What’s the point of being a discipline? Four disciplinary strategies and the future of International Relations
| Author | Olaf Corry |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/00108367221098492 |
| Published date | 01 September 2022 |
| Date | 01 September 2022 |
https://doi.org/10.1177/00108367221098492
Cooperation and Conflict
2022, Vol. 57(3) 290 –310
© The Author(s) 2022
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DOI: 10.1177/00108367221098492
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What’s the point of being a
discipline? Four disciplinary
strategies and the future of
International Relations
Olaf Corry
Abstract
While disciplinary identities are among the most fraught subjects in academia, much less
attention has been given to what disciplinarity actually entails and what risks different disciplinary
strategies involve. This article sets out a theory of disciplinarity that recognises not only their
coercive but also their redeeming features, particularly in view of the coexistence of multiple
competing disciplines and powerful transdisciplinary movements (such as rationalism). On this
basis it identifies four disciplinary strategies and each is assessed in relation to the future of IR:
(1) remaining a subdiscipline of Political Science (‘stay put’), (2) becoming an interdisciplinary field
(‘reach out’), (3) dissolving into transdisciplinarity or abolishing IR (‘burn down’), or (4) establishing
IR as a discipline in its own right (‘break out’). Rejecting the false choice of disciplinary constraint
versus epistemic freedom, this framework allows IR and other subfields to more consciously
consider a range of disciplinary strategies and to entertain the risks and affordances they each
offer. The article concludes that a future independent discipline focused on the implications of
‘the international’ not just for politics but all fields – including disciplinarity – would make for a
broader, more diverse IR, ultimately also better able to engage other disciplines.
Keywords
disciplines, epistemes, International Relations, multiplicity, politics, theory
Introduction
Whether International Relations (IR) is or should be a separate academic discipline is the
subject of long-standing debate (Buzan and Little, 2001; Dyer and Mangasarian, 1989;
Grenier et al., 2015; Kaplan, 1961; Kennedy-Pipe, 2007; Kristensen, 2012). The disci-
pline-question resurfaced most recently in response to Justin Rosenberg’s (2016) star-
tling claim that IR has so far failed to clearly identify its own unique subject matter,
defining itself only negatively as a subfield of Political Science concerned with politics
beyond settled state confines. Without a notion of ‘the international’ as a problem in its
Corresponding author:
Olaf Corry, University of Leeds, Leeds LS2 9JT, UK.
Email: T.O.Corry@leeds.ac.uk
1098492CAC0010.1177/00108367221098492Cooperation and ConflictCorry
research-article2022
Article
Corry 291
own right, IR has remained conflicted about its subject matter and narrowly focused on
a certain sphere of politics, making it relatively ineffectual in contributing to other disci-
plines, runs the argument (Rosenberg, 2017, see also Brown, 2013; Halliday, 1994). To
remedy this, a positive conception of the core subject matter of IR is offered: ‘[N]o mat-
ter how much we twist and turn it in our hands, the word “international” always ends up
presupposing the same basic circumstance, namely, that human existence is not unitary
but multiple. It is distributed across numerous interacting societies’ (Rosenberg,
2016:135). Since no other discipline has the consequences of societal multiplicity as its
object, IR can with this identify its own unique vantage point, and become relevant to the
whole of the social world (not just politics), freeing itself from the ‘prison of Political
Science’ (Rosenberg, 2016, see also Albert and Buzan, 2017) and thereby become a fully
fledged discipline in its own right.
But whereas it used to be a source of worry that IR fell short as a discipline, there is
now widespread anxiety about disciplinarity succeeding. Some fear a new disciplinary
prison of colonial modernity (Blaney and Tickner, 2017) or unwanted disciplining at the
hands of positivist scientism (Jackson, 2017). Catarina Kinnvall (2019) captures the sen-
timents of many of those aiming to expand the remit of IR and who are sceptical of
disciplines:
at a time when we are concerned with decentring IR, recognising that there may be many IRs
rather than one [. . .] and when we are increasingly asked to investigate the white mythology
of IR [. . .] the call for disciplinary cores and thus boundaries, seems to be problematic.
(pp. 153–154).
Others see a ‘set of warning lights’ going off and ‘red flags’ waving at the idea of defin-
ing a core subject matter risks ‘catapulting’ innovative IR work out of the discipline
(Drieschová, 2019: 156–157). Patrick Jackson (2017) welcomes Rosenberg’s argu-
ment but declares himself ‘simply not interested in defining anyone or anything out of
IR’ (p. 83). So what Rosenberg takes as the great selling point is for others the precise
reason why his reformulation of IR’s subject matter must be rejected.
In this article I argue that, although answers differ as to what the core problem of IR
is, the actual crux of this debate is pre-judged: should IR even aspire to become a disci-
pline on a par with history, geography or economics with its own unique angle on the
social world? Or should it avoid identifying its subject in positive terms as a discipline in
its own right in a bid to avoid further harmful disciplining of knowledge and scholarship
about its subject (whatever that is deemed to be)?
In this debate, ‘disciplinarity’ has been cast as code for a restrictive state-centric IR
subject matter and exclusiveness in terms of approaches. It is painfully true that disci-
plines regulate and restrict knowledge cultivation, and there are very good reasons to be
critical of the specific history and content of much of existing IR. In a world of multiple
disciplines, however, the alternatives to being an independent discipline might also not
be so rosy, nor lead to more diverse and inclusive scholarship. Important strategic choices
should not be made without pausing to ask, ‘what is disciplinarity’ and ‘what are the
disciplinary options actually on offer?’.
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