International Relations before Critical Theory

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard Devetak
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Critical Theory ◽  
International Relations ◽  
Philosophy Of Science ◽  
Science Standards ◽  
Epistemic Practices ◽  
International Theory ◽  
The Social ◽  
Post War ◽  
The Way

The chapter elaborates the post-war disciplinary context from which critical international theory emerged. While most accounts start with the so-called ‘third debate’, this chapter situates its emergence in the longer story of the rise in theory’s prestige in the social sciences. It tells the story of a series of disputes over method (Methodenstreit) that paved the way not just for higher levels of theoretical abstraction, and a never vanquished humanist challenge to the scientific outlook. It was during the 1950s that the persona of the theorist was first established in international relations. In the following decades, personae of the international relations theorist evolved through academic institutionalization of certain epistemic practices and technical capabilities modelled on behaviouralist and philosophy-of-science standards. The stage was thus set for a rival, namely, critical intellectual persona to emerge in opposition to both the humanist and scientific outlooks, but in continuity with the ever-higher orders of abstraction.

The limits of power: Knowledge, ethics, and foreign policy in Hans J. Morgenthau’s international theory

2020 ◽  
pp. 004711782093562
Author(s):  
Lorenzo Zambernardi
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Foreign Policy ◽  
International Relations ◽  
Political Theory ◽  
Political Action ◽  
International Theory ◽  
The Social ◽  
Limits Of Knowledge ◽  
Political Thinker

Hans J. Morgenthau’s contribution to international relations and political theory appears to have been fully recognized to date. However, his ideas have undergone surprisingly little comprehensive investigation: an attitude that made it possible to grasp only a few aspects of his reflections. The main argument of this article is that the main area of inquiry in Morgenthau’s scholarship – international politics and foreign policy – is based on general considerations regarding the role of reason in politics and the limits of knowledge of the social universe. Not only does the question of the possibility of such knowledge lie at the root of his considerations on political action, but it also forms the mainspring of his reflection on ethics. Through an inquiry into the red thread that tightly links his diverse body of thought on social sciences, ethics, and foreign policy, the article aims to show that Morgenthau was a systematic political thinker who set out from theoretical observations on the limits of knowledge to develop particular insights into ethics and, from there, a particular notion of how foreign policy should be conducted. In other words, Morgenthau established links of essential continuity between knowledge, ethics, and action.

Putting the state in its place: the critique of state-centrism and its limits

2003 ◽  
Vol 29 (4) ◽  
pp. 521-541 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hannes Lacher
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
International Relations ◽  
Social Relations ◽  
International Relations Theory ◽  
The State ◽  
Spatial Transformation ◽  
Crucial Aspect ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Way

The critique of state-centrism is a crucial aspect of the restructuring of International Relations theory, widely seen as a precondition for the conceptualisation of international transformation. In this article, I argue that the terms on which this critique is framed lead to claims which are both too sweeping in their implications for a transformation to a post-Westphalian system, and not radical enough with respect to the Westphalian period itself. The critique of state-centrism is premised on the assumption that modernity was a territorial order in which states contained ‘their’ societies. But modern social relations always included global dimensions. If the modern social sciences discounted these global aspects of modernity, the way forward for the social sciences, and IR in particular, cannot be in embracing the notion of a contemporary shift from the national to the global, but in a reconsideration of modernity itself. Just as the new globalism is inadequate as a basis for understanding our supposedly postmodern times, so nation-statism was always defective as a basis for understanding modernity. I argue that the notion of a national/global dialectic provides a better basis for understanding the current socio-spatial transformation.

Definitions of Religion: A Matter of Taste?

Horizons ◽  
1984 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 86-99
Author(s):  
Stephen J. Casey
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Philosophy Of Science ◽  
Grand Theory ◽  
Science Discourse ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Common ◽  
Definition Of Religion ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
The Way

AbstractAs theologians are increasingly employing the social sciences in their work, it is incumbent upon them to examine the way the term religion is employed in these disciplines. This paper explains the common types of definition employed (the substantive and functional varieties) and critiques each from the perspective of contemporary theology. Both are found deficient in ways highly significant for theologians. This paper argues that it is inappropriate to attempt to establish any single definition of religion as normative. While the posture adopted appears to lay to rest any attempt to generate “grand theory” about religion it is not inconsistent with the canons of science as understood in current philosophy of science discourse.

Critical International Theory

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard Devetak
Keyword(s):  
Critical Theory ◽  
International Relations ◽  
Intellectual History ◽  
Historical Materialism ◽  
Frankfurt School ◽  
German Idealism ◽  
Social Philosophy ◽  
International Theory ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Civil Government

Whether inspired by the Frankfurt School or Antonio Gramsci, the impact of critical theory on the study of international relations has grown considerably since its advent in the early 1980s. This book offers the first intellectual history of critical international theory. Richard Devetak approaches this history by locating its emergence in the rising prestige of theory and the theoretical persona. As theory’s prestige rose in the discipline of international relations it opened the way for normative and metatheoretical reconsiderations of the discipline and the world. The book traces the lines of intellectual inheritance through the Frankfurt School to the Enlightenment, German idealism, and historical materialism, to reveal the construction of a particular kind of intellectual persona: the critical international theorist who has mastered reflexive, dialectical forms of social philosophy. In addition to the extensive treatment of critical theory’s reception and development in international relations, the book recovers a rival form of theory that originates outside the usual inheritance of critical international theory in Renaissance humanism and the civil Enlightenment. This historical mode of theorising was intended to combat metaphysical encroachments on politics and international relations and to prioritise the mundane demands of civil government over the self-reflective demands of dialectical social philosophies. By proposing contextualist intellectual history as a form of critical theory, Critical International Theory: An Intellectual History defends a mode of historical critique that refuses the normative temptations to project present conceptions onto an alien past, and to abstract from the offices of civil government.

The Politics of Global Health Inequalities

2019 ◽  
pp. 58-84
Author(s):  
Yusra Ribhi Shawar ◽  
Jennifer Prah Ruger
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Critical Theory ◽  
Global Health ◽  
Health Inequalities ◽  
Health Inequality ◽  
The Political ◽  
State Of Health ◽  
Political Determinants ◽  
The Social

Careful investigations of the political determinants of health that include the role of power in health inequalities—systematic differences in health achievements among different population groups—are increasing but remain inadequate. Historically, much of the research examining health inequalities has been influenced by biomedical perspectives and focused, as such, on ‘downstream’ factors. More recently, there has been greater recognition of more ‘distal’ and ‘upstream’ drivers of health inequalities, including the impacts of power as expressed by actors, as well as embedded in societal structures, institutions, and processes. The goal of this chapter is to examine how power has been conceptualised and analysed to date in relation to health inequalities. After reviewing the state of health inequality scholarship and the emerging interest in studying power in global health, the chapter presents varied conceptualisations of power and how they are used in the literature to understand health inequalities. The chapter highlights the particular disciplinary influences in studying power across the social sciences, including anthropology, political science, and sociology, as well as cross-cutting perspectives such as critical theory and health capability. It concludes by highlighting strengths and limitations of the existing research in this area and discussing power conceptualisations and frameworks that so far have been underused in health inequalities research. This includes potential areas for future inquiry and approaches that may expand the study of as well as action on addressing health inequality.

Feudal Europe, 800–1300: communal discourse and conflictual practices

1992 ◽  
Vol 46 (2) ◽  
pp. 427-466 ◽  
Author(s):  
Markus Fischer
Keyword(s):  
Critical Theory ◽  
Social Science ◽  
International Relations ◽  
Social Theory ◽  
Structural Theory ◽  
Historical Change ◽  
Fundamental Significance ◽  
The Social ◽  
Social Scientific ◽  
Scientific Argument

The discipline of international relations faces a new debate of fundamental significance. After the realist challenge to the pervasive idealism of the interwar years and the social scientific argument against realism in the late 1950s, it is now the turn of critical theorists to dispute the established paradigms of international politics, having been remarkably successful in several other fields of social inquiry. In essence, critical theorists claim that all social reality is subject to historical change, that a normative discourse of understandings and values entails corresponding practices, and that social theory must include interpretation and dialectical critique. In international relations, this approach particularly critiques the ahistorical, scientific, and materialist conceptions offered by neorealists. Traditional realists, by contrast, find a little more sympathy in the eyes of critical theorists because they join them in their rejection of social science and structural theory. With regard to liberal institutionalism, critical theorists are naturally sympathetic to its communitarian component while castigating its utilitarian strand as the accomplice of neorealism. Overall, the advent of critical theory will thus focus the field of international relations on its “interparadigm debate” with neorealism.

International Relations an a World of Revolutionary Change

1949 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 272-276 ◽  
Author(s):  
Charles Easton Rothwell
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
New York ◽  
International Relations ◽  
Collaborative Research ◽  
Practical Experience ◽  
Revolutionary Change ◽  
Social Scientists ◽  
Carnegie Corporation ◽  
The Social ◽  
Wartime Experience

A PROJECT of collaborative research concerning major world trends affecting international relations has been launched this year at the Hoover Institute and Library. This project has been made possible by a three-year grant from the Carnegie Corporation of New York.1Beneath the original planning for the project lay the conviction born of wartime experience, that a deeper understanding of the dynamics of international relations could be obtained by pooling the contributions of the social sciences and related disciplines and by taking account of practical experience in the international field. The need for new and more penetrating approaches to international relations had been put by Arnold Toynbee in a few challenging words: “There is nothing to prevent our Western Civilization from following historical precedent, if it chooses, by committing social suicide. But we are not doomed to make history repeat itself; it is open to us through our own efforts, to give history, in our case, some new unprecedented turn.” Natural scientists, as well as social scientists are agreed that any “new unprecedented turn” must be sought in deeper understanding of relations among people and among nations.

The Edwards' Report and the International Relations profession

1988 ◽  
Vol 14 (2) ◽  
pp. 149-152 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Nicholson
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Social Science ◽  
International Relations ◽  
Research Council ◽  
Social Research ◽  
Future Research ◽  
Social Scientists ◽  
Social Science Community ◽  
The Social ◽  
Science Community

The Economic and Social Research Council recently published a Report commissioned from a committee chaired by Professor Edwards, a psychiatrist, so that the Council, and the social science community in general, might know what was good and bad in British social sciences, and where the promising future research opportunities lie over the next decade. Boldly called ‘Horizons and Opportunities in the Social Sciences’, the Report condensed the wisdom of social scientists, both British and foreign, and concludes with a broadly but not uncritically favourable picture of the British scene.

Futures Honed

Futures ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 118-134
Author(s):  
Barbara Adam
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Original Work ◽  
Collective Responsibility ◽  
The Past ◽  
Writing Theory ◽  
Time Space ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Future ◽  
Verse Form ◽  
The Way

This chapter comprises an interview between Barbara Adam and the editors, and is followed by Adam’s ‘Honing Futures’, which is presented in four short verses of distilled theory. In the interview Adam reflects on thirty-five years of futures-thinking rooted in her deeply original work on time and temporality, and her innovative response to qualitative and linear definitions of time within the social sciences. The interview continues with a discussion of the way Adam’s thinking on futures intersects in her work with ideas of ethics and collective responsibility politics and concludes with a brief rationale for writing theory in verse form. In ‘Honing Futures’, a piece of futures theory verse form, Adam charts the movements and moments in considerations of the Not Yet and futurity’s active creation: from pluralized imaginings of the future, to an increasingly tangible and narrower anticipated future, to future-making as designing and reality-creating performance. Collectively, the verses identify the varied complex interdependencies of time, space, and matter with the past and future in all iterations of honing and making futures.

Die Macht der Institution

2021 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Welfare State ◽  
Cultural Anthropology ◽  
The State ◽  
History Of Ideas ◽  
The Social ◽  
History Of ◽  
Post War

This volume examines Arnold Gehlen’s theory of the state from his philosophy of the state in the 1920s via his political and cultural anthropology to his impressive critique of the post-war welfare state. The systematic analyses the book contains by leading scholars in the social sciences and the humanities examine the interplay between the theory and history of the state with reference to the broader context of the history of ideas. Students and researchers as well as other readers interested in this subject will find this book offers an informative overview of how one of the most wide-ranging and profound thinkers of the twentieth century understands the state. With contributions by Oliver Agard, Heike Delitz, Joachim Fischer, Andreas Höntsch, Tim Huyeng, Rastko Jovanov, Frank Kannetzky, Christine Magerski, Zeljko Radinkovic, Karl-Siegbert Rehberg and Christian Steuerwald.

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