The Wages of Discipline: Rethinking International Relations as a Vehicle of Western Hegemony

Yıl 2012, Cilt: 4 Sayı: 1, 5 - 26, 01.03.2012

Kees Van Der Pijl

Öz

In this paper, based on the keynote speech at the METU Conference on
Rethinking International Relations, 15-17 June 2011, I argue that academic
discipline functions as an extension of the class/state discipline on the
population. Disciplinary division of labour in academia began when the classical
political economy perspective, which had been turned into a political
programme of the labour movement by Marx, was reformulated as marginalism
in the late 19th century. International Relations (IR) after World War I was also
turned into an academic specialisation, targeting, along with the Russian
Revolution, the critique of imperialism. The third part of the paper discusses
how the ostracism of Marxism has entailed deleting the crucial Kant-Hegel-Marx
transition in philosophy from static antinomy to historical dialectics. As a result
social science stagnates into a repetition of identical positions under new labels.
What this entails will be discussed by taking the example of Andrew Abbott’s
argument about “syncresis”. The paper concludes with a brief outline of a
historical materialist alternative to the mainstream IR canon. 

Anahtar Kelimeler

Western Hegemony, International Relations, Social Discipline, Academic Discipline

Kaynakça

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