This course is entered in the UBC calendar as POLI 367 International Relations Theory and the International System, with the following brief description: “the evolution of the international system and empirical and normative theories of international relations such as realism, liberalism, and Marxism.” This captures an enduring and core feature of our interest but, like the theoretical discourses it engages, the course ranges well beyond this (un?)holy trinity of perspectives. It would not be an exaggeration to call these approaches—even those inspired by Marxist assumptions—mainstream when measured against the myriad and wide-ranging debates, discourses, and new perspectives on theory that have proliferated in the past two decades. In other words, this is NOT a straightforward survey course, given that the boundaries, proper subjects of focus, appropriate investigative methods, conceptions of theory (as well as who and what it is for), and the prospects for theoretical progress, or arriving at some widely shared standard in which to measure it, have never been more contested. In short, it is no longer feasible or intellectually honest to discuss IR theory as if there were a single, shared definition of theory, or wide consensus on anything that most “healthy” fields could take for granted (I say field, because I refuse to call IR a discipline). Rather it has become a contested terrain, with at least 8 identifiable theories according to our current course text. Some of these approaches deny long accepted definitions of theory, the theorizability of the subject matter and… oh yeah… the very existence of that subject itself  in any conventional sense!

Long preoccupied with building, keeping, and/or losing consensus IR has proven so adept at keeping alive the dream of a widely shared vocation that it can even absorb and normalize “perspectives” that seek its dismantling.  Consider, for example, that some IR textbooks refer to a “postmodern school of IR” despite strong evidence that most members of this perspective deny the existence, utility, and value of precisely the sort of foundational enterprise that conventional IR theory pursues.  I’m reminded of the phenomenon of “alternative” music and how it eventually became sort of mainstream, or Herbert Marcuse’s observation that somebody could scream “death to all capitalists” on a street corner one day, only to find the slogan emblazoned and sold on a T-shirt the next. Simply put, there’s something a bit strange about IR theory, and ignoring this reality, or discussing the subject as if it constitutes a cohesive and coherent set of approaches—however much we might wish that were so—cannot do justice to the current state of the field… or is it is fields??