300030 International Political Sociology (S) (SoSe 2014)

International Political Sociology (IPS) is a rather new research strand in International Relations (IR). IPS is however as intellectually rewarding as it is challenging because it requires students to put on hold many of the premises, notions, and models learned in introductory classes of a conventional IR curriculum, e.g. from assumptions of instrumental rationality, actorhood of states and organizations to canonical standards of positivist methodology. Once problematized, these traditional starting points in IR are to be replaced with a number of new dispositions, some of which are counterintuitive, that allow students to take a fresh look at world politics. In this regard, IPS somehow opens Pandora’s box as it raises many more questions than it provides clear-cut answers, further complicating issues that seemed already quite difficult. Furthermore, in its current state the IPS literature is often very scholarly, jargonistic with rather few accessible and introductory readings. As such, a journey through IPS requires a great deal of intellectual involvement and effort, a bit of courage, and much patience. But the journey is well worth taking when students, after going through a bit of brain rewiring, finally reach a kind of eureka moment from which they get to grasp the thick social fabric of world politics. Thus, the key question of the course is how and to what extent can insights from sociology (or sociological thinkers) be used to shed more light on problems of world politics?

To approach this question, the course is divided into three parts. The first part gives a brief introduction of IPS as a research strand in IR. In the second section we are discussing texts using different sociological approaches to answer crucial questions of world politics. Finally, the students are asked to choose an article – e.g. in the journal of International Political Sociology – and discuss how the article contributes to deal with a pressing problem in world politics.

Requirements for participation, required level

Students should have obtained basic knowledge of political sociology and international relations.

Bibliography

Kessler, Oliver (2009): Towards a Sociology of the International? International Relations between Anarchy and World Society. In: International Political Sociology 3(1), S. 87-108.