Introduction to the Special Issue: The multiple births of International Relations

Disciplinary histories are, by default, complicit in the production of subjective memories as truth. This Special Issue builds on the existing scholarship on rethinking IR's disciplinary history by expanding its geographical focus beyond the West, and explores how IR came to define itself as a self-contained body of knowledge that is distinct from other fields of study in different parts of the world. These alternative histories enable us to appreciate that the development of IR as a global discipline was only possible through a transnational circulation of key ideas such as sovereignty, empire, Commonwealth and, especially, competing notions of the ‘international’. In addition, they bring attention to the purpose of knowledge and the politics of its production, and allow for both democratisation as well as discursive plurality.

Objectivity

Chapter 2 stresses the connection between scholarly identity and intimacy in dialogue as it takes place between scholars. To explore this connection, it approaches the concept of novelty in a skeptical manner by arguing that Sanskrit logicians could and did purposely misrepresent the history of their discipline with the purpose of making their views appear novel, even if they were not. A superb example of this pertains to the debate about the ontological status of a type of relation called the objectivity relation (viṣayatā), which serves to link our cognitions to the objects of the world. A major outcome of this debate was the construction of a philosophical community around putatively novel positions—a process that displays an intimacy between scholars who accept a specific version of nyāya disciplinary history.

The ‘Economic’ in Indian Sociology: Genealogies, Disjunctions and Agenda

A cursory glance at the century-old history of Indian sociology reveals its relative under-engagement with economic phenomena and processes. Although the ‘economic’ did get studied under the influence of agrarian and village studies, and certain apparently economic themes such as industry and labour did attract scholarly attention from some sociologists, we notice the absence of a sustained and robust academic tradition of sociological studies of the economy in India. There appears to have been an intellectual division of labour, where the study of economic issues was ceded to economists whereas sociologists remained jubilant with their studies of primordial institutions. This study attempts to locate this persistent disjunction between the social and the economic from the perspective of the disciplinary history. Of necessity, this calls for an examination of the relationship between sociology and economics, and the way it unfolded in post-independence India. To this end, this study discusses the role of the developmental state, the prevailing notions of expertise, and the differential treatment accorded to different social sciences’ disciplines. The paper concludes with the outlining of a disciplinary agenda for the sociological study of the ‘economic’.

Theorizing Chemical Rhetoric: Toward an Articulation of Chemistry as a Public Vocabulary

Chemistry has been a pivotal part of scientific discovery and human life for centuries. This essay argues that chemical terms, tropes, figures, appeals, and narratives serve as powerful rhetorical features of public discourse. From affinities and atoms to dark matter and radioactivity, chemical rhetoric fulfills a central organizing function in contemporary society and shapes how people deliberate and delineate their identities, relationships, and communities. The present research demarcates chemical rhetoric as a form of nonexpert communication, and explicates its association with chemistry’s disciplinary history, as well as with technical chemical language’s grounding in key focal concepts. More specifically, it maps out a framework for defining and theorizing chemical rhetoric through three, interconnected lenses: historical–ecological, conceptual articulation, and vernacular. The overarching goal in this essay is to create an infrastructure for investigating chemistry’s longitudinal circulation and emergence as a shared public vocabulary.

Introduction

The Introduction situates the book’s approach to comparative literature in relation to recent debates in the field over the status of “world literature.” It historicizes the notion of world literature in terms of the global disciplinary history of literary studies, contextualizing redefinitions of literature and efforts to write literary modernity in terms of connected yet heterogeneous epistemic shifts in eighteenth-century Europe and early twentieth-century China. It introduces the design of the book and offers chapter summaries. And it explains how efforts to write literary modernity in the asynchronous periods of Romantic England and Republican China constitute experiments also with new socio-political forms of life in different cultural contexts.

Because of Bostock

On a below-freezing January morning, Jennifer Chavez, an automobile technician, sat in a car that she was repairing to keep warm while waiting for delayed auto parts to arrive. Without intending to, she nodded off. Her employer promptly fired her for sleeping on the job. At least, that is the justification her employer gave. But Chavez had reason to believe that her coming out as transgender motivated the termination. In the months leading up to the January incident, Chavez’s supervisor had told her to “tone things down” when she talked about her gender transition. The repair-shop owner said that the transition made him “nervous” and could “impact his business,” claiming that it had prompted a prospective employee to decline a job offer. The owner had also instructed Chavez not to wear “a dress or miniskirt” or “too feminine attire” to and from work. Before coming out as transgender, Chavez was an “excellent employee” with a spotless disciplinary history. After coming out, things changed. The repair-shop management acted on advice from an attorney to begin writing up Chavez for issues “one at a time” with a “focus on work and performance.” The accidental nap may have been exactly the opportunity they needed.

Curriculum development in American Studies: Interdisciplinarity, student progression, and the Swedish-American paradox

The article explores challenges and possibilities of curriculum development in American Studies in Sweden, a discipline that does not yet exist as a national degree-awarding subject. The aim is to investigate how advanced level learning in American Studies can be designed in relation to student progression. The backdrop to this problem is “the Swedish-American paradox”—the fact the many Swedish students have substantial prior experiences and knowledges about the United States, yet where the opportunities for academic education about North America are rather limited. While American Studies is a common discipline at North American and European universities, it does not have a strong foothold in Sweden. The article discusses the disciplinary history and educational tradition within American Studies, focusing on its interdisciplinarity. It then discusses how interdisciplinarity have been brought into American Studies curricula internationally, and how this sits within the framework of the Swedish Higher Education Ordinance. The American Studies case is juxtaposed to similar fields through a review of area studies MA programs in Sweden. The article ends with an exploration of the ways in which interdisciplinarity can be adopted as a learning outcome in relation to the challenge of student progression in Sweden.

Baltic Postcolonialism: A Prospect for Disciplinary History of Folkloristics

Postkoloniālisms ir viens no 21. gadsimta sākuma vadošajiem virzieniem humanitārajās zinātnēs. Tomēr bijusī “ Otrā pasaule”, tai skaitā Baltijas valstis un citas Padomju Savienības okupētās teritorijas, ir vēsturiski problemātisks izaicinājums postkoloniālajai teorijai, kas liek kritiski pārlūkot ar rases reprezentācijām vai konkrētiem vēstu- riski ekonomiskiem apstākļiem saistītus pamatprincipus. Tagadējās postsociālisma valstīs postkoloniālās teorija var tikt pieņemta tikai ar virkni atrunu. Postsociālisma postkoloniālās teorija un Baltijas postkoloniālisms kā šīs teorijas jaunākais atzars tomēr liecina, ka tā ir efektīva un daudzsološa pieeja padomju pagātnes analīzei. Postsociālisma postkoloniālās teorija var kļūt par veidu, kā paskatīties uz folkloristikas kā nozares vēsturi padomju okupācijas laikā. Raksta autors ar šādu nolūku piedāvā pārlūkot astoņus teorētiskos princi- pus, kurus no folkloristikas vēstures Britu Impērijā savulaik ir atvedi- nājusi pētniece Sadhana Naithani. Baltijas postkoloniālisms ir pieeja, kas ļautu šos principus adaptēt Baltijas un citu postsociālisma valstu folkloristikas vēstures pētniecībai. Tas radītu instrumentu kopumu padziļinātai nozares vēstures analīzei, stingru teorētisko pamatu, ko sniedz pārskatīta postkoloniālās teorija, un jēdzieni, kas ļauj precīzi attēlot pagātnes daudznozīmīgās un pretrunīgās atbalsis pētniecībā mūsdienās. Vienlaikus Baltijas postkoloniālisma pieejas plašam lieto- jamam ir vismaz četri ievērojami šķēršļi: teorijas fragmentārā uzbūve, bieža jēdzieniskā neskaidrība un sarežģītība, problemātisks rašanās un pielietojuma laiks, un ideoloģiskais tēls mērķa valstīs.