‘Greatly exaggerated’: the death of EU studies–new regionalism dialogue? A reply to Jørgensen and Valbjørn

Abstract

In a recent piece in this journal Jørgensen and Valbjørn develop a typology of intellectual dialogue across fields that yields rather negative conclusions about the prospects for sustainable dialogue between ‘European studies’ and the ‘new regionalism’. This response disputes this pessimistic conclusion. First, it is argued that while their derivation of models of dialogue is impressive, it is nonetheless incomplete. Using Jørgensen and Valbjørn’s premises, the article derives a ‘market’ mode of dialogue that represents a challenge to their assumption that dialogue will tend towards hierarchy. Second, the article accepts that there are important ‘sociology of knowledge’ impediments to effective dialogue within political science and International Relations, but maintains that Jørgensen and Valbjørn fail to work through the question of ‘dialogue between whom?’ The article argues that methodological division is the most significant impediment to dialogue, but maintains that within-methodology dialogue is more than viable in the case under scrutiny in this debate. Third, having established these general parameters of disagreement, the article moves to a number of more particular criticisms of the assumptions made by Jørgensen and Valbjørn about extant calls for dialogue between scholars in these two fields.