A Sociology of Diplomacy

This course introduces students to a new approach to the study of diplomacy and world politics. Historically, diplomatic studies has been a theory-light if not atheoretical field, with diplomatic history and diplomat's memoirs serving as the standard reading material for the field . Over the past two decades, however, the field of diplomatic studies has experienced a transformation. The up-close study of who diplomats are and what they do has emerged as the empirical launchpad for a theoretically ambitious and sophisticated approach to the study of international politics. Better known by the labels "practice turn" and “international political sociology,” this avowedly sociological sensibility aims to bring abstract international politics (a world of states and free floating norms and identities) down to the trenches of everyday life and lived experiences. This approach draws on sociologists and anthropologists to show how domestic politics, everyday action, and social structures of class, race, and gender shape inequality, stratification, agency, and power in world politics. This new turn has not only put diplomatic studies on the map of disciplinary IR, it has also attracted a new generation of scholars who are pushing the boundaries of how to study world politics using new theories and methods, and working in new regional and historical contexts. This course surveys this important sociological shift in the study of diplomacy by introducing students to its key thinkers, writings, and unfolding debates.