Place: Tulane University

Date: January 10Ð12, 2004.

Organizer: Martyn P. Thompson (Political Science, Tulane). Contact:martynpt@aol.com

The location, timing, and theme of the proposed Conference for the Study of Political Thought are suggested by its occasion: the 100th anniversary of the founding of the American Political Science Association. On December 30th, 1903, a group of 25 distinguished American economists, historians, lawyers, sociologists, and other university educators met in the Howard Tilton Library of Tulane University to found a “national association that should comprehend within its sphere of interest the entire field of Political Science.” On the occasion of APSA's centenary, an equally distinguished, similarly interdisciplinary group of scholars will meet at Tulane University to reflect on the character, presuppositions, past achievements, and future prospects of the “scientific” study of politics. This time, however, the group will be as much international as American and its analyses of “sciences of politics” will be culturally and historically much broader than has usually been the case.

The conference will address the same conceptual issues as confronted the founders themselves: what is the nature of political science, what is its place in university curricula, and what practical consequences might reasonably be expected to flow from its pursuit? The commemorative conference will address these questions from the vantage point of a hundred years experience of APSA and in the light of recurrent controversies (both inside and outside of APSA) about the changing nature of American political science. In particular, the conference is designed to add two missing or neglected dimensions to the current controversies within APSA. First, a more appropriate historical dimension, one that places the experience of the last hundred years within the context of endeavors to create scientific disciplines of political studies during the last 700 years. Second, the conference hopes to add to the broad dimension of cultural politics in American political science with respect to change and continuity. In this second dimension, particular attention will be paid to the cultural politics of political science as envisaged and practiced by the founders of APSA, and the reception, reworking and, on occasion, rejection of American political science by relevant constituencies in Europe and Asia.