The SAGE Handbook of the History, Philosophy and Sociology of International Relations | Gofas, Hamati-Ataya & Onuf

IR at 100: Reflections on a Centenary of Scholarship with the SAGE Handbook of the History, Philosophy and Sociology of International Relations. Roundtable at the EISA's 12th Pan-European Conference on International Relations.

gloknos and SAGE are co-sponsoring this roundtable hosted by Nicholas Onuf and Inanna Hamati-Ataya, on the occasion of the publication of the Handbook in September 2018. The roundtable features interventions by several Handbook contributors, who are leading scholars in the field: Tanja E. Aalberts, Christian Bueger, Zeynep Gülşah Çapan, Patrick Thaddeus Jackson, Anna Leander, Halvard Leira, Ido Oren, Brent Steele, Ayşe Zarakol, and Yongjin Zhang.


The SAGE Handbook of the History, Philosophy and Sociology of International Relations, edited by Andreas Gofas, Inanna Hamati-Ataya, and Nicholas Onuf, offers a panoramic overview of the broad field of International Relations (IR) by integrating three distinct but interrelated foci. It retraces the historical development of IR as a professional field of study, explores its philosophical foundations, and interrogates the sociological mechanisms through which scholarship is produced and the field is structured.

Comprising 38 chapters from both established scholars and an emerging generation of innovative meta-theorists and theoretically driven empiricists, the handbook fosters discussion of the field from the inside out, forcing us to come to grips with the widely held perception that IR is experiencing an existential crisis quite unlike anything else in its hundred-year history. This timely and innovative reference volume reflects on situated scholarly practices in a way that projects our collective thinking into the future.

Reviews

“A thought-provoking volume, with contributions from a geographically and methodologically diverse group of scholars who invite us to think reflexively about IR’s philosophical, historical and sociological foundations. At a time when many see a discipline in disarray, this innovative Handbook offers us a better sense of what we mean by IR as well as the multiple ways to study it.” (J. Ann Tickner, School of International Service, American University)

“The Handbook is a landmark, not only providing a panorama of the discipline, but also embracing it as a global project. Critical of traditional paradigms with their clear cores and boundaries, this monumental work includes diverse perspectives from history, philosophy, and sociology, opens up new horizons for International Relations, and reshapes our understanding of the world we have made together.” Yaqing Qin (China Foreign Affairs University)

“Instead of the stale debates that focus on the ‘theory’ of IR, this volume opens up new spaces for exploration. It also shows how wrestling with questions - rather than foreclosing them by ‘applying’ the answer that traditional ‘theories and approaches’ provided - can lead to new heuristics, precisely because the quest for a ‘view from nowhere’ has lost its allure.” Friedrich Kratochwil (Department of Political & Social Sciences, European University Institute)