From Intellectual to Socio-History

Researching Everyday Geopolitical Imaginaries

Bibliographic Data

ID8251978
AuthorsXavier Guillaume (0000-0002-9255-1680, University of Groningen, corresponding author)
Year2026
Volume6
Issue2
Publication date2026-03-17
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueGlobal Studies Quarterly (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 2634-3797 • E-ISSN: 2634-3797
PublisherOxford University Press (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1093/isagsq/ksag043
OpenAlexW7140221027
LanguageEN
References cited27

International Relations (IR) historiographic imaginary is largely one of elites and elite practices, as reflected in dominant approaches to geopolitical imaginaries. IR’s prevailing historiographic imaginary privileges “intensified” politics—wars, diplomacy, and crises—and in doing so marginalizes mundane and non-elite worlds. Enriching IR’s historiographic imaginary requires a socio-history of the international that foregrounds the everyday. Drawing on French socio-histoire and feminist historiographies, this approach draws attention away from “intensification” to the “densified” social, cultural, and economic relations that constitute the everyday-international. Such invitation expands IR’s historical imaginary beyond “high politics” to include ordinary traces and artefacts that reveal how people “make history” in diffuse and often invisible ways. Building on the notion of social imaginaries, I briefly illustrate how IR’s historiographic imaginary may expand to more vernacular and cultural representations of the international circulating through media, art, games, or literature. Embracing everyday sources—such as colonial board games, advertisements, or ephemera—opens a historical window onto the socio-historical textures through which the international is lived and reproduced

Colonialism · CONTEST · Elite · Everyday life · Geopolitics · The Imaginary · Vernacular · Gender, Security, and Conflict · Globalization and political ideologies · Historical Gender and Feminism Studies

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