The final podcast lecture in my Spring 2012 SIS-301 “Theories of International Politics” class — and the last podcast of the last time I will teach this class for a while, since I become Associate Dean in a couple of months ad that’s a full-time administrative gig. So, perhaps fitting that the topic of this last podcast lecture is Naeem Inayatullah and David Blaney’s radical reexamination of IR as an enterprise, which raises some fundamental questions about the purpose of IR theory and IR scholarship. Is it science? Is it philosophy? Does it matter? Questions to ponder.

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The eleventh in the ongoing series. This week, relational theory: boundary processes and sovereign practices, especially the formation of identities.

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The tenth lecture for this semester’s rendition of SIS-301: systems, structures, and what it means to think about theoretical explanations of world politics that don’t place individuals and their decisions at the center.

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The ninth lecture for SIS-301: contemporary mainstream US IR theory, realism/liberalism/constructivism. And their fundamental similarity as different hypotheses — reductionist hypotheses — about state behavior.

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Lecture 8 for SIS-301 Theories of International Politics. This week’s topic: E. H. Carr, and the rise of social science disciplines as a way of organizing knowledge.

Yes, these lectures are getting longer. I hope to stop that precedent next week, and try to curb my enthusiasm a bit.

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Lecture 7, for your listening enjoyment: Hegel, historical dialectics, and the progress of reason. A little longer than usual, because there was a lot to say.

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The diagrams we drew on the board in class this week — and, full disclosure, that’s not the first time I have used such diagrams — seemed to need a supplemental lecture of their own, as we gather our thoughts before diving into Hegel for the week after the break. Accordingly, here’s a supplemental lecture on the differences in modes of authority between Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau, and Kant. Plus some thoughts on universal Reason.

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Lecture 6, Kant. Longer lecture than usual, because with Kant, there is usually a lot more to say.

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Now, after the Vienna interlude, back to our regularly scheduled program: the weekly lectures for SIS-301 “Theories of International Politics.” This week, lecture #5, on Rousseau, in which I suggest that Rousseau is something of a constructivist.

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