in the vocabulary of international relations were crucial to the rhetoric of nation-building in mid-nineteenth-century Europe. A close examination of the Romanian context elucidates in a more general way historical actors’ reflections and critiques of this conceptual vocabulary as well as the permeable nature of the (inter)national in the given historical context. The article explores two conceptual pairs: jus Gentium versus jus publicum Europaeum, and sovereignty versus suzerainty. In the process, it shows how Romanian nation- and state-builders became scholars of international relations. This they did in an effort to demonstrate the historically grounded sovereignty of the Romanian Principalities, in a manner compatible with the prevailing norms of the law of nations. The emphasis on a contractual relationship with the Ottoman Empire allowed for the assertion of national agency, both in the past and in the present. Increasingly focused on the imperfect translatability of concepts forged by the Western historical experience, pamphleteers of all stripes ultimately came to jettison the supposedly feudal, anachronistic vocabulary of suzerainty, militating for the inclusion of the Principalities as full parties in European public law. Thus, the article elucidates some significant conceptual tensions in the development of mid-nineteenth-century nationalism, simultaneously contributing to a growing body of scholarship on the intellectual history of international relations.

International relations and intellectual history

2017 ◽  
Vol 31 (3) ◽  
pp. 213-226 ◽  
Author(s):  
William Bain ◽  
Terry Nardin
Keyword(s):  
International Relations ◽  
Intellectual History ◽  
Knowing How ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Canonical Texts ◽  
International Thought

The history of international thought has traditionally focused on a limited number of canonical texts. Such an approach now seems both naive and parochial. International Relations scholars often read their own ideas into these texts instead of getting ideas from them – ideas that if properly understood have the potential to undermine theirs. By ignoring non-canonical texts, we overlook resources that are not only necessary to establish the historical contexts of canonical writings but that can also help theorists of International Relations to understand their subject better. Judgements of what is and is not canonical are in any case themselves context-bound and contestable. Intellectual history can help us understand how the International Relations canon was constructed and for what purposes. It can also counter the abstractions of theory by reminding us not only that theories are abstractions from the activities of people living in particular times and places but also that our own theories are embedded in historicity. In these and other ways, paying attention to intellectual history expands the repertoire of ideas on which International Relations theorists can draw and against which they can measure their conclusions. The articles in this issue illustrate these points in relation to a wide range of texts and contexts. They suggest that whether one approaches international relations from the angle of description, explanation, policy or ethics, knowing how past thinkers have understood the subject can lead to better informed and more robust scholarship.

Power Analysis and International Relations

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
David A. Baldwin
Keyword(s):  
World War I ◽  
Social Science ◽  
International Relations ◽  
Intellectual History ◽  
Power Analysis ◽  
Balance Of Power ◽  
World War ◽  
History Of ◽  
The 1960S

This chapter is divided into two parts. The first is an intellectual history of the treatment of the concept of power in the international relations literature in America from World War I until the 1960s. The focus is on comparing and contrasting the treatment of power by Hans J. Morgenthau and his followers and the treatment of power by Harold and Margaret Sprout, Arnold Wolfers, Frederick Sherwood Dunn, Quincy Wright, Richard Snyder, Ernst Haas and others who viewed themselves as promoting the study of international relations as a social science. The second part of this chapter is organized in terms of different analytical perspectives on power in the international relations literature. These perspectives include the treatment of power as identity, goal, means, mechanism (balance of power), competition, and capability.

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