Abstract

The Japanese discipline of international relations has been understood as a product of interaction with its Western other, formed and developed much like Japanese contested identity. But although much attention has been paid to how the discipline emerged and evolved, very little has been written about how the discipline looks now. To remedy that, we apply a sociology of knowledge perspective to find out whether the Japanese discipline of IR does still possess distinct qualities or whether there has been growing influence from its Euro-American counterpart. We proceed in two steps: (a) We analyze 175 articles from the Japanese language IR journals Kokusai seiji, Kokusai mondai, Kokusai anzen hoshō, Heiwa kenkyū, Ajia kenkyū, Revaiasan and Nenpō seijigaku, and dissect them according to topics, focus, author background and theories/methods used; (b) We conduct four case studies of IR education at Japanese universities to demonstrate how the discipline is taught, with a focus on lecturer background, experience and syllabus composition. Our findings suggest that although there remains a preoccupation with diplomatic history, loose methodology and either realist or atheoretical studies, there is a clear trend of convergence toward Euro-American standards, especially in university education.

中文翻译：

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日本国际关系期刊和大学教育的社会学调查：学科还是“中间”？

摘要

日本的国际关系学科被理解为与西方其他学科相互作用的产物，其形成和发展的方式与日本有争议的身份非常相似。但是，尽管已经对该学科的产生和发展给予了很多关注，但是关于该学科现在的外观却鲜有报道。为了解决这个问题，我们使用知识社会学的观点来研究日本的IR学科是否仍然具有独特的品质，或者其欧美同行是否具有越来越大的影响力。我们分两步进行：（a）分析来自日语IR期刊Kokusai seiji，Kokusai mondai，Kokusai anzenhoshō，Heiwakenkyū，Ajiakenkyū，Revaiasan和Nenpōseijigaku，并根据主题，重点，作者背景以及所使用的理论/方法进行剖析；（b）我们在日本大学进行了四个IR教育案例研究，以展示该学科的教学方法，重点是讲师背景，经验和课程提纲。我们的发现表明，尽管外交史，宽松的方法论以及现实主义或理论研究仍然是人们关注的重点，但显然有朝着欧美标准趋同的趋势，尤其是在大学教育方面。