Description
Despite decades of interest relating to issues of disciplinary hierarchy and dominance, the sociology of IR operates with a conceptually limited understanding of hegemony.
It is a subfield that employs a simplified theoretical framework associated with hegemony, which is narrowed to a mere acknowledgment of consent, as a prevalent element in maintaining a hegemonic disciplinary order. Despite frequent references to Gramsci and Cox, the concept is stripped from its dialectical essence and neglected its initial theoretical context. This theoretical neglection leads to a situation in which the sociology of IR is not able to effectively identify patterns of consent within the discipline and proclaims that, despite the material predominance of the US IR community, ideationally the discipline is non-hegemonic.
Thus, the paper proposes «bringing back» Gramsci and neo-Gramscianism to the sociology of IR. It seeks to revisit possible avenues for a critical theoretical transfer, and to assess the possibility of conceptualizing actors and dynamics associated with the production and maintenance of the disciplinary hegemony. Specifically, it draws attention to several features of hegemony, such as its duality, domestic origin, transnational essence, and heterogeneous character. Eventually, it seeks to comprehend a possible heuristic value of such notions as intellectuals and passive revolution, associated with the Gramscian and neo-Gramscian understanding of hegemony
