Reaching for allies? The dialectics and overlaps between international relations and area studies in the study of politics, security and conflicts

Abstract

This article sets the scene for the Special Issue ‘Reaching for allies?’ by setting out the research questions and structure of the Special Issue. Specifically, this introduction reviews the state of the art of dialectics interweaving International Relations and Area Studies. Specifically, it focuses on tracing the genealogy of these debates, identifying the actors engaged with them, as well as, mapping those sites where such transdisciplinary knowledge is produced and circulated. We also provide an assessment of the interaction between the two disciplinary traditions as scholarly disciplines by reviewing the field as it had developed in the last decade since 2013. In order to do so, we present data on the brokers of this dialogue by analysing top-ranked Journals across regions, dedicated Special Issues on the matter as well as main international conferences and participants. Overall, this article provides a threefold contribution: first, we provide an account of the globalization of knowledge production and circulation that has also increasingly decentred, valuing local peculiarities and epistemological traditions beyond the Western academia(s). Second, we assess and discuss how Western and non-Western academics have contoured concepts which demand and entail site-intensive techniques of enquiry, exposure to complexities on the grounds, ethnographic sensitivity, and, at the same time, comparative endeavours going beyond area specialisms. Third, by looking at international and regional policy-making milieus with attention to context-specificity, we believe critical policy-relevant implications can be discussed, specifically in relation to local ownership and bottom-up approaches.

Turning towards practices: on the common ground of international relations and European studies

“…International Relations (IR) scholars operate in an academic environment deeply affected by a culture of fields and subfields where drawing boundaries and setting hierarchies of values is often more important than acknowledging common histories, trajectories, and synergies (Bell, 2009; Fierke and Jabri, 2019). As the Special Issue tries to show, this is especially problematic when it comes to the boundaries and hierarchies set up between IR and area studies (AS) (D'Amato et al ., 2022). In fact, competing disciplinary politics within IR and AS have ensured the continuous reproduction of Western and American dominance of IR, favoured IR scholars over AS specialists, and constrained the space of interaction between the two (Acharya, 2014; Bell, 2009; Chamlian, 2019; Fawcett et al ., 2020; Köllner et al ., 2018; Katzenstein, 2002; Teti, 2007).…”