[Editors’ Introduction]
Situating Theory: International Relations’ Disciplinary Narratives
Christian Bueger
According to Joseph Rouse, scientific disciplines are narrative configurations.
Scientific practices and achievements are intelligible if they have a place within enacted
narratives that constitute a developing field of knowledge. Narratives give coherence to a
practice by giving meaning to action, providing a connection between the past, present
and future, and offering an interpretative template for adjusting to new situations. They
reduce complexity by giving a general outline of how things hang together. Narratives
also provide a moral compass and induce standards of evaluation. They are means of
distinguishing path-breaking academic products from those to be refuted, and the
upcoming star from the dead duck. Narratives are continuously re-written, they develop
and transform, and there is an ongoing struggle over them. What is common among
researchers is a field of interpretative conflict rather than any uncontested commitments
about beliefs, values, standards, or meanings.
Drawing on such an understanding of disciplines as narrative, in this contribution
I reconstruct the development of core narratives of the discipline. Drawing on a narrative
analysis of core IR texts I show how over time different imaginaries of the discipline
have prevailed. I investigate what the place of “theory” within these imaginaries is. The
analysis reveals how the disciplinary understanding of what a theory is and what it is for
has gradually changed. The contemporary situation is characterized by a multiplicity of
different narratives, which conflict and overlap. In summary the contribution provides a
new matrix of what the discipline is and where it is developing.
IR’s Limited Sociological
Interdisciplinarity
Jonathan Joseph
Imagination:
Disciplinary
Blocks
on
This contribution looks at the troubled relationship IR has with the wider social
sciences, and in particular, with arguments from sociology and philosophy of social
science. Why it is that IR borrows from the other social sciences, but has hardly any
influence of its own? This contribution argues that IR needs to confront its own
weaknesses and insecurities, and suggests that while these are partly attributable to the
discipline’s brief history, they remain evident even in more radical forms of
contemporary IR. The piece traces these problems to the discipline’s own selfconsciousness, and argues that IR has always been marked by a sense of inferiority and a
lack of confidence in its own distinctiveness. These problems are addressed through a
focus on three particular issues: the hindrance of IR’s own internal history; the desire to
assert IR’s scientific credentials; and the desire of opponents to appear more
sociologically and philosophically sophisticated.
The first two problems are well known, but nevertheless ongoing issues. IR is a
recent discipline that lacks the firm foundations and classical heritage of other social
sciences. This would not be a problem if IR was comfortable playing an auxiliary role to
1
political science. But its main advocates have instead insisted on its distinctiveness at the
cost of disembedding it from a wider political and social context. The consequences of
IR’s desire for scientific respectability are also well known. The desire for scientificity,
combined with the desire for disciplinarity has resulted in the mystifying levels of
analysis problem and the stultifying system-unit dichotomy that are unable to account for
the ebb and flow of the social world.
If all of this makes IR less sociological, then the third problem lies with those who
would wish to bring the social back in. The attempt to import new ways of thinking under
the banner of postpositivism has had an interesting impact on IR, but without many
consequences beyond the discipline. Indeed, it could be argued that the main effect of the
postpositivist turn has been to reinforce IR’s self-consciousness rather than challenge it.
The attempt to appear more sociologically or philosophically sophisticated might have
irritated some of the mainstream theorists, but has done little to catch the attention of
those beyond the boundaries of the discipline. IR’s turn to philosophy and sociology has
been founded on embracing approaches that are already well established elsewhere.
Unfortunately their advocates do the sociological turn little favours with an often
instrumental use of imported work. At the same time, IR has proved unable to make
much of a contribution to major sociological debates in those areas where it should have
more to say.
It is easy to blame the lack of sociological thinking on the discipline’s history and
its striving for scientificity, but in doing so such criticisms run the risk of contributing to,
rather than challenging, the discipline’s introspection. An alternative approach would be
to start with the awareness that the failings of IR are as much a consequence of the
failings of our own sociological imagination.
Inglorious Discipline: Un-authentic Theorizing, or the Art of Problematizing
Xavier Guillaume
IR theory seems to suffer from at least two potentially terminal illnesses. On the
one hand, it does not seem to generate and influence reflections in other disciplines and
should thus ask itself the question of its relevance (Buzan and Little). On the other, it
lives under the nostalgic illusion of a past better health when there were Debates, the
contemporary absence of which is a sign of an ever declining health, the harbinger of its
own end (EJIR panels at the ISA 2012). These different diagnoses start from the
(epistemic) assumption that IR theory, and theory in general, is limited to its constitutive
role in defining a discipline. This has a double consequence. On the one hand, it leads to
a (de)limitation of (sound) theoretical knowledge production to an ability to generate
clearly demarcated boundaries between proponents and opponents of specific theoretical
frameworks competing for the explanans championship. On the other, IR is supposed to
produce an authentically IR knowledge that, though partly influenced by non-IR sources,
should gain a form of autonomy from other disciplines, and thus a form of legitimacy, in
order to become an independent form of knowledge production: a discipline. This
contribution argues on the contrary that IR theory can potentially be a vibrant endeavour
in producing a cross-fertilising field of knowledge production precisely because it should
not seek to ossify (anymore?) along disciplinarian front lines and because it should seek
to expand the problematizations linked to the international beyond the (de)limitations
2
imposed by the logics behind the establishment of these front lines. IR theory's ability to
borrow, to cross-fetilize, to be un-authentic, should on the contrary be celebrated.
This contribution thus starts by highlighting the problems identified by those
harbingering the death or the end of IR theory and locates their epistemic stance
regarding the importance of discipline for IR theory. It then turns to a discussion of
discipline in terms of sociology of knowledge and how IR theory should rather be
understood as participating in a field of knowledge production. It finally ends on the
necessity of theory to principally be an endeavour of cross-fertilising problematizations
rather than one of authentic apocriticality (Meyer): that is to participate in a form of
knowledge production that seeks to resolve questions by suppressing them.
“For Someone and For Some Purpose” – Round Two: IR Theory as Situated
Political Praxis
Inanna Hamati-Ataya
The latest round of disciplinary discussions about the status of IR Theory has
revealed a generational gap between the initiators of the various post-positivist “turns” in
the discipline and their inheritors among the youngest generation of IR scholars engaging
theory at different levels. Against the ever-confident position of their opponents in the
positivist camp, the pioneers of critical IR display a certain pessimism and defeatism,
which seem to be the product of a paradox: the requirements/achievements of “theory-asunderstanding” are still assessed according to the standards/expectations of “theory-asexplanation.” Moreover, the engagement with the “knowledge-power nexus” has merely
exacerbated everyone’s awareness of the discipline’s own permeability to the political,
thereby undoubtedly leading it to better metatheoretical problematisations, but without
significantly empowering it as a meaningful social endeavour. Post-positivists’
problematic relation to the reality of power is visible in their recurrent frustrated
acknowledgments of the persistent dominance of their intellectual opponents in both the
academic and policy-making realms. What is incomprehensible, however, is why they, of
all scholars, should expect the discipline, and the world, to behave in any other way.
This paper therefore argues that despite an intense engagement with the
knowledge-power problématique, a certain naiveté still plagues our understanding of
knowledge and “theory,” and that the praxical function of “critical” theory has steadily
been diverted from the realm of social action to the realm of disciplinary
opposition/debating. This scholastic enactment of the critical ethos has diffused and
diluted the political meaning of theory, and is only worsened by two additional
disciplinary processes: the co-optation of “dissident” theories as “legitimate contenders”
in the field, and the recent calls for a disciplinary “pluralism” that annihilates the critical
project by incorporating it into the neat, depoliticised categories of textbooks and
analytical thought.
The paper suggests, then, that “dissident” IR has only addressed half the problem
that a critical engagement with power brings forth: what theory is, but not what it does. It
shows, firstly, that a praxeological approach to theory (theory-as-practice) takes Cox’s
proposition to its logical and empirical consequences, by revealing how theories have
different political meanings and effects for different peoples in different socio-historical
contexts; and consequently, that theory should necessarily be understood as a form of
3
situated political praxis whose realm of action – the world and the discipline – is
ultimately governed by purpose (values) and conflict, rather than neutrality/consensus
and peaceful coexistence.
Concepts as Causes?
Felix Berenskoetter
Starting from the Kantian position that our mental frames give meaning to the
world around us, and assuming that despite post-(positivist, modern, colonial, etc)
interventions concepts remain indispensable tools for analyses, this contribution explores
how and in what sense they (can) have ‘causal’ effects.
The paper first lays out different understandings of ‘cause’, a tricky concept in
and of itself, reflected in attempts to make a distinction between ‘understanding’ and
‘explaining’, or ‘constitutive’ and ‘explanatory’ theorizing. Next, it turns to the idea that
concepts are not one-dimensional but can have multiple meanings, as expressed in W. B.
Gallie’s notion of ‘essentially contested concepts’. Consequently, deciding on a particular
reading and drawing conceptual boundaries in one way rather than another is a
constitutive act. On this basis, I look at three ways in which concepts can be seen as
having causal (explanatory) effects.
First, there are concepts whose meaning is intrinsically linked to the notion of
‘cause’. Here the paper focuses on the concept of ‘power’, a concept that on the most
basic level refers to the ability to make a difference. The interesting observation in this
example is that different conceptualizations of power seem to carry different connotations
of ‘cause’. Second, I discuss the role of concepts in theories beyond their function as a
heuristic device. While it is the theory that links concepts into an argumentative causal
chain, our understanding of a particular concept has significant implications for how the
argument unfolds. This is exemplified by looking at the concepts of war/peace in the
‘democratic peace’ debate. Third, I engage the view that some concepts are logically
more ‘fundamental’ than others and, hence, require analysts to take a step back in the
causal chain. One concept for which such a claim has been made is ‘identity’, which
according to the constructivist mantra of the 1990s, precedes and therefore can be used to
explain interests. I will critically interrogate this claim to suggest that it is flawed.
Overall, the discussion stresses that concepts also inform practical reasoning and
decision-making and, hence, that the effects discussed play out not just on an academic
level but also in the world of policy-makers. I conclude by reflecting on whether it is
ethically preferable to precisely define concepts or to leave them sufficiently vague.
Living in the End of (Theory) Times? IR Theory and the Pluralist Mood
Vassilis Paipais
Recent meta-theoretical and historiographical work in IR theory has raised serious
objections about the utility of theoretical labels, such as realism, liberalism,
constructivism and so on, around which the discipline has been traditionally organised.
After the rise of the revisionist disciplinary historiography we have come to realise that at
worst they function as disciplinary tools of distributing authority within the discipline and
at best they operate as pedagogical devices, ideal-types that have to be used with caution
4
but never taken to reflect coherent theoretical categories. What one sees here arising very
clearly is a feeling of frustration with reification of canonical works, with the extremism
that the attachment to traditions as actual theories breeds and with the fanatical search for
theoretical purity that turns research traditions from being useful organising devices to
secular theologies. A form of Nietzschean perspectivism seems to be the order of the day
operating as the hallmark of scientificity in late- or postmodernity. Bracketing
foundationalist claims is inaugurated as the only viable and democratic solution to the
irresolvability of competing ontological and epistemological positions. Since access to
the validity of foundationalist claims is impossible, the argument goes, the best one can
do is adopt a pragmatic view that enables us to get on with our research while isolating
any debilitating or contentious philosophy of science debates that cannot be
authoritatively decided. However, the problem with that view is that, in principle, it still
allows for the possibility of any particular foundationalist claim being ‘correct’ or ‘real’
in some deep ontological sense even though that ‘knowledge’ is inaccessible to our
cognitive capacities (in other words, this is not pluralism but relativistic agnosticism).
This paper argues that we need to think harder about the philosophical grounds of
this ‘new pluralism’. It starts with a discussion of recent ‘pluralist’ work in IR and then
investigates the philosophical grounds of such pluralism. By way of contesting the
consistency of its post-foundationalism it offers a diagnosis and a warning. The fact that
foundationalism is under attack is a sign for optimism not anxiety. However, we still have
to be wary of the complacency leading to another (liberal) orthodoxy in the making
appropriate to our late modern sensibilities.
Why Does (IR) Pluralism Matter?
Daniel Levine and David McCourt
IR is deep in the throes of a reflexive turn. The theory/practice nexus and the role
played by IR scholars in the construction and constitution of world politics are ubiquitous
themes. IR theorists have drawn in invaluable ways on the sociology of science and the
sociology of knowledge in this task, much enriching the field’s reflexive imagination and
conceptual vocabulary. Implicit in much of this work, however, is the idea that IR should
be more pluralistic: that is, that the predominance of any one form of knowledge has
negative consequences for the theory and practice of international relations. While
common, this presumption has largely escaped scholarly scrutiny. Does the theoretical
and empirical make-up of IR in different national contexts actually have any effect on
policy-making? Just as importantly, is pluralism to be defended only on the grounds of
more policy-useful research? Why does pluralism matter?
This paper therefore has two elements. It first addresses the question of why
pluralism matters from empirical, theoretical, and ethical perspectives. It asks how the
relationship between theory and practice could be tested and understood, in empirical and
theoretical terms. The very form the question takes suggests a positivist methodological
approach: to systematically relate academic pluralism or its absence to public policy. But
is such an approach justified? Could the relationship be more diffuse than it might gauge?
Secondly, and consequently, the paper asks does it matter whether (IR) pluralism
matters? Is there not still an ethical imperative for IR theorists to “chasten” their
knowledge claims, even if they might never have a significant impact on policy-making?
5
Graffic Responses: Beyond IR’s ‘Understanding’ of Resistance
Sarah Jamal
Furthering a post-positivist logic, this paper proposes the necessity of ‘queering’
academic work through upsetting the theory/case binary divide. This piece comes from
locating my own work on the Palestinian graffiti movement as a way to theorize
resistance in a department of International Relations. Questioning my own relationship to
the discipline of IR through my work on graffiti, this piece is about the need to look at
political phenomena differently, in a way that upsets and complicates the way we ‘do,’
teach, and think about theory.
Using concepts from graffiti, Ahmed, Deleuze, Butler, and Segwick, I ask
whether academia can be re/oriented or ‘queered’ in a way that allows a consideration
and incorporation of visual mediums, providing new avenues for social science research
and pedagogy in a way that addresses the ineffectiveness of IR to provide a mechanism
or space for social change, activism, or politics in scholarship and the classroom. How
critical can teaching, research and thought be when it is structured (and thereby
disciplined) in our current model of academia? One that is inherently oriented in a
particular way that privileges not only certain ways of teaching and learning but also
ways of thinking. Can academia be queered in a way that alters the discipline at its
foundations; or to put it differently, can we queer the way we ‘do’ and teach theory
through alternate methods and presentations of thought?
Do Our Theoretical Endeavours 'Impact'? Academic Capitalism and IR's
Research Impact
Helen Louise Turton
Numerous discussions have taken place recently concerning the status of IR’s
theoretical endeavours, which have once again raised questions about the status of the
discipline as a whole. This paper seeks to situate these claims within the changing
academic climate and assess them through the lens of ‘impact’. According to Ole Wæver,
there is an academic hierarchy within IR and the sub-field of IR theory is at its apex,
suggesting that IR’s theories and the body of work produced by theorists ‘impact’ upon
the discipline more than other sub-fields, due to their high citation rates. However, given
the current academic climate where terms such as ‘academic capitalism’ and the
McUniversity feature prominently in discourse, can we still claim that our theories hold
an academic premium and ‘impact’ more than other categories of IR scholarship? This
paper aims to unpack the buzzword of impact and to look at the effects that the drive for
‘impact’ is having on the discipline as a whole. It addresses whether indicators of
academic success (e.g., Journal Impact Factor and H-index) continue to recognize
theoretical work to a greater degree, or whether scholars are being encouraged to focus
more explicitly on certain empirical sites in order to have a greater ‘impact’ upon policymakers. The paper will also critically assess how certain indicators are being formulated
and question whether they are stifling innovation and marginalizing certain forms of
scholarship.
6
Firstly, I provide a review of the current academic climate within the UK,
focusing on the rise of corporate universities and relationships of academic capitalism, in
order to frame the conversations surrounding ‘impact’ and show why this word has
achieved such importance. Secondly, I examine the concept of impact itself, focusing on
how the UK Research Excellence Framework defines it. The concept has both an internal
and external dimension. The latter relates to the impact on the policy sphere, and the
former on the academic community. I examine these two realms to assess whether we can
claim that our theories are ‘impacting’. Moving from the external dimension to the
internal, I focus, in the latter case, on the Journal Impact Factor (JIF), to explore how
influential it is and how it has not only become a measure of the impact of journals but
can also be used as a tool of evaluation for individuals, departments, funding grants and
more. I conclude by assessing the overall impact of ‘impact’ on the discipline itself.
7