ABSTRACT
International Relations (IR), area studies, and the other major social sciences are products of Anglo-American early twentieth-century hegemonic elite knowledge networks aimed at securing elite and imperial-state interests in a world rocked by war, revolution and change, particularly after World War I (WWI). The main contours of IR are hardly the product of a liberal-pluralistic free market of ideas nor even of inward-looking disciplinary developments, but of elite attempts to construct a "scientific" discipline capable of comprehending and managing a changing world to protect western (imperial) interests. This represented an attempt at ruling-class intellectual and political hegemony against the forces of radical change brought about by capitalist industrialization, urbanization and mass immigration, especially in the United States. The elite knowledge network, frequently funded by pioneering American foundations such as the Ford, Rockefeller, Carnegie and other corporate "philanthropies", plays a decisive role in this process.
