The importance of re-affirming IR’s disciplinary status

Fragmenting and connecting? The diverging geometries and extents of IR’s interdisciplinary knowledge-relations

“…These interrelated intellectual and social stakes animate the debate about the proclaimed ever greater fragmentation of IR scholarship, and the premise that this represents a threat to disciplinary status (Holsti, 1985;Kristensen, 2015a;Lake, 2011;Turton, 2015b). This claim is derived from a traditional Kuhnian outlook, in which the vitality and validity of a discipline is determined by its position on the spectrum of internal unityfragmentation: a unified discipline is strong and works towards the production of an iteratively developed singular knowledge and a fragmented one is weak and produces Aris disparate knowledges that do not build on one another.…”

“…On the one hand, the relevance, integrity and legitimacy of academic knowledge production are seen as corollaries to disciplinary practices: the widely accepted norm is that good academic knowledge is produced in dialogue with iterative internal disciplinary debates about a particular object of study (Albert and Buzan, 2017; Bourdieu, 1988; Frodeman, 2014; Rosenberg, 2016). On the other hand, the institutional and professional organisation of the academy is largely based on disciplinary differentiation: departments, jobs, publication outlets, conferences and professional associations all justify themselves – and the allocation of resources to them – through their identification with and contribution to a discipline (Jørgensen et al, 2017; Turton, 2015b; Weingart, 2010).…”

“…International Relations (IR) scholarship frequently expresses concern about its disciplinary identity and health. 1 It has been suggested that this is due to IR’s ‘inferiority complex’ about its status as a standalone discipline (Turton, 2015b: 248; see also Rosenberg, 2016; Lawson and Shilliam, 2010; Albert and Buzan, 2017). Such disciplinary handwringing is often seen as taking place against the seemingly perennial dilemma of how to interpret the grey area of IR’s independent status vis-à-vis Political Science (Reiter, 2015; Rosenberg, 2016).…”

“… 1. For e.g. : Buzan and Little (2001), Dunne et al (2013), Holsti (1985), Lake (2011), Rosenberg (2016), Turton (2015b). …”

Psychology and aggregation in International Relations

“… 4. There is disagreement over the disciplinary status of IR, with scholars variously contending that it is a subfield of political science, a discipline in its own right or an inherently hybrid field that encompasses politics, economics, culture and history, among other forms of human activity and inquiry. Following Turton (2015: 245), I conceive of the academic discipline as emerging from ‘. .…”