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Positivist Review
• Neo-Realism and Neo-Liberalism – two sides of the same coin?
• Similar assumptions:– Potential for cooperation (disagree over how
much)– Positivist methodologies– Objective approach– Emphasis on “high politics”
Positivist Review
• “explanatory” theories
• see the task of theory as being to report on a world that is external to our theories.
• Want to uncover regularities in human behaviour
• Explain the social world in the same way as natural scientists explain the natural world.
Critical Theory: Origins
• Can trace back to the enlightenment.
• Kant, Hegel, Marx
Critical Theory: Origins
Frankfurt school:
• Understand the features of contemporary society by understanding its historical and social development
• Trace contradictions in the present; open up the possibility of transcending contemporary society with its built-in forms of domination.
Critical Theory: Origins
• emphasis here is on:– Analysing social structures – Determine power structures, which ones
cause abuse– Intention is on overcoming these structures
and abuse.
• Identify possibilities for social transformation
• This is the link with Kant, Marx, etc.
Critical Theory and IR
• By 1980s, there is dissatisfaction with positivist approaches
• Robert Cox, “Social Forces, States and World Order: Beyond International Relations Theory”, Millennium Journal of International Relations, (1981)
• Andrew Linklater, Men and Citizens, (1982)• Mark Hoffman, “Critical Theory and the Inter-
Paradigm Debate”, Millennium Journal of International Relations, (1987)
Critical Theory and IR
• Robert Cox– Borrowing from Horkheimer (uses “traditional”)– “problem solving” vs “critical theory
• “Problem-Solving” theory:– accepts the prevailing definitions; tries to solve
the problems these definitions generate.
• Critical theory– look at the way the problem serves particular
interests, shuts down different debates and solutions
Critical Theory and IR• Robert Cox con’t:
• Postitivist methods:– take the world as an untheorized given– trying to work out how to better theorize, given
the world
• Critical theory:– recognizes that the theorist is situated within
the historical circumstances of the time.
Critical Theory and IR“Theory is always for someone and some
purpose” – not just a neutral thing we are trying to get
across. – Speaks from a particular moment in history– seeks to understand why and how it came to
be – what possibilities for change there might be.
Critical Theory: Research
• Takes issue with positivism and “scientific” methods– Not neutral– World is historically constructed.– Liberalism not an emancipatory theory.
• Challenges the idea of immutable “structure”/looks at prospects for greater human freedom.– Realism, rational choice suggest present world is pre-
determined. (states, boundaries, war, etc.) – Imagine international relations beyond borders. Shared
humanity across borders.
Critical Theory: Research
Draws on Marxism
• ultimately sees it as a flawed theory
• wants to create a “historical sociology” with an emancipatory purpose
– Look at historical developments – how power structures have evolved, and how they may be overcome.
Critical Theory
Critical theory:
• judges social arrangements by the way they embrace open dialogue
• envisages new forms of political community (local or global)
• emphasizes unconstrained discourse to rethink national boundaries and examine the possibility of escaping them.
Critical Theory
• Critical theory– Emphasis on “emancipatory” theory.– Lost purpose of IR?
• Impact:– Gramsci and “Hegemony”– Feminism
Post-Modernism
• aka post-structuralism
• aka deconstruction
• aka post-postivism
• Closely related to critical theory, but some important differences
• No set-definition of what post-modernism is.
Po-Mo: Foucault & Power
• Genealogy: focus on the process by which we have “constructed” origins, given meaning to particular representations of the past.– guide daily lives and set clear limits to political and
social options. – po-mo to expose the processes of exclusion – Idea that one cannot study history objectively
• Knowledge is not immune from the workings of power – what we know depends on power in our lives.
Derrida and Deconstruction
• World is a “text” that must be interpreted. – World is constructed like a text.– Cannot refer to anything “real” – only
“interpretive experience”– Quoting Montaigne: “We need to interpret
interpretations more than to interpret things”
• stable and natural concepts and relations are artificial concepts.
Derrida and Deconstruction
• Society relies on artificial, seemingly opposite distinctions. – Good/bad, male/female, civilizational barbaric
• Arranged hierarchically – society tends to prefer one over the other. (ie: order to anarchy)
• Deconstruction show that terms are really an illusion. – Terms are mutually constitutive – Cannot have ‘other’ without ‘self’
• Differences between two terms mask differences within terms.
Critical vs Po-Mo
• Some po-mos agree with critical theorists aims. • Yet others disagree: Critical theory/Marxism
presents new “meta-narratives” and its own truth claims.
• Derrida,sympathetic:– “new International” should be supported – violence, inequality, exclusion, famine, and thus
economic oppression affect humanity on huge scale
• Yet, others see the emancipatory projects as just another claim to power for which we must be sceptical.
Criticism• Positivists:
– this is not social science, not verifiable– Can’t offer a theory of IR. Only deconstructs– Keohane: rationalist vs reflectivist
• Is this fair?– Have done positivist vs post-postivist to death!– But many critical theorists see themselves as
engages with current issues– Writing for a different audience than IR
academics