Sitting on the Shoulders of Giants

Abstract

How does the discipline of political science change? How are new ideas produced? How are they validated and rewarded? Do disciplines evolve primarily through internal developments or through external contributions? Through gradual evolutions or revolutions?  

Does change occur by importing ideas and insights from neighbouring disciplines, by challenging disciplinary boundaries, or through incursions into political science made by scholars from more or less proximate disciplinary fields?

Sitting on the Shoulders of Giants explores how intellectual innovation happens in political science; how new ideas emerge; how novel concepts and methods are introduced and validated in the discipline. It focuses on the intellectual contributions of ten influential authors, including Carl Schmitt, Karl Polanyi, Antonio Gramsci, Erving Goffman, Peter L. Berger, Barbara Geddes, Judith Butler, Andrew Moravcsik and Mark Blyth.

While recognizing the role of agency and contingency, the book draws on the heuristic concepts of layering, displacement, and conversion to highlight the path-dependency of change in political science. By tracing different pathways to change, it shows that innovation generally is gradual, context-dependent, and shaped by circulations across disciplinary boundaries.