International Political Sociology: Opening Spaces, Stretching Lines

Abstract

Since its appearance, International Political Sociology ( IPS ) has tried to respond to the diversification of scholarly concerns in contemporary international studies. Its primary intellectual signature has been the creation of a stimulating and influential meeting ground between work in sociology, political theory, and international studies. A wide range of traditions from historical, legal, economic, cultural, and political sociology have been brought to bear on some of the key questions defining world politics today. We and the new editorial team are strongly committed to further explore this work at the interstices between sociology and international studies. In particular, the journal will continue to develop along the lines set out by the founding editors in 2007 (Bigo and Walker 2007). The key characteristics defined by Didier Bigo and Rob Walker are the following. Contemporary enactments of worlds, the international, and the global have international studies reaching beyond its disciplinary resources again. Similarly, sociology has been increasingly reaching into international studies when moving beyond methodological nationalism to understand social transformations and global social phenomena. IPS seeks to intensify emerging conversations between sociology, social theory, and international studies. In particular, it seeks to engage the antagonisms at the heart of disciplinary divides and modern modes of organizing worlds in innovative ways. For that purpose, IPS seeks to creatively rework the modern categorical dichotomies of state and society, sovereignty and market, national and international, the social and political, nation and state, global and international, and community and society. To make this conversation possible, IPS calls for sustained engagement with sites and events that re-invent and skew in unsettling ways what is called social and political. The emphasis on sociology brings a renewed focus on practice, on …