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Lookup NU author(s): Professor Hartmut Behr
This is the authors' accepted manuscript of an article that has been published in its final definitive form by Oxford University Press, 2021.
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The disciplinary history of international relations (IR) is usually told as asuccession of theories or “isms” that are connected to academic schools.Echoing the increasing criticism of this narrative, we present in this articlea new perspective on the discipline. We introduce concepts fromlinguistics and its method of digital discourse analysis (DDA) to explorediscursive shifts and terminological entrepreneurship in IR. DDA directsattention away from schools of thought and “heroic figures” who allegedlyinvented new theories. As we show exemplarily with the rise of “regimetheory,” there were entire generations of IR scholars who (more or lessconsciously) developed new vocabularies to frame and address their commonconcerns. The terminological history of “international regime” startsin nineteenth century international law, in which French authors alreadyused “régime” to describe transnational forms of governance that weremore than a treaty but less than an international organization. Only inthe 1980s, however, was an explicit definition of “international regime”forged in American IR, which combined textual elements already in use.We submit that such observations can change the way in which we understand,narrate, and teach the discipline of IR. DDA decenters IR theoryfrom its traditional focus on schools and individuals and suggests unlearningestablished taxonomies of “isms.” The introduction of corpus linguisticmethods to the study of academic IR can thus provide new epistemologicaldirections for the field.
Author(s): Behr H, Steffek J, Mueller M
Publication type: Article
Publication status: Published
Journal: International Studies Review
Year: 2021
Volume: 23
Issue: 1
Pages: 30-58
Print publication date: 01/03/2021
Online publication date: 27/02/2020
Acceptance date: 02/01/2020
Date deposited: 02/03/2020
ISSN (print): 1521-9488
ISSN (electronic): 1468-2486
Publisher: Oxford University Press
URL: https://doi.org/10.1093/isr/viaa003
DOI: 10.1093/isr/viaa003
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