ABSTRACT
This chapter outlines how academics from the Amsterdam School (AS) have informed our analyses. It critically deals with the notion that the AS constitutes a distinctive approach before warning against the very notion of 'school' formation. The chapter shows that, rather than employing the same set of inherited concepts, critical scholars today should embrace wider debates to offer a broader historical materialist perspective on the geopolitics of global capitalism. Embarking on the academic careers at the end of the 1990s, AS work provided a breath of fresh air in a situation where discussions of globalization were dominated by exchanges between state-centric neorealists and market-focused liberals. For Andreas Bieler, an article by Otto Holman proved crucial for his analysis of Austria's and Sweden's accession to the European Union (EU) in 1995. While Andreas Bieler already recognized that social class fractions are the main collective actors to be investigated, how to identify them in concrete empirical research was another matter.
