In accordance to the week four lecture theme, Foundations: IR as a Modern Academic Discipline week four, we read the article “The Big Bangs of IR: The Myths That Your Teachers Still Tell You about 1648 and 1919”. The article helped me to understand how the modern discipline of IR has a complex and disputed history where even the standardized origins of the discipline, its “Great Debates”, and who identifies with which school of thought can be reasonably called into question. For instance, even calling E.H. Carr, who famously undermined the Idealists for their utopian view of the world, a Realist could be a misnomer because the cluster of thought he advocated was neither that of Idealism or Realism but a mix of both. Just from this, we can see that even the normalization and categorization of schools of thought into neat bundles of thought is also problematic. In class, we learned that Realists retrospectively claim prominent thinkers to have ascribed to Realist thought, presenting Realism as a tradition of thought with a long and continuous history.

IR as a discipline is presented to have originated as a study to ensure peace where Idealism sets out with a blatant prescriptive aim to prevent wars and after the two catastrophic world wars, loses completely to Realism who by definition looks realistically at the actual state of world affairs. This standard textbook narrative hardly acknowledges the ahistorical, Eurocentric, and complex mix of ideas the discipline has evolved and based on. The first myth claims that the Treaty of Westphalia in 1648 was a clear-cut turning point in international relations where religious wars and feudal systems came was pushed to the background and the sovereign state and the anarchic state system took center stage. The second myth proclaims that WWI gave birth to Idealism who sought to end all wars but was utterly defeated with its inability to predict and prevent WWII, giving way to Realism whose advocates assert to be more committed to reality and scorn the naivety of Idealism. The authors claim that these myths are maintained through structural amnesia, where the discipline does not come to face the complex origination of itself.

By underscoring the importance of critical reflexivity of the discipline of IR itself, I feel that I have learned a more profound and comprehensive account of how IR has emerged as a modern academic discipline and told stories about itself. The article encourages academics to engage in active dialogue in questioning the myths of the foundations of the discipline, moving away from the Eurocentric parochialism that pervades the framework, and deconstruct the ahistorical simplification of the standardized births of the discipline of IR as clear-cut originating in 1648–after the treaty of Westphalia and in 1919–during the interwar period. Additionally, the article succeeds in warning students of IR or at least me personally, to be wary and critical of standard accounts presented to us especially in textbooks about the foundations of the discipline, its historical developments, and its inner discourses.

Although I can empathize with the standard or normalized account of the origins of the discipline of IR and the myths it tells about its origins occupying its continued and reiterated existence in textbooks and academic sources, I agree with the authors of the article that entrenched in these myths are the underlying Anglo-American assumptions that frame mainstream IR thought and further discourses in the field may be promoting a certain distorted way that justifies certain interests and actions in world politics. The myths are appealing as they effectively simplify complex processes of disarray of academic literature full of emerging ideas, dialogue, and their influences to paint a coherent story of the foundations of the discipline of IR. However, the discipline has to be reflexive and seek to take revisionist accounts more seriously because the stakes are high. In looking at International Relations, what we prioritize to study, how we choose to measure it, and why we want to study it will affect what kind of world not just we see, but others who encounter the discourses will see, and how we all act in it based on our convictions.

The article nicely compliments the lecture where we learned about how IR as a modern discipline came to be dominated by Anglo-American IR, especially that the assumptions of state-centric and hegemonic accounts of the world focuses on the hegemonic power as a central actor where the others are seen as insignificant. So in IR, the nationality of the scholars and their unconscious views can shape theories. It seems almost ironic and incredibly conceited when those who study IR focuses mainly on one actor or one region and call that world politics because the others are not worth studying. I think it is dangerous and erroneous to assume that one knows what is best for everyone else and impose their framework of seeing the world as universal on others. When parochialism masquerades as cosmopolitanism and preaches that they are looking out for the interest of everyone when it is their own interest that is being furthered, then the academic inquiry just becomes a pretty mask to justify their actions. When one does not realize that the assumptions and the origins of the discipline are embedded with such myths, it is worse.

I think the article and the lectures rightfully underscored the importance of thinking about theories with their historical context in mind and understanding that ideas come from people who are historically and geographically situated, where their nationality, language, culture, and social position influences how they see the world. These include even the stories we tell about the emergence of a discipline.

-Degi Bolormunkh

Hello! I am going to share my initial interest in POLI367B, the International Relations theories course and my first impressions. I am in my last year of studies, doing a combined major in Political Science and Philosophy with a minor in International Relations. I greatly enjoyed taking more theory-based courses such as POLI240 and PHIL335 in my past years at UBC. I remember a few specific instances where I have been asked with a hint of ridicule what kind of job I hope to find by studying such abstract and intangible subjects. However, the more I learn about these ‘impractical’ pursuits I become more convinced that there are indispensable values to be had from theoretical and philosophical discourses. Although I could have chosen other classes from the list of approved courses in the IR department, I wanted to take this course because I think theories and conceptualizations are a necessary part of unpacking and understanding the complexities of the world that we cannot do without. I think theories and practice ought not to be thought of as two very distinct things, as both reflect how we understand and navigate through the world.

So far, I am really enjoying the course and feeling excited to learn more as the course progresses. I found the readings and the lectures we had on the great debates in IR and how the discipline has developed historically to become not a ‘normal’ science to be quite fascinating because these disagreements show that the field is finally becoming self-critical and aware of its own purpose of existence. I especially like the approach of the textbook that presents the competing IR theories and schools of thought as lenses through which we can see the world where with each lens we focus on a different aspect and learn something different about the international system. Theories, in this sense, can almost be equated to different parts of a puzzle that when taken as a whole makes up and illuminates different aspects of the complex picture of the world we are trying to understand.

It seems the tensions between the natural sciences and the social sciences are still at large today, but I think there are fundamental differences that raise questions about expecting the same standard of inquiry for both. I took PHIL375, a Philosophy of Literature course which really resonated with me that explored the hermeneutic tradition that emerged first as a literary interpretation approach, went through several attempts to be remolded into a ‘legitimate’ science in unison with the positivist current, and then later developed as a parallel approach in opposition to the scientific tradition. I think the hermeneutic or interpretative method correctly calls out the tendency for science to be blindly emulated and invade all aspects of inquiry into one rigid frame of knowing, claiming a monopoly on legitimacy and truth forgoing its critical commitment to the possibility that all knowledge claims may be fallible. This religious prioritizing of rationality or reason and the scientific method above all else defeats the very Enlightenment spirit of critical thought that it vows to uphold.

I am looking forward to learning more about each of the different theories and understand the deeper implications of favouring one theory over another. Learning case studies and current affairs in relation to the theories may be a useful way to go about this. I think I still have lots to learn and I am grateful to have this opportunity to pursue the subjects of my interests.

-Degi Bolormunkh