Visions of International Relations: Assessing an Academic Field

Almost since the founding of the discipline of international relations, scholars have debated about appropriate ways to describe, study, and explain the realm of human behavior that has to do with relations among states and peoples. Such scholarly discussion, however enlightening, has in recent years also led to polarizations of views, fragmentations of interests and attention, and bouts of intolerance within the field.

In this collection of essays by eight prominent scholars, each of whom presents a divergent ontological, epistemological, or methodolodical view on the study of international relations, there appears hope for redefining and reinvigorating intellectual exchange. Emerging from a series of seminars organized by the Walker Institute of International Studies at the University of South Carolina, the volume, edited by Donald J. Puchala, brings together the assessments of scholars who were challenged to defend their standpoints but also to build bridges between them.

* Yosef Lapid, "Sculpting the Academic Identity: Disciplinary Reflections at the Dawn of a New Millennium"
* Margaret G. Hermann, "One Field, Many Perspectives: Shifting From Debate to Dialogue"
* Harvey Starr, "Visions of Global Politics as an Intellectual Enterprise: Three Questions Without Answers"
* Charles W. Kegley Jr., "Bridge Building in the Study of International Relations: How 'Kuhn' We Do Better"
* Gregory A. Raymond, "The Moral Pulse of International Relations"
* Richard W. Mansbach, "Deterritorializing Global Politics"
* Nicholas Onuf, "Worlds of Our Making: The Strange Career of Constructivism in International Relations"
* Donald J. Puchala, "Harold Lasswell's Legacy and Twenty-first Century International Relations"