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1. From epistemology to practice: a sociology of science for international relations

Author:
Christian Bueger
Publication Date:
01-2012
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Journal of International Relations and Development
Institution:
Central and East European International Studies Association
Abstract:
Without question there is no shortage of reflexivity in the discipline of International Relations (IR), to the extent that after several 'grand debates' and numerous 'turns', it seems to have reached a certain intellectual 'surfeit'. One of the reasons is certainly that many of the questions concerned are not logically solvable, and that debates on reflexivity tend to become affective if not religious from time to time. Another reason is that debates are often scholastic, and have nothing to do with either the social life of the researchers or the objects studied. This surfeit should not, however, be an argument for refraining from reflexive exercises. After all, standards of reflexivity are what distinguish scientific practices from those of other knowledge producers. Instead, this observation should lead us to reconsider the connection between the abstract, theoretical, conceptual and the practical everyday. Therefore, this contribution argues for an extended understanding of reflexivity centred on practice and taking advantage from works in the sociology of science.
Topic:
International Relations and Sociology

2. Accounting for the politics of language in the sociology of IR

Author:
Anne-Marie D'Aoust
Publication Date:
01-2012
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Journal of International Relations and Development
Institution:
Central and East European International Studies Association
Abstract:
With its 2009 report on the state of the discipline of International Relations (IR), the Teaching, Research, and International Policy (TRIP) Project of the Institute for the Theory and Practice of International Relations aimed to tackle directly Ole Wæver's claim that IR 'is and has been an American social science' (Wæver 1998: 687). Driven by the question of whether or not one could see national variations in the way scholars think about the discipline, and if one could agree on the existence of a single IR discipline, the TRIP project engaged in an ambitious ten-country survey about 'the state of the discipline' (Jordan et al. 2009). The choice of the ten countries surveyed then (Australia, Canada, Ireland, Israel, Hong Kong, New Zealand, Singapore, South Africa, United Kingdom, and the United States) reflects an obvious yet unmentioned selection criteria: these countries use English as the main language of scientific communication. If no consensus could be reached as to whether IR was an American discipline per se, there could at least be an implicit consensus that to be considered and acknowledged — and thus evaluated, measured, and assessed — the discipline(s) of IR had to be Anglophone by definition. This presumption also underpinned Stephen Walt's recent commentary on the persistent dominance of Anglo-Saxon scholarship in IR. 'I'm still struck', he admitted, 'by the relative dearth of “big thinking” on global affairs from people outside the trans-Atlantic axis, including continental Europe. And by “big thinking” I mean ideas and arguments that immediately trigger debates that cross national boundaries, and become key elements in a global conversation' (Walt 2011).
Topic:
International Relations and Sociology
Political Geography:
United States, United Kingdom, Canada, Israel, South Africa, Australia, Ireland, Singapore, New Zealand, and Hong Kong