International Studies Compendium Project

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Comment on this article   Teaching international political sociology (IPS) is as intellectually rewarding as it is pedagogically challenging. In the conventional International Relations (IR) curriculum, IPS requires students to put on hold many of the premises, notions, and models learned in introductory classes, from assumptions of instrumental rationality to canonical standards of positivist methodology. Once problematized, these traditional starting points in IR are to be replaced with a number of new dispositions, some of which are counterintuitive, that allow students to take a fresh look at world politics. In the process, IPS opens many more questions than it provides clear-cut answers, further complicating issues that seemed already quite difficult. What is more, in its current state the IPS literature is often very scholarly and jargonistic and there exist few accessible and introductory readings. As such, a journey through IPS requires, on the part of both students and instructors, a great deal of intellectual involvement and effort, a bit of courage, and much patience. But the journey is well worth taking when students, after going through a bit of brain rewiring, finally reach a kind of eureka moment from which they get to grasp the thick social fabric of world politics. This essay deals in turn with the objectives and the strategies of teaching IPS. In terms of the ... log in or subscribe to read full text