ABSTRACT
The academic discipline of IR has had a checkered history of relating to the practice of international relations. It emerged as a distinct branch of social science early this century in the wake of the pervasive societal depression and feeling of senselessness that the First World War engendered and has since evolved according to the atmosphere and context that political events have created.1 It could be argued that this reactive character of the discipline renders it susceptible to expansive reformulation from an ecological perspective. However, the current chapter will describe the determining influences that have defined the space in which we now participate academically. The exclusive epistemological and methodological parameters of IR are shown to be structurally inimical to adaptation to ecological principles and dismissive of ontological realities.
