Understanding IR: understanding Gramsci

Abstract

Randall D. Germain and Michael Kenny's valuable 'Engaging Gramsci: International Theory and the New Gramscians'Review of International Studies, 24:1 (1998), pp. 3-21. alerts Anglophone IR scholars to broader debates about Gramsci's theories that are rarely highlighted by scholars in the (somewhat misnamed) 'Italian School'. Just as Germain and Kenny have offered one way to contextualize Gramsci's contributions within the intellectual and social world that was the immediate object of his analysis, it is equally important to put the work of Anglophone 'Gramscian' scholars in its own immediate context in order to clarify why the 'Gramsci' that so many of us have found helpful was the historicist and 'idealist' who, as Germain and Kenny's article suggests, is only one of the many Gramscis that can be identified through historically grounded close readings of the Sardinian's words and deeds.