Session 17: Four Sociologies of International relations

The interesting aspect of this article was the different debates that exist between sociological theories of international relations. The author has carefully divided these theories into two sets of arguments. The first one is the debate between materialist and idealist and the other debate is between agent and structure. In the materialistic argument, by focusing on aspects such as natural resources, geography, factors of production and aspects which cause destruction, he then links this to ho human association is caused by all of this and how the structure of society is shaped through this. However materialism sharply contrasts with the notion of idealism which believes that the structure of society is based more on ideas rather than tangible aspects such as material objects. Idealist relies on the concept of social consciousness and how it is extremely important to society. The other pair of debate is between individualism which is the ‘agent’ and holism which is the ‘structure’. Both these ideas also juxtapose one another since the agent theory focuses on individualism and the individual while the structure refers to the holistic aspect of society as a whole. These different school of thoughts provide a comprehensive overview on the theories that exist in international relations and provide a solid basis of reasoning and understanding of international relations. The question that intrigues me is whether can society be reduced to the aspect of a single human being which is individualism or do we look as society as a whole.