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WiSe 20/21: Global International Relations? World Politics, Donors, Universities, Scholars, and the Social Sciences from the Cold War to COVID19.

Alvaro Morcillo-Laiz

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In the last twenty years, scholars of International Relations (IR) have grown interested in the question of whether their discipline, IR, is a truly international and even a truly global one. This interest implies that the question of when and why scholars began to practice IR outside the Global North has become important. Are the problems that interest IR scholars outside the wealthy, former colonial powers the same that have structured the discipline elsewhere? After placing these questions within its appropriate historical and political context – the expansion of the social sciences, in particular political science, sociology, and economics during the Cold War – this course focuses on international organizations like UNESCO and transnational actors like the Rockefeller and the Ford Foundations as the powerhouses that transformed IR into a more or less global undertaking. To account for the rise of global IR, a number of concepts will be critically examined. Among them are diffusion, institutionalization, world culture, intellectuals, carriers, cultural hegemony, and, last but not least, domination. Cases from West and Eastern Europe, the Americas and beyond will best studied using primary sources obtained from the funders' archives. The course aims at covering the newest roles envisioned by other funders like the European Union for IR and the social sciences generally in the study of the post-COVID19 world. close