ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book focuses on the increased demands made of international relations (IR) scholars to have policy relevance and engage with the world of practitioners. It considers the pros and cons of IR scholars remaining in their intellectual towers and rejecting engagement with public and policy audiences. The book explores Indian IR attempts to move beyond realism as the dominant theoretical paradigm. It shows how roots of IR's challenges lie less with IR itself and more with the nature of modern sciences as a whole. The book charts the often-uneasy relationship between IR and international political economy (IPE), equally often-uneasy relationship between IR and feminism, and developments of feminist IR in the past two decades. It analyzes the lack of attention given to methodology in IR – particularly within critical approaches IR – and argues that the future of the discipline requires a "methodological turn".
