Women, Socialism, and early International Relations
The conventional narrative of the (sub)discipline of International Relations (IR) claims that its origins can be described as liberal idealists. It also states that early IR thinkers ignored economic issues since it was until the 1970s that International Political Economy (IPE) was established. While the narrative related to IPE has been less contested, during the last twenty-five years a flourishing revisionist literature has persuasively challenged IR’s traditional account providing strong evidence of a variety of theoretical perspectives that existed to understand world affairs during the interwar years. Marxism and Functionalism, for instance, have been shown to be influential during the period. Additionally, recent efforts have highlighted the importance of women’s international thinking during the first half of the twentieth century. Yet, the influence of socialism on women´s perspectives on global issues has received scant attention. Through a textual analysis of the writings and speeches –books, articles, correspondence, addresses, book reviews, among other sources– of Helena Maria Lucy Swanwick, Emily Greene Balch, and Jessie Wallace Hughan, the present paper seeks to answer the questions of whether or not and to what extend socialism made an impact on the international thought of these early IR intellectuals, and if they ignored economics in their analyses. The article hypothesises that the cases of Swanwick, Balch, and Hughan demonstrate that socialism had a considerable impact on early IR women intellectuals, and as a result economics far from being neglected during the period was a key dimension considered, particularly in relation to the causes of war and its remedies.
Date: 15 March 2023, 11:00 (Wednesday, 9th week, Hilary 2023)
Venue: Manor Road Building, Manor Road OX1 3UQ
Venue Details: Seminar Room D
Speaker: Ricardo Villanueva (Visiting Fellow University of Oxford)
Organising department: Department of Politics and International Relations (DPIR)
Booking required?: Not required
Audience: Members of the University only
Editors: Helen Morley, Rebecca Freeman, Joby Mullens, Daniel Burton