Methodological Diversity

 Last week's post began with I am depressed; this week's ought to begin with I am unsure.

In Conduct of Inquiry in IR, Jackson argues that neopositivism, critical realism, analyticism, and reflexivism each contain fundamental assumptions about (1) the “hook-up” between the world and the researcher’s mind, and (2) commitments regarding empiricism and observation. These four ideal-typical philosophical ontological “stances” are “themselves incapable of being definitely justified” (Jackson, 2010: 196). These underlying philosophical ontological components of each of Jackson’s four wagers do not, however, seem equal. As a component of critical realism transfactualism relates to “undetectable properties of both observable and unobservable objects” (Jackson, 2010: 89). Within reflexivism, however, transfactualism relates “not [to] knowledge of specific outcomes”… but to “disclose historical forces and factors shaping the present” (Jackson, 2010: 160). Do the meanings of philosophical ontological components related to empiricism therefore depend on previously made assumptions regarding mind-world “hook-up”?

The remainder of this discussion is promised on the following: I do not dispute the need for pluralism, but I do not necessarily see how such pluralism should take form in practice. If what Jackson recommends is that we apply ontological assumptions based on the research questions we ask and the sort of knowledge we try to produce, is it possible to overcome personal biases among researchers regarding which knowledge-production efforts are most useful? If for instance, we concede that neopositivism makes certain assumptions regarding the mind, the world, and empiricism that align with a particular research question, is it possible to put on the neopositivist hat for that project and then take it off again when another question approaches that may not be so well aligned with neopositivist assumptions? Basically, can Jackson’s pluralism occur within one individual researcher? Or must a researcher be rigid in her/his commitment to particular philosophical ontological assumptions when asking certain questions, albeit open-minded enough to other researchers having different assumptions?

As Banks and O’Mahoney (2010) remark: “the practice of IR rarely fits neatly into one of his four philosophical-ontological boxes” (12), Jackson’s book is at once an ideal-typifying exercise (cf. Jackson, 2010: 37) and a denaturalizing exercise (cf. Jackson, 2010: 43-44). Are there research endeavors that are so complex that they straddle multiple philosophical ontological realms? It might be an interesting challenge to conceptualize other examples of possible unclear combinations across ideal-typified philosophical ontologies.  

On a slightly different, but related, note, consider Grynaviski’s discussion of Jackson’s position regarding Waltz’s ideal-typing: “There is no meaningful sense in which a falsifiable hypothesis generalizing across multiple cases might be developed because these coincidental causes vary by case. Therefore, the only plausible test of Waltz’s theory, using his “own clearly-declared allegiance to such a methodology,” (2010: 151) is to focus on specific cases to see if the pressures at work in Waltz’s theory help structure explanations” (Grynaviski, 2010: 7). If we accept Jackson’s account of Waltz’s work, must we also accept that it is inappropriate to convert Waltz’s declared methodological allegiance into another methodological paradigm for our own use? What I am trying to get at with this question relates to the manner in which knowledge is intertextually produced. New authors produce new knowledge partially by reproducing claims from earlier works through the lens of their own perspective and through the synthesis of multiple texts. If that’s the case, what’s so wrong about taking Waltz’s theory, accepting that it is rooted in analyticist assumptions, and interpreting it using different methodological assumptions to see whether different types of knowledge-claims can also be derived from it? Is there something about philosophical ontological assumptions that precludes such intertextual reinterpretation of theories grounded in specific methodological foundations? (Or is this just something neopositivists do--somehow intrinsic to their philosophical ontological stance (cf. Jackson, 2010 symposium: 22)?)

After all, I do not see Jackson arguing that we should not break down neopositivists’ testable conjectures and create ideal-types from them; nor that we ought to not use the theories posited by both categories of dualists and reflexively reformulate them in order to achieve an emancipatory agenda through denaturalization. In fact, to me it seems that reflexivism all but necessitates that we reposition claims that are bound to other philosophical ontologies! (Is the only difference that neopositivists are the ones going around criticizing work rooted in other methodologies as not living up to neopositivists' own assumptions?) So let me rephrase my previous question: Is there something about philosophical ontological assumptions that precludes such intertextual reinterpretation of theories grounded in specific methodological foundations, or is this critique of neopositivists reframing Waltz just a shot at neopositivists’ dominance in the field?

Towards Global IR

I am depressed.
Nothing in the readings this week particularly surprised me - especially with regard to the dearth of 'radical' IR in top syllabii and reading lists in the US (Biersteker). And yet still I am depressed.

Why do I have to be 'radical'? Why do those of us who acknowledge (albeit perhaps imperfectly) that there is an entire world/worlds out there beyond 'Anglo-national' Relations get lumped together in this negatively connoted 'extreme' box? Because I think we can agree that the label as issued from without has the meaning associated with the derogatory synonyms of the definitions below.

radical

adjective

1 radical reform is long overdue: thoroughgoing, thorough, complete, total, entire, absolute, utter, comprehensive, exhaustive, root-and-branch, sweeping, far-reaching, wide-ranging, extensive, profound, drastic, severe, serious, major, desperate, stringent, violent, forceful, rigorous, draconian. ANTONYMS superficial.

2 the apparently radical differences between logic and natural language: fundamental, basic, essential, quintessential; inherent, innate, structural, deep-seated, intrinsic, organic, constitutive, root. ANTONYMS minor.

3 a radical political movement: revolutionary, progressive, reforming, reformist, revisionist, progressivist; leftist, left-wing, socialist; extreme, extremist, fanatical, militant, diehard; informal red; derogatory Bolshevik. ANTONYMS conservative, reactionary; moderate.

Personally, I actually like being a 'radical' regardless of connotation. But its use still says a great deal about the state of IR today. Does it have to be the radical's job to 'decenter IR'?

I am also depressed because I find Tickner & Wæver's introduction particularly obtuse and difficult to digest (made even more depressing when I read that they envision it as a perfect reading for undergrads!). If I - as a fellow 'radical' - cannot wrap my head around their discussion of the sociology of science, how are others who do not share my proclivity for language, reflexivity, and social theory going to appreciate this as a viable alternative mindset? Are we becoming so wrapped up in the way we talk ("I can use big words too!") that we forget that the ultimate object is to share insight and communicate with others? Or have we decided to simply talk to those others who already show some understanding of what we're saying?

More and more frequently I get the sense that IR scholars are unintentionally yet ironically (btw, I LOVED Alker's discussion of this and the other three tropes) using completely different languages to bemoan the separation of practices and theoretical baselines within the discipline.  We get inculcated into a particular vocabulary and perhaps forget that it isn't as straightforward to other IR scholars as it is to us. I stumble across this in my own work when I [seem to] parrot the discourse lexicon I've been taught and can't quite fathom why others don't totally get what I'm saying. Uh, duh, people: 'discursive commonplaces' are everywhere!   What?! you don't use the terms 'subject-positions,' 'imaginaries,' and 'interpolation' in your own writing?! What's wrong with you??

Seriously, though, these internal divisions in IR in some ways also mirror the spacial division that T&W describe in terms of the hegemony of Anglo-national R.  Alternative perspectives, alternative theories, get strangled and reformulated to more closely resemble what the Americans and some of their English-speaking or European brethren say it should look like (like what Patrick writes about with regard to the French in Africa). Those that continue exploring different theories of IR then become as 'radical' as those of us within the English-speaking community who think there is more out there than universal Truth, mathematical logic, and statistics, not to mention states, military power, capitalism, institutions, and all the rest.

I like the notion of 'worlding' (though I am in principle opposed to making a noun into a verb after having a very negative experience with 'journaling'). As T&W define it: "worlding is meant to invoke a situation in which we live as neither homogenized and global, nor separate and local, but place-based yet transnational" (9). And yet this makes me think of both Bleiker and Inayatollah/Blaney and their [unsatisfying] attempts to circumvent or in a way destroy the standards upon which IR scholarship gets thought and judged. There doesn't appear to be a good answer to this - or to Patrick's question about whether the colonized should adopt the colonizer's language, mores, conceptualizations of the world in order to participate in some sort of 'international' discussion.

Sometimes I feel lost. I am an American. I care about how the US acts in the world. I don't assume that what the US does matters for EVERYONE else, but I do think that - for better or worse - the US affects a lot of what goes on around the globe. Should this be the case? And if I continue to center my scholarship on the US am I propagating the prominence of the Master's tools and reconstructing the Master's house? Does it matter whether my work has an impact on this decentering or is it enough that I like what I'm doing?

Finally, the one question lingering in my mind after reading Patrick's post is this: Is there a difference between post-colonial and post-imperial? or colonial and imperial? Are we really 'post' either of these things? It seems to me that T&W's point is that not only IR but the sociology of IR is still very much colonized - yet not really acknowledged as such as it is obscured under the universalist rhetoric of rationalism, freedom, national determination, etc.

P.S. Vico's Verum et factum convertuntur is brilliant, and I might have to get this tattooed onto my hand.

Toward a Global IR

One time a Belgian journalist asked President Mobutu about the rampant corruption in the Congolese (then Zairian) administration. Speaking in French, Mobutu explained to the Belgian journalist that the word “corruption” was a French word, a French reality, and a French concept that did not necessarily apply to the Zairian/Congolese context. If we suspend Mobutu’s intellectual dishonesty, the merit of his point is that the conversation about the Congo had to be grounded in the French framework, or within the French experience for it to be intelligible for both Mobutu and his interlocutor.

In fact, often concepts such as tax, government, bureaucracy, and administration have no clear and agreed upon translation in Congolese languages. Hence, for Congolese to address these concepts they are forced to borrow European understandings, and in so borrowing they forcefully insert themselves into the theoretical and political debate of Europeans. It is like talking about the American football by using soccer’s rules. The more one attempts to explain football through soccer’s rules and experience, the more football begins to look like a deformed way of playing soccer.

Just as Tickner and Waever interrogate the social and the political environment that inform IR, an insightful understanding of the American football, as a team sport, would require accurate geo-cultural dimensions. Certainly, as Tickner and Waever demonstrate, postcolonial positioning and the sociology of science provide us with some tools to decenter IR and address the geo-cultural question. Of course, post-colonialism has some hurdles to confront. Peter Child (1997), for instance, argues that discourse of post-coloniality poses three pertinent questions of agency, temporality and spatiality. When we talk about the post-colonial whom are we talking about? What time are we referring to? And what space are we concerned with? Depending on how we answer these questions, we could all be postcolonial thinkers.  

Certainly language (with its ability to formulate concepts and frame discourse) is pertinent to Tickner and Waever, and Alker and Biesteker who are all concerned with decentering IR. However, how can we successfully decenter IR while in the global arena power tends to be concentrated and some languages are centralized? Preeminent African thinkers disagree whether or not to promote the use of the colonizer’s’ language. Chinua Achebe argues that African should write and own the language of the former colonizers as a way of reclaiming their history and inserting themselves in a global conversation. But Ngugi wa Thiong’o argues that in continuing to espouse the language of the powerful, African writers are weakening the periphery by enriching the cultural heritage of the stronger.      

Perhaps the greatest challenge in decentering or in the attempt to decenter IR is to find ways of understanding and explaining local international experience without a centrist framework. For instance, how do I, as Africanist talk about IR in Cote D’Ivoire or in Mali without a simplistic transposition of the Ivorian and Malian experiences into a French reality? In other words, is it possible to develop an effective peripheral IR while using the hegemonic language?

           

The Poverty of Theory - Discussion (on behalf of deRaismes Combes)

deRaismes: Even after reading these articles/chapters, not to mention last week's book and others besides, I STILL DON'T UNDERSTAND WHAT (exactly) THEORY IS. What. The. Heck??!!!

Bleiker: Don’t drink the cool-aid, deRaismes.

Guilhot: Easy for you to say. You’re coming decades after the first debates took place over what IR theory should be. The post-war struggle between liberal historians/legal scholars, the political science rationalists/behavioralists (all with a big case of invidia homo economicus scientificus), and finally the realists searching for a way to understand the complexities, contingencies, and irrationalities of the world laid the groundwork for future work like the stuff you’re doing…

Zalewski: OK, but reading your history is sort of akin to being lulled into an Enlightenment-induced stupor (less Kant, more Descartes) that Toulmin and Inayatullah/Blaney have already called attention to. This early 'battle' for determining the scope and direction of IR still held several assumptions about the world and how it works that we have since seen problematized, particularly in critical theory and constructivism. For instance –

Guilhot: Oiy, Marysia! Take a chill pill. Mine was an unearthing of an alternative historical narrative of realism, not a treatise on all the ways realist theory sucks. I know you’re going to start talking about those three ideal typical definitions of theory you like so much –

Zalewski: Yes, theory as tool, as critique, and as everyday practice.

deRaismes: Like any competent semi-tech-literate human, I googled ‘political theory’ to get a baseline for this discussion, and the first thing that popped up was this definition from Princeton: "Political theory is the study of the concepts and principles that people use to describe, explain, and evaluate political events and institutions." Wow. Not satisfying. Don't people remember from elementary school that the word being defined should never appear (in any of its forms) in the definition??!

Also, Marysia, you seemed far more critical of the first (theory as tool) than you were about the other two. But I think each assumes a certain moral high-ground: the first – as you say – distinguishes between theory, theorists, and the real world and ascribes a value judgment on these distinctions even while it hides behind a façade of rational valuelessness; But the second seems to imply that critical theory is morally superior to other theories since it unveils inequalities promoted by the existing system; and the last collapses the distinction between the real-worlders-as-actors and theorists-as-observers, implying that an Enlightenment-influenced conception of theory/theorists as mind/world dualists is morally inferior to being a monist. 

Zalewski: Your point?

Bleiker: The point is that a critique of orthodox IR practices and theories is not enough because it still exists within the confines of that orthodoxy. Instead, you should argue like I do that a genealogical critique of orthodoxy can be supplemented with a process of forgetting that very doctrine – leaving us able to theorize world politics without being constrained by the agendas, issues and terms preset by traditional IR – in any of the varieties you or Nicolas mention (58).

deRaismes: I agree with Roland, but it seems that one can never totally escape having a foot within that orthodoxy. Otherwise, wouldn’t it be like Wittgenstein’s private language?

In any event, I'm still struggling with why I should care about being able to specify what theory is... after all, isn’t it enough that I use it in my own work? Haven't I already delimited certain topics as 'theory'? And doesn't this simply mean that they serve me as a framework with which I examine and attempt to make sense out of some thing or event or behavior I see going on around me? 

Guilhot: That reminds me of a definition of theory I once read by Michael Oakeshott. Perhaps it will help you: “‘Theorizing’, then, is being represented here as a continuous, unconditional activity of trying to understand. It begins with an occurrence which is both understood and waiting to be understood. It is making more sense out of what already has some sense. And its principle is: ‘Never ask the end’. It will go on until the occurrence becomes transparent, until the last vestige of mystery has been dispelled, until the theoros runs out of questions.”

deRaismes: But how can any occurrence become truly transparent? That seems impossible. … And don’t start talking to me about Habermas…

Bleiker: But conscious forgetting opens up possibilities for a dialogical understanding of our present and past (59).

deRaismes: What does that even MEAN??

Bleiker: language frames politics. Form turns into substance (60). Our quest is to find out where the ideas and underlying principles that influence our life emanated from, and then reveal how the dilemmas of contemporary world politics are not actually immutable, but part of a historically constructed system of exclusion (61).

deRaismes: Wow, talk about drinking the cool-aid. At least the post-modern mix.

Guilhot: But he’s right.

Bleiker: Of course I’m right. Or even write. Ha, ha, see what I did there? But seriously, academic disciplines are powerful mechanisms to direct and control the production and diffusion of discourses (63). Perfect example being KKV.

Zalewski, Guilhot, Bleiker, deRaismes: [collective shudder]

Guilhot: The contemporary doorkeeper of IR!

Zaleswski: Let’s not forgot the ‘lovely’ discussions we’ve had at ISA conferences, too, with our more positivist-oriented friends… Or the oh-so-helpful comments from our policy brethren about hiding in our ivory towers and ignoring all the dead bodies below us. As if ‘bodies’ only represent the physical here-and-now, and IR theory is just the psychic inner-workings of academic minds who are somehow dis-embodied! Pshaw!

deRaismes: I guess it does seem as if we ‘do’ theory to ‘act on’ the physical world. Are you saying that you can’t separate theory from the ‘real world’ or the mind from the body? And getting back to my other question: why does this matter? Seriously, so what if one person sees the world as a realist, and another sees it as a feminist? Shouldn’t this add to our collective [theoretical] body of knowledge? Really, I truly don’t know the answer… I feel like I should care that most IR scholars – at least in the US – think Foucauldian discourse/post-structuralism is a waste of time…. And yet I don’t. Frankly, it’s their loss-

Bleiker: Until you want to get tenure.

Zalewski: You should care because the narrow focus of IR scholars on what is appropriate theory or application of theory propagates a very small boundary of what is considered acceptable IR work-

Bleiker: Think of it this way: A statement has to be ‘within the true’ before one can even start to judge whether it is true or false, legitimate or illegitimate (64). This means that things like your little dialogue here are not even considered proper IR because they are not immediately ‘within the true.’

Zalewski: Instead, we need to rethink the discipline in ways that will disturb the existing boundaries of both what we claim to be relevant in international politics and what we assume to be legitimate ways of constructing knowledge about the world (352).

deRaismes: That sounds a lot like Inayatullah & Blaney’s book. Sigh. I agree that pushing the accepted boundaries of ‘normal’ is a good thing. Hence this conversation and not a traditional response to the readings ([aside to audience] and you should all be grateful I elected to go this route versus haiku, by the way). And, like you say Roland, I certainly believe in investigating “why certain language games become dominant, how they have framed our political realities, and how alternative forms of thinking and speaking may reframe these realities” (68) or have been excluded altogether from what is considered ‘possible’. But I’m not comfortable with the implicit value judgments going on here. Why is one form of theory or theorizing better than another? Why is critical theory ‘better’ than realism? Isn’t someone, or group, or category always being excluded somewhere, even in emancipatory frameworks?

Zalewski: Perhaps. But engaging in theory as everyday practice – similar to theory as critique but very different from theory as just tool – implies that one theorizes as a way of life – that we all do it, all the time. This means that the theorizing that matters in terms of affecting and/or creating international political events is not limited to academics or policy-makers but could include small groups, individuals, etc. and that all of these are also global actors. Moreover, if theorizing is a way of life, then a lot more activities than ‘strictly’ political ones may be relevant as topics of study…

Bleiker: You must disenchant a topic or concept by refusing to define it monologically – concepts should achieve meaning only gradually, in relation to each other (71). And most importantly, you cannot eliminate the contradictory, the fragmentary, and the discontinuous. Contradictions are only contradictions if one assumes the existence of a prior universal standard of reference. What is different appears as divergent, dissonant, and negative only as long as our consciousness strives for a totalizing standpoint, which we must avoid if we are to escape the reifying and excluding dangers of identity thinking” (71).

deRaismes: My head hurts… dangers of identity thinking?... No idea…

Guilhot: Yeah, but if you follow Bleiker here and embrace linguistic contradictions be prepared to fail in your attempts to make a difference. It didn’t work out so well for Morgenthau now, did it?

deRaismes: Though we still talk about him. He might not have changed the field, but he left an imprint on it. And even if many misunderstand his motives or what he was trying to do, it is out there to be seen and read. After all, can’t this go both ways? Can’t past theory – like Roland’s poetry – fulfill the task of a critical memory by assuring “a presence beyond death and beyond the current, historically delineated moment” (Bleiker, 76)?

Bleiker: Like I always say: Practice IR as follows: Forget. Listen. Feel. For(to)get a new angle on IR (76).

Finis.

IR and The Problem of Difference- Discussion

In the book, IR and the Problem of Difference, Inayatullah and Blaney investigate their main research idea: IR has not incorporated notions of difference, thus theories are based on cultural assumptions and biases that are not acknowledged. They draw from several “spheres of inquiry,” including IPE, ID, Social Theory, Political Philosophy, and Intercultural/Cross-Cultural literature. Their research method is based on an examination of texts to “uncover” the subjectivity of authors and contextualize the authors historically within political/ethical issues. This “process of recovery” includes looking at the work of often referenced political philosophers and a reexamination of dominant narratives of sovereignty. The conclusion asks for dialogue, where self-interest and the language of ethics can overlap in acknowledgement of self in other and other in self.

Question one:

On page 94, they speak to a “logical overlap of IR and modernization theory, especially their theoretical treatment of the cultural difference presented by third-world others.”

Who is part of the conversation (who are they talking to) when difference spheres of inquiry are referenced? How do the overlaps in the literature reflect overlaps of I/other? How are the concepts of chaos and order problematized in this text? Did you see that their underlying purpose was to collapse the binaries of inside/outside, chaos/order as categories?

Question two:

On page 74,  the authors write that, “the Indians serve as a medium for the exchange of messages between the religious opponents- as a site of struggle between their respective views concerning the tolerance of difference.”

How does this relate to the notion of contact zones? Who is having contact with whom and where? What is overlap? How does that apply to international norms and implementation of norms? Where are the contact zones in scholarship on difference?