Call for Papers: Co-IRIS Open Panel at the 24th IPSA in Istanbul

Call for Papers

Khaldunian Civilizational Analysis in International Relations

24th World Congress of Political Science
July 23-28, 2016
Istanbul, Turkey

Civilization as a field of research was not taken seriously by political and social scientist in their study of world affairs in early 1990s. The modern (Westphalian) nation-state dominated the intellectual fora of IR since pre-World War I. Until Huntington’s thesis on clash of civilizations was published in late 1990s, several public intellectuals and scholars have opined, argued, and provided critique on the study of civilization. Many political elites from Iran, Spain, Malaysia, Qatar, and Turkey expressed a kind of dialogue or alliance of civilizations, which eventually led to the creation of the United Nations Alliance of Civilizations in 2004. Although the contours, debates and discourses of contemporary Civilization Studies have primarily shaped by several disciplines from International Relations, Politics, Sociology, History, Humanities and Literature, and to some extent Philosophy.

One of the profound paradigms in the study of civilization is the Khaldunian epistemology. In order to revisit the foundational moment for the concept of civilization, one has to look back to the writings of Ibn Khaldun (1332-1406) who is considered to be the first proponent of civilizational discourse. Consequently, the panel will survey the literature of Islamic contributions to the theoretical discourse of IR and present the Khaldunian paradigm of civilizational state as an alternative explanatory power to modern nation-state system.

Instructions:

—Create your free IPSA account via this link.
—Submit your abstract through this link. Select the session type (RC40 New World Orders?) and select the name of our panel.