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The International Relations discipline has recently witnessed a wave of stocktakings and they surprisingly often follow the narrative that the discipline once revolved around all-encompassing great debates, which, either neatly or claustrophobically depending on the stocktaker, organized the discipline. Today, most stocktakers argue, International Relations has moved beyond great debate — the very symbol of the discipline — and is undergoing fragmentation. For some scholars, fragmentation is caused by the lack of any great structuring debate and a proliferation of less-than-great theories. To others, fragmentation is a result of the divisive great debates themselves. When stocktakers portray fragmentation as novelty, however, they neglect the prominent historical record of this fragmentation narrative. By rereading stocktaking exercises from the 1940s to today, this article argues that the stocktaking genre — past and present — is conducive to seeing the past as more simple, coherent and ordered while the present is marked by fragmentation and cacophony. Neat summaries of the academic scene in one's own time are quite rare. Few stocktakers ever identified one conversation/debate driving the discipline, not during the first, second, third or fourth debates — and those who did disagreed on what the main trenches and its warriors were. The article concludes by arguing that International Relations' recurrent anxieties about its fragmentation beg questions, not about whether it is real this time, but about the disciplinary politics of this stocktaking narrative. Stocktaking exercises are never only objective descriptions of a current state of disarray; they are political moves in the discipline. Dissatisfied scholars employ this narrative to lead the discipline in certain directions, often quite idiosyncratic ones that reflect and serve their own position in International Relations.

Forest fragmentation will inevitably continue over the coming years, especially in developing economies. This book provides a cutting edge review of the multi-disciplinary sciences related to studies of global forest fragmentation. It specifically addresses cross-cutting themes from both an ecological and a social sciences perspective. The ultimate goal of Global Forest Fragmentation is to provide a detailed scientific base to support future forest landscape management and planning to meet global environmental and societal needs.

. Over recent years the several aspects of European integration began to arouse a deep academic interest, and this interest is quite versatile. Political, economic, legal, and many other aspects of European integration are being studied under the "European studies" label in the world. It should be noted that the interest is well justified. Numerous studies in the field of European integration as well as developed curriculum and disciplines, research papers that become more widespread in Uzbekistan and Central Asia, prove it. Hence the integration processes within the European Union (EU) are the focus of attention, the study of different aspects of the European integration processes and political, economic, and cultural cooperation of the Republic of Uzbekistan with the EU, to investigate the EU energy policy, how to export to the common European market, cooperation in the field of education, in ecological security, legal approximation and other subjects may be defined as priorities of research activities in Uzbekistan. The EU studies is not a new direction of research and teaching activities in Uzbekistan at all. The first research attempts date back to the middle of the 90s of the last century. Nowadays the Uzbek universities such as the University of World Economy and Diplomacy, Westminster International University in Tashkent, and Tashkent State University of Law offer dozens of EU-related courses. This article is dedicated to the current state of EU law studies in Uzbekistan. The author tries to explain the importance of EU law education and outlines the challenges that EU law education faces in Uzbekistan. Practical recommendations are given in the conclusion on the further development of EU law education in the country.

Rainer Eisfeld's book highlights the merits of socio-historical research into topics infrequently covered by mainstream political science. Directing attention to the need for carefully scrutinizing the convenient "truths" of established - post-Nazi, post-Communist - political narratives, its chapters encourage reflection of the discipline's history and state of the art. A companion volume to the 2012 book entitled Radical Approaches to Political Science: Roads Less Traveled (also published by Barbara Budrich), this collection is likewise based on an approach to political science informed by a theory of participatory pluralism and grounded in history. The chapters focus on the discipline's fragmentation and its retreat from public debate; on the varying roles of political science and international relations as champions of more or less democracy; on normative and analytical concepts developed by Hannah Arendt, Klaus von Beyme, and Robert A. Dahl; on the deconstruction of the "Peenemünde Legend" about the unspoiled rule of science at the Third Reich's missile development center; on reasons for the Peenemünde engineers' actual complicity in the exploitation of concentration camp labor to mass-produce their V-2 missile. "Rainer Eisfeld's leadership in the fields of pluralism and analysis of the discipline in the International Political Science Association means that he has quite a background to share with us in this, his most recent, collection of essays." John Trent

Interdisciplinary work avoids specialisation's growing fragmentation, but it also loses the political advantage of setting criteria and patrolling boundaries. Research that faces the challenge of bringing together concepts from several areas (e.g. in deep ecology, health studies, and natural resource management) is often criticised for blurring distinctions, for being unscientific, and for being conceptually trite. In addition, disciplinary work produces advantages for its practitioners which those who attempt more open approaches rarely enjoy. Besides epistemic authority and public legitimacy, such advantages include a degree of control over resources, clearer standards for publishing, and a critical mass of disciplined members who protect the turf of their specialisation. How can interdisciplinary work in future best play the political game? Should interdisciplinary scholars be between the boundaries of other areas, exhorting those protected within to choose relevance and come out and do as we do? Do we need boundaries for interdisciplinary work, carefully and vigorously controlled, so that we too can form distinctions based on criteria for methodological rigour? Is there a place for full theoretical awareness of what distinguishes interdisciplinary work? If interdisciplinarity is to mobilise support, does it need, just like any discipline, its own self-regulating guild?

Knowledge management (KM) research lacks a common conceptual core; it is cross‐disciplinary, addresses a wide variety of phenomena, and has difficulty distinguishing itself from many related areas of research. The result is a fragmented field that is itself artificially split from the related literature on organizational learning. KM may be progressing through a predictable life‐cycle that could end in collapse of the KM concept unless researchers can develop more integrative core theories of learning‐ and knowledge‐related phenomena in organizations. The diverse body of organizational learning and knowledge management research provides an impressive foundation for the synthesis of such broader theories of learning and knowledge that are creative, new, and integrative.

The disciplinary boundaries among geography, political science, sociology, & economics have become increasingly permeable & fluid. As more & more scientific innovations occur at the intersections among these specialties, traditional assumptions about research paradigms seem increasingly confining. While research that draws from more than one disciplinary tradition is generally referred to as interdisciplinary, this term is misleading. Because whole disciplines are not literally being combined, the term hybridization is a better description of the processes of specialization & recombination that are taking place in the social sciences. 2 Photographs, 58 References. Adapted from the source document.