International Relations academic developments in Brazil: sociological, institutional and epistemological elements

Abstract

The discipline of International Relations (IR) was accused, in the past, of being “the least self-reflexive of the Western social sciences” and “an American social science”, but in the last decades it has changed a lot. Among its current trends, there are critical readings of its self-images and historical narratives, sociological analyses of different national academic developments and renewed interest on epistemological debates. This article offers a case study of the academic developments of IR in Brazil, having these main themes in mind. It investigates the formation of an intellectual field in the country and the social sciences´ institutionalization process, from its national independence until mid-1970s, when the first undergraduate course in IR was created. After fifteen years of solitary existence, that initiative was accompanied by an impressive expansion of the discipline in the Brazilian university system –some probable reasons of this expansion are discussed here, too. Finally, the article presents an epistemological discussion, present in the contemporary IR studies in Brazil, one which focuses on the main alternatives to academic developments when there is hegemony of theories “made in the US”.