The History of International Studies

Author(s):  
Brian C. Schmidt

A significant development in the history of international relations (IR) is the increased focus on historiographical issues. Prior to 1998, the literature had, for the most part, failed to address adequately the question of how to write a history of the field. The tendency was to describe the history of IR as if a complete consensus existed on the essential dimensions of the field’s evolution. However, during the past 10 years (1998–2008) a wealth of new literature has appeared that greatly challenges much of the conventional wisdom regarding the development of IR. Three main thematic issues have been prominent in the literature. The first theme concerns the status of IR as an academic field or discipline. For various reasons, there has been a repeated questioning of whether IR is in fact a distinctive discipline. A second theme is the issue of whether the boundaries of IR should be demarcated in terms of one particular country (the United States) or whether it should be viewed as a more cosmopolitan endeavor without regard to national differences. The third theme involves the historiographical debate about whether the evolution of the field is best explained in terms of exogenous events in the realm of international politics or by endogenous factors associated with the institutional setting of the field.

Societies ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
pp. 34
Author(s):  
Eva Martin-Fuentes ◽  
Sara Mostafa-Shaalan ◽  
Juan Pedro Mellinas

There is a lack of comprehensive international studies on accommodations for people with disabilities; only small, local-level studies exist. This study aims to show the status of the tourist accommodation sector through the online distribution channel in terms of accessibility to offer more inclusive tourism. A descriptive analysis has been carried out with more than 31,000 hotels from the online travel agency Booking.com, in the 100 most touristic cities in the world. For the first time, an accurate picture of adaptation in the hotel sector for people with disabilities is presented. Results show that the adapted hotel infrastructures by countries are uneven. The main adaptations are those that help to avoid mobility barriers, and in contrast, hotels offer very few adaptations for sensory disabilities such as visual disabilities. Moreover, this study shows that, worldwide, countries with the highest income per capita, such as the United States of America, Canada, Ireland, Australia, New Zealand, Qatar or the United Arab Emirates, have the highest degree of hotel adaptation.


2016 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 83-98 ◽  
Author(s):  
Margaret Peacock

Purpose – This paper aims to explore the relationship between childhood, consumption and the Cold War in 1950s America and the Soviet Union. The author argues that Soviet and American leaders, businessmen, and politicians worked hard to convince parents that buying things for their children offered the easiest way to raise good American and Soviet kids and to do their part in waging the economic battles of the Cold War. The author explores how consumption became a Cold War battleground in the late 1950s and suggests that the history of childhood and Cold War consumption alters the way we understand the conflict itself. Design/Methodology/Approach – Archival research in the USA and the Russian Federation along with close readings of Soviet and American advertisements offer sources for understanding the global discourse of consumption in the 1950s and 1960s. Findings – Leaders, advertisers, and propagandists in the Soviet Union and the USA used the same images in the same ways to sell the ethos of consumption to their populations. They did this to sell the Cold War, to bolster the status quo, and to make profits. Originality/Value – This paper offers a previously unexplored, transnational perspective on the role that consumption and the image of the child played in shaping the Cold War both domestically and abroad.


2017 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 425
Author(s):  
Neşide Yıldırım

Virginia Satir (1916-1988) is one of the first experts who has worked in the field of family therapy in the United States. In 1951, she was one of the first therapists who has worked all members of the family as a whole in the same session. She has concentrated her studies on issues such as to increase individual's self-esteem and to understand and change other people's perspectives. She has tried to make problematic people compatible in the family and in the society through change. From this perspective, change and adaptation are the two important concepts of her model. This is a state of being and a way to communicate with ourselves and others. High self-confidence and harmony are the first primary indicator of being a more functional human. She starts her studies with identifying the family. She uses two ways to do this; the first one is the chronology of the family that is history of the family, the second one is the communication patterns within the family. With this, she updates the status of the family. Updating is the detection of the current situation. The detection of the situation, in other words updating, constitutes the very essence of the model that she implements. In this study, communication patterns within the family are discussed for the updating, the chronological structure has not been studied. The characteristics of family communication patterns, the model of therapy that is applied by Satir for these patterns and the method which is followed in the model are discussed. According to her detection, the people who face with problems, use one of those four patterns or a combination of them. These communication patterns are Blamer, Sedative/Accepting, distracter/irrelevant and rational. Satir expresses that these four patterns are not solid and unchanging but all of them “can be converted”. For example, if one of the family members is usually using the soothing (sedative/accepting) pattern, in this case, it means that he/she wants to give the message that he/she is not very important in the inner world of the individual itself. However, if such a communication pattern is to be used repeatedly by an individual, he/she must know how to use it. According to Satir, this consciousness may be converted to a conscious gentleness and sensitivity that is automatically followed to please everyone. This study was carried out by using the copy of Satir’s book, which was originally called “The Conjoint Family Therapy” and translated into Turkish by Selim Ali Yeniçeri as “Basic Family Therapy” and published in Istanbul by Beyaz Yayınları in 2016. It is expected that the study will provide support to the education of the students and family therapists.


Author(s):  
Zoltan J. Acs

This chapter describes the system of opportunity creation in the United States, which has been a series of inventions and reinventions of the means by which opportunity has been provided. It begins with a historical background on efforts to suppress opportunity—or at least keep a monopoly hold on it—particularly in Britain. It then considers how opportunity has been embedded in American-style capitalism in two fundamental ways. The first is by equipping individuals with the skills they need to participate in capitalism; the second relates to the functioning of innovation and markets, and to the ability of new industries, firms, and jobs to challenge the status quo—namely, creative destruction. It also highlights the fundamental tension between wealth creation and maintaining economic opportunity. The chapter concludes with a discussion of the role played by schools and education reformers in the history of opportunity and opportunity creation in America.


Author(s):  
Mary K. Meyer McAleese ◽  
Susan S. Northcutt

The interdisciplinary field of international studies has traditionally been a male-dominated field. Indeed, the field of international relations, both theory and practice, has been argued to be gendered in highly masculinist ways. Whether as practitioners or as scholars, women have had a difficult time entering and advancing in such male-dominated fields, both in the United States and around the world. Their admittance and full acceptance in the profession has been hindered by laws and regulations, institutional practices and inertia, gendered stereotypes and customary expectations, overt discrimination and subtle biases, or benign neglect. As such, women have adopted a number of different strategies to make their ways into such male-dominated fields. These include working to expand the field to encompass questions of interest to women, developing new networks with other women for mentorship and resource development, and organizing themselves into distinct groups to promote women’s professional interests and advancement. One of these women’s organizations is Women’s Caucus for International Studies (WCIS), a formal section within the International Studies Association (ISA). Since its formal organization in 1996, the Women’s Caucus has worked hard to fulfill its mission of upgrading the status of women in the profession. Specifically, it seeks to promote equal opportunities for women in their professional lives, as well as women’s professional development. The Caucus fulfills its mission in numerous ways, including sponsoring scores of panels and roundtables focused on women’s professional development, and organizing mentoring networks, both inside the Caucus and beyond.


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Aaron Berliner ◽  
Jake Hecla ◽  
Michael Bondin ◽  
Austin Mullen ◽  
Kelsey Amundson ◽  
...  

On February 1, 2019, the United States and Russia withdrew from the three-decades old Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) treaty. Events precipitating the withdrawal were allegations by both the United States and Russia of a variety of treaty violations. Until that point, the treaty had been a centerpiece of arms control and a key agreement of the global security architecture. The absence of such a pillar has the potential destabilize the status quo of arms control, creating significant uncertainty in global nuclear stability and security. In this paper, we present a historical review as overture to an analysis on the impacts of this development on force structure. This analysis examines the changes in U.S., Russian, and Chinese nuclear forces which may occur as a result of the treaty's demise. The article concludes with commentary on potential actions to preserve stability in a post-INF world.


2020 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 239-251
Author(s):  
Bradley Fawver ◽  
Garrett F. Beatty ◽  
John T. Roman ◽  
Kevin Kurtz

The United States is one of the world’s perennial sports powers, yet the pathway to that success is littered with millions of youth athletes who either are not good enough to compete at a higher level or dropout from sport completely due to various personal, social, and organizational factors. These barriers are compounded by a win-at-all-costs mentality that pervades the U.S. sport culture and ultimately disenfranchises many youths from the opportunity to enjoy sport participation throughout their life. The authors argue that principle components in this flawed system are the lack of standardized coach education at the state and national level, weaknesses in the current curricula offered, and difficulties for aspiring coaches accessing existing training programs. In the current paper, the authors (a) briefly review the history of coach education in the United States as well as existing opportunities for coach education at the university, sport-specific, and private sectors; (b) provide a description of the strengths and weaknesses of the current coaching model; and (c) provide recommendations to improve coach education and training in the United States.


Author(s):  
Valukas Anton R ◽  
Byman Robert L ◽  
Murray Daniel R

This chapter begins by introducing the history of the status of Lehman Brothers in the financial world. It discusses the ranking of Lehman Brothers and the revenues recorded in 2007 and contrasts that to the status of the company in the following year. The fall of Lehman, the chapter argues, nearly took with it the entire global economy. The chapter goes on to argue that even though the company’s fall was spectacularly rapid, Lehman’s rise before that was far more storied and measured. It presents thorough detail on the rise of Lehman Brothers from the beginnings when Henry Lehman emigrated from Rimpar in Germany to the United States in 1844 to the time of the company’s dramatic demise in 2008. The chapter asks: why did Lehman fail? There were many reasons, the text of this chapter argues, and the responsibility for that failure is shared.


Author(s):  
Rosanne M Cordell

Instruction in the use of academic libraries has a long history but was not well established as a permanent and formal part of academic libraries in the United States until well into the 20th century. It has taken many forms, but none are likely to be maintained as formal programs unless measures are taken to move them beyond the status of the efforts of single individuals. The development of information literacy as an area of study coincided with the institutionalization of instruction programs and has given academic context and form to the curricula for instruction in the use of academic libraries.


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