IR, the University, and the (Re)-Production of Order: Between Perversions of Agency and Duties of Subversion

Abstract

The discipline of IR was born in a time and place characterised by the consolidation of the University as the leading social institution of advanced learning and teaching. This contribution addresses two dimensions that can guide our thinking about IR’s socio-educational impact as delineated and mediated by its University-bound condition, a condition that is presumably different from that of other institutions and sites of knowledge- production and transmission, such as private institutes, professional schools, or think-tanks. Each dimension calls for two types of reflection: a socio-historical one that aims to understand the situation IR faces within the liberal, public University and vis-à-vis the broader public realm; an axiological-normative one that aims to identify the possibilities for meaningful socio-academic action. These types of inquiry and their associated discourses and objectives are classically opposed, but need not, and should not, be. A sociological understanding of IR enables us to negotiate the interconnectedness of what is and what ought to be intelligently and responsibly, along the same ‘logic' applied against the social sciences by political agents who have long understood this interconnectedness and learned to use it at our, and society’s, expense.