‘Home and away’: the international and its ‘publics’
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Date
2014
Authors
Vale, Peter
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
University of the Free State
Abstract
The paper explores how the academic study of International Relations
(IR) seeks out and develops its ‘publics’ and how these serve to propagate
the discipline’s founding purpose. The history of the founding of IR,
in the immediate post-First World War years, is discussed. Using a social
constructivist approach, the article then tracks how the idea of the
‘international’ emerged in two separate (but closely linked) approaches
to understanding social relations at this level of organisation, viz., International
Law and International Relations. Throughout, the argument
stresses that those who founded IR understood that it was essential to
enlist the interest of the ‘public’ if they were to succeed in the founding
purpose. Intermittently, references to the discipline’s South African life
form are made.
Description
In 2013, prof Vale delivered the 29th E.H. Carr Lecture at the University of Aberystwyth, Wales. This essay is a version of his Inaugural Lecture of the same title that was delivered at the University of Johannesburg on 22 August 2013.
Keywords
International relations, International law
Citation
Vale, P. (2014). 'Home and away': the international and its' publics'. Acta Academica: Special issue: Rethinking the publics, 46(1), 119-137.