International Relations in France: The ‘Usual Suspects’ in a French Scientific Field of Study?

2009 ◽  
Vol 8 (2) ◽  
pp. 239-253 ◽  
Author(s):  
Matthieu Chillaud
Keyword(s):  
International Relations ◽  
Scientific Field ◽  
Field Of Study

scholarly journals A place for intelligence studies as a scientific discipline

2016 ◽  
Vol 5 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Klaus Solberg Søilen
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Empirical Investigation ◽  
Scientific Discipline ◽  
Scientific Field ◽  
Competitive Intelligence ◽  
Scientific Journals ◽  
Field Of Study ◽  
Area Of Interest ◽  
The Social ◽  
Intelligence Studies

Is the field of Competitive Intelligence (CI) or Intelligence Studies (IS) a proper scientific field of study? The empirical investigation found that academic and professional within CI and IS could not agree upon what dimensions, topics or content are handled by their own area of interest that is not covered by other areas of study. In fact, most topics listed as special for CI and IS are covered by other established scientific journals. Most topics are covered by other disciplines. The data also showed that the same group could not list any analysis that is not used by other areas of study. It shows that a majority of the analyses the respondents think are unique to their study come from the area of strategy and military intelligence. However, this does not mean that CI and IS does not have its own place or niche as a study and discipline. It is suggested here, but further investigation is encouraged, that CI and IS brings a number of unique dimension to the social sciences.

IR and the false promise of philosophical foundations

2009 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 15-48 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nuno P. Monteiro ◽  
Keven G. Ruby
Keyword(s):  
International Relations ◽  
Philosophy Of Science ◽  
Theoretical Framework ◽  
Methodological Pluralism ◽  
Field Of Study ◽  
Philosophical Foundations ◽  
History Of ◽  
Science Question

International Relations (IR) is uneasy about its status as a ‘science’. Throughout a long history of attempts to legitimate the field as ‘scientific’, IR scholars have imported multifarious positions from the Philosophy of Science (PoS) in order to ground IR on an unshakable foundation. Alas, no such unshakable foundation exists. The PoS is itself a contested field of study, in which no consensus exists on the proper foundation for science. By importing foundational divisions into IR, the ‘science’ debate splits the discipline into contending factions and justifies the absence of dialogue between them. As all foundations require a leap of faith, imperial foundational projects are always vulnerable to challenge and therefore unable to resolve the science question in IR. In this article, we seek to dissolve rather than solve the ‘science’ debate in IR and the quest for philosophical foundations. We argue that IR scholars should adopt an ‘attitude towards’ rather than a ‘position in’ the irresolvable foundational debate. Specifically, we advocate an attitude of ‘foundational prudence’ that is open-minded about what the PoS can offer IR, while precluding imperial foundational projects, which attempt to impose a single meta-theoretical framework on the discipline. This requires knowing what PoS arguments can and cannot do. As such, foundational prudence is post-foundational rather than anti-foundational. A prudent attitude towards philosophical foundations encourages theoretical and methodological pluralism, making room for a question-driven IR while de-escalating intra-disciplinary politics.

scholarly journals Challenges to Local-Global Relations in Federal Countries

2019 ◽  
Vol 15 (2) ◽  
pp. 41-44
Author(s):  
Gilberto M. A. Rodrigues
Keyword(s):  
International Relations ◽  
17Th Century ◽  
Field Of Study ◽  
The University ◽  
First Time ◽  
Global Relations

International Relations has been a consolidated expression since the Peace of Westphalia in the 17th Century (Wilkinson, 2010). As a separate field of study, it was adopted for the first time when its Chair at the University of Wales, Aberystwyth was established in 1919 (Evans, 1998). Despite the fact that the expression has been and is still used in academia, politics and diplomacy worldwide to explain relations between nations, we know that the term “international” not only encompasses the nations themselves, as sovereignty countries, but also includes subnational entities, either public or private...

Global Environmental Politics

2011 ◽  
Author(s):  
Loren Cass
Keyword(s):  
International Relations ◽  
Environmental Politics ◽  
Interdisciplinary Approach ◽  
Environmental Problems ◽  
Natural World ◽  
Field Of Study ◽  
Science And Policy ◽  
Global Environmental Problems ◽  
Global Environmental Politics ◽  
Global Environmental

Global environmental politics is a relatively new field of study within international relations that focuses on issues related to the interaction of humans and the natural world. As early as the mid-19th century, scholars wrote about the role of natural resources in global security and political economy. However, much of the literature prior to the 1980s related specifically to resource extraction and development issues. It was only in the 1980s and into the 1990s that global environmental politics began to establish itself as a distinct field with its own dedicated journals and publishers, and the focus of study expanded to include global environmental problems such as ozone depletion, climate change, biodiversity loss, deforestation, and desertification. It has emerged as a center of interdisciplinary work that integrates research from a range of fields, including geography, economics, history, law, biology, and numerous others. The interdisciplinary approach makes it difficult to define the boundaries in this rather immense field of study. The focus in this article will be on global environmental politics research that falls primarily within the larger field of international relations. Global environmental problems present many unique challenges and have thus spawned a range of subfields of study. Global environmental problems frequently involve substantial scientific complexity and ambiguity. This fact has produced a wide-ranging scholarship on the relationships between science and policy. The very long timeframes of both the consequences of environmental problems as well as the efforts to address them create a number of governance challenges given the much shorter political timeframes of politicians and diplomats. In addition, because environmental problems typically do not respect borders, they pose challenges for international cooperation, which has thus produced a growing literature on global environmental governance. The widespread potential for massive economic, political, and ecological dislocation from the consequences of global environmental problems as well as from the potential policies to address those problems have led scholars to study global environmental politics from every paradigm within international relations as well as drawing on research in numerous other disciplines. Finally, efforts to address the consequences of environmental problems have raised controversial ethical and distributive-justice questions that have produced an important philosophical literature within global environmental politics. Global environmental politics has thus emerged as a rich and diverse area of scholarship.

scholarly journals Understanding Enmity and Friendship in World Politics: The Case for a Diplomatic Approach

2013 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-20 ◽  
Author(s):  
Corneliu Bjola
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Policy ◽  
International Relations ◽  
Policy Analysis ◽  
International Relations Theory ◽  
World Politics ◽  
Foreign Policy Analysis ◽  
Field Of Study ◽  
Specialized Form

Summary This article invites diplomatic scholars to a debate about the identity of diplomacy as a field of study and the contributions that it can make to our understanding of world politics relative to international relations theory (IR) or foreign policy analysis (FPA). To this end, the article argues that the study of diplomacy as a method of building and managing relationships of enmity and friendship in world politics can most successfully firm up the identity of the discipline. More specifically, diplomacy offers a specialized form of knowledge for understanding how to draw distinctions between potential allies versus rivals, and how to make and unmake relationships of enmity and friendship in world politics.

16. Introducing Global Politics

2020 ◽  
pp. 364-385
Author(s):  
Stephanie Lawson
Keyword(s):  
International Relations ◽  
State System ◽  
Global Politics ◽  
Modern State ◽  
Global Order ◽  
Field Of Study ◽  
European State ◽  
Globalizing World ◽  
State Actors

This chapter discusses global politics in relation to the phenomenon of globalization. ‘Global politics’ as a field of study encompasses the traditional concerns of International Relations with how states interact under conditions of anarchy, but lays greater emphasis on the role of non-state actors and processes in a globalizing world. The chapter first provides an overview of politics in a globalizing world before explaining the basic distinctions between ‘state’ and ‘nation’ in the context of contemporary global politics. It then considers the variation in state forms and the phenomenon of empire throughout history as well as the historical emergence of the modern state and state system in Europe along with ideas about sovereignty and nationalism against the background of ‘modernity’. It also examines the effective globalization of the European state system through modern imperialism and colonialism and the extent to which these have been productive of contemporary global order.

scholarly journals An Intellectual Confession from a Member of the “Non-White” IR Community: A Friendly Reply to David Lake’s “White Man’s IR”

2018 ◽  
Vol 52 (1) ◽  
pp. 78-84 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yong-Soo Eun
Keyword(s):  
International Relations ◽  
Life Experiences ◽  
Field Of Study ◽  
The World ◽  
Critical Scrutiny

ABSTRACTDavid Lake wrote that International Relations (IR)1 will be a more diverse and better field of study if we embrace varied “life experiences and intuitions,” especially those of “marginalized” scholars, about politics and how the world works. Although concurring with his admonition, I also believe that his call for “greater diversity” in IR and his approach to realizing it need to be subject to critical scrutiny, being reconsidered in terms of reflexivity—more specifically, self-reflection by “marginalized” scholars. For this reason, as a “non-white” scholar working in a “non-Western” (or, in Lake’s words, “underrepresented”) IR community, I want to make my own confession to better understand what is at stake in promoting diversity in the academy from a different angle.

Worlding, Ontological Politics and the Possibility of a Decolonial IR

2017 ◽  
Vol 45 (3) ◽  
pp. 293-311 ◽  
Author(s):  
David L. Blaney ◽  
Arlene B. Tickner
Keyword(s):  
International Relations ◽  
Political Ecology ◽  
Science And Technology Studies ◽  
Science And Technology ◽  
World Politics ◽  
Field Of Study ◽  
Colonial Modernity ◽  
Technology Studies ◽  
Representational Practices ◽  
Ontological Turn

This article argues that attention to representational practices and epistemology, however important for expanding the boundaries of International Relations as a field of study, has been insufficient for dealing with difference in world politics, where ontological conflicts are also at play. We suggest that IR, as a latecomer to the ‘ontological turn’, has yet to engage systematically with ‘singular world’ logics introduced by colonial modernity and their effacement of alternative worlds. In addition to exploring how even critical scholars concerned with the ‘othering’ and ‘worlding’ of difference sidestep issues of ontology, we critique the ontological violence performed by norms constructivism and the only limited openings offered by the Global IR project. Drawing on literatures from science and technology studies, anthropology, political ecology, standpoint feminism and decolonial thought, we examine the potentials of a politics of ontology for unmaking the colonial universe, cultivating the pluriverse, and crafting a decolonial science. The article ends with an idea of what this might mean for International Relations.

On Approaches to the Study of International Relations, Or, Back to Machiavelli

1967 ◽  
Vol 19 (4) ◽  
pp. 551-562 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Vital
Keyword(s):  
International Relations ◽  
The Other ◽  
Positive Case ◽  
Scientific School ◽  
Classical Approach ◽  
Field Of Study ◽  
Firm Basis

A Heavy onslaught on the (predominantly American) “scientific” school of students of international relations has recently been delivered to the evident satisfaction and comfort of those who practice or respond most comfortably to the “classical approach.” Still, the defeat of one school—if defeat there was—need not, of course, necessarily redound to the honor of the other, and it is surely worth considering what positive case has been made out on this occasion, explicitly or by implication, in favor of “classicism.” In fact, this article will argue, neither approach is entirely adequate. Neither provides a really firm basis on which to found a coherent and well-integrated field of study or—what is undoubtedly more important—a framework within which the facts of contemporary international life can be selected, compared, and interpreted in a thoroughly valid and enlightening manner.

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