Conference report: ISA 2018 (International Studies Association 59th Annual Convention, San Francisco, California, USA)
by Thomas Mercier (Post-doc CEFRES & Charles University)
The International Studies Association (ISA) was founded in 1959. It was created by U.S. political scientists who were growing dissatisfied with the hegemonic position enjoyed by behaviourists within the American Political Science Association. Because the behaviourist approach naturally privileges methodological individualism and micro-scale analytics, it was deemed ill-fitted for the study of international affairs, balances of power between states or empires and macrostructural politics, as well as for understanding the specifics of war, diplomacy or foreign policy. Additionally, it was the intention of the founders of ISA to offer a more inclusive platform, less focused on American politics and more open to other methodologies and disciplines. But the creation of ISA also reflected a general trend in Western academia: the field of International Relations (IR), born in the UK just after WW1, was progressively affirming its independence from its mother disciplines — disciplines such as political science, social sciences or political theory. Continuer la lecture de International Relations and Decolonial Ethics