(Re-)Engaging Gramsci: a response to Germain and Kenny

Abstract

In a recent issue of the Review, Randall Germain and Michael Kenny issued a serious challenge to neo-Gramscian scholarship in international studies,Randall D. Germain and Michael Kenny, 'Engaging Gramsci: International Relations Theory and the New Gramscians', Review of International Studies, 24:1 (1998), pp. 3-21. claiming that 'the Italian school's appropriation of Gramsci is far more conceptually problematic than they [neo-Gramscians] acknowledge, and that their use of his framework is difficult to sustain with respect to the scholarship devoted to his ideas'.Ibid., p. 3. In their critical probing of the neo-Gramscian IR literature, Germain and Kenny focus most closely upon two issues: Gramsci's ambiguous and contested legacy and the difficulty of establishing any 'definitive interpretation' of his work; and the appropriateness of attempting to understand transnational social relations in terms of a broadly Gramscian concept of 'civil society'. I will discuss each in turn.