Robert W. Cox was born in Montreal Canada in 1926. Following a Master’s degree in history from McGill University, he worked in the International Labor Organisation (ILO) for over 20 years. Cox then turned to academia and taught at Columbia University, New York, before taking up a Professorship at York University, Toronto, between 1977 and 1992. He was made a member of the Order of Canada in 2014.
Along with Susan Strange, Cox is considered one of the leading figures in International Political Economy (IPE) and a leading critical theorist in International Relations (IR) theory. His work is marked by a unique historicist approach to world order and political economy. His historical mode of thought always remained heterodox and independent of any specific school or tradition.
His academic work spans over five major single authored books, perhaps the most widely read is Production, Power, and World Order: Social Forces in the Making of History (1987) that examined power relations in production and its effect on the organisation of society and world politics. His two articles, published in Millennium: Journal of International Studies, ‘Social Forces, States and World Orders’ (1981) and ‘Gramsci, Hegemony and International Relations’ (1983), were pivotal in turning the discipline toward critical thinking: the former offering a new critical theory beyond problem-solving, and the other introducing the ideas of Antonio Gramsci to the discipline. His later work remained historicist in its approach and was concerned with civilisations, coexistence and the importance of plurality in the future of humanity.
We welcome any further tributes to the legacy of Robert W. Cox here. Please email me: sbrincat@usc.edu.au
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Anna Agathangelou
It is with great sadness that I write of the passing of one of the Global North leading intellectual luminaries, whose work offers a transformational framework for our times. I write this tribute from York University, his former place of work.
As a graduate student I was thrilled beyond words that Bob articulated for us critical theory, problematising both the orthodoxy of the world order and the dominant approach of problem-solving. More so, and years later, I discovered that beyond “eccentric”—the word that Susan Strange used to describe him—Bob was a seeker of insight, an intellectual whose politics pushed him to innovate the problem-solving approach to thinking IPE and IR as well as world order. Even during the worst of times, he did not shy away from taking unique positions, such as refusing to accept the disciplinary divisions and instead pushing for a broader intellectual sensitivity to dialogue, differences, and the materiality of the world.
Bob was a champion of a multiple worlds’ understanding. He believed that critical theory and history were lenses for seeking insight about how people, international organisations, civilisations and hegemonies work. In operation that meant he understood that the world is an assemblage of multiple communities and different peoples in distinct places who are to be respected for their differences. The state, for instance, he told us, is “made up of combinations of ethnic/religious and social forces, which more often than not […]
