Historical materialism and international studies: Theorising the politics of struggle in the everyday world

Abstract

This forum brings together critical engagements with Andreas Bieler and Adam David Morton’s Global Capitalism, Global War, Global Crisis to assess the prospects and limits of historical materialism in International Studies. The authors’ call for a ‘necessarily historical materialist moment’ in International Studies is interrogated by scholars working with historical materialist, feminist and decolonial frameworks in and beyond International Relations (IR)/International Political Economy (IPE). This introductory essay situates the book in relation to the wider concerns of historical materialist IR/IPE and outlines how the contributors assess the viability of Bieler and Morton’s historical materialist project.