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Situating Sociology's Causal Claims: An American Phenomenon?
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This special issue addresses the growing concern with the Eurocentric nature of the sociological tradition (broadly understood) and its inadequacy in dealing with questions of power, race and coloniality. In pursuit of a global sociology, the special issue draws its contributors from a wide range of geographical locations and the articles address topics rarely considered within these debates, including, surprisingly, issues of gender. Broadly, they re-engage with standard debates from innovative theoretical positions and via new research from what are often regarded as peripheral locations. Together, the articles seek to contest the dominance of Europe and the US in the production of knowledge and transform the ways in which we understand sociology from a global perspective.
A substantively shorter version of the paper has been published in International Relations in Europe: Traditions, perspectives, destinations, Knud Erik Jørgensen and Tonny Brems Knudsen eds., London and New York: Routledge 2006.
Many scholars have employed the notion of American hegemony in their meta-studies of the discipline and enthusiastically discussed what could be done about it. However, by the early 21st century, this image is so ‘last century’—not least because a new trend is emerging that questions whether hegemony is the right place to start. The article examines the persistent mythology of American hegemony.
This chapter focuses on the major debates within International Relations theory with regard to the philosophy of social sciences. The philosophy of social science has played a key role in the formation, development, and practice of IR as an academic discipline. Issues concerning the philosophy of social science are frequently described as meta-theoretical debates. Meta-theory primarily deals with the underlying assumptions of all theory and attempts to understand the consequences of such assumptions on the act of theorizing and the practice of empirical research. The chapter first provides an historical overview of the philosophy of social science in IR before discussing both the implicit and explicit roles played by meta-theoretical assumptions in IR. It then considers the contemporary disciplinary debates surrounding the philosophy of social science and concludes by analysing how theoretical approaches to the study of world politics have been shaped by meta-theoretical ideas.
This work seeks to explore the widely held assumption that the discipline of International Relations is dominated by American scholars, approaches and institutions. It proceeds by defining 'dominance' along Gramscian lines and then identifying different ways in which such dominance could be exerted: agenda-setting, theoretically, methodologically, institutionally, gate-keeping. Turton dedicates a chapter to each of these forms of dominance in which she sets out the arguments in the literature, discusses their theoretical implications, and tests for empirical support. The work argues that the self-image of IR as an American dominated discipline does not reflect the state of affairs once a detailed sociological analysis of the production of knowledge in the discipline is undertaken. Turton argues that the discipline is actually more plural than widely recognized, challenging widely held beliefs in International Relations and it taking a successful step towards unpacking the term 'dominance'. An insightful contribution to the field, this work will be of great interest to students and scholars alike.
The Oxford Handbook of International Relations offers the most authoritative and comprehensive overview to date of the field of international relations. Bringing together an impressive collection of international relations scholars, this Handbook debates the nature of the field itself, critically engages with the major theories, surveys a wide spectrum of methods, addresses the relationship between scholarship and policy making, and examines the field's relation with cognate disciplines. The Handbook takes as its central themes the interaction between empirical and normative inquiry that permeates all theorizing in the field and the way in which contending approaches have shaped one another. In doing so, the Handbook provides an authoritative and critical introduction to the subject and establishes a sense of the field as a dynamic realm of argument and inquiry.
This latest edition to the ISA handbook series actively engages with the many traditions of sociology in the world. Twenty-nine chapters from prominent international contributors discuss, challenge and re-conceptualize the global discipline of sociology; evaluating the diversities within and between sociological traditions of many regions and nation-states. They assess all aspects of the discipline: ideas and theories; scholars and scholarship; practices and traditions; ruptures and continuities through an international perspective. Its goal is to become a text for debating the contours of international sociology.
The international relations (IR) discipline is dominated by the American research community. Data about publication patterns in leading journals document this situation as well as a variance in theoretical orientations. IR is conducted differently in different places. The main patterns are explained through a sociology of science model that emphasizes the different nineteenth-century histories of the state, the early format of social science, and the institutionalized delineation among the different social sciences. The internal social and intellectual structure of American IR is two-tiered, with relatively independent subfields and a top layer defined by access to the leading journals (on which IR, in contrast to some social sciences, has a high consensus). The famous successive "great debates'' serve an important function by letting lead theorists focus and structure the whole discipline. IR in France, Germany, and the United Kingdom has historically been structured differently, often with power vested more locally. American IR now moves in a direction that undermines its global hegemony. The widespread turn to rational choice privileges a reintegration (and status-wise rehabilitation) with the rest of political science over attention to IR practices elsewhere. This rationalistic turn is alien to Europeans, both because their IR is generally closer to sociology, philosophy, and anthropology, and because the liberal ontological premises of rational choice are less fitting to European societies. Simultaneously, European IR is beginning to break the local power bastions and establish independent research communities at a national or, increasingly, a European level. As American IR turns from global hegemony to national professionalization, IR becomes more pluralistic.
Using a unique data set of causal usage drawn from research articles published between 2006-2008 in the American Journal of Sociology and American Sociological Review, this article offers an empirical assessment of causality in American sociology. Testing various aspects of what we consider the conventional wisdom on causality in the discipline, we find that (1) “variablistic” or “covering law” models are not the dominant way of making causal claims, (2) research methods affect but do not determine causal usage, and (3) the use of explicit causal language and the concept of “mechanisms” to make causal claims is limited. Instead, we find that metaphors and metaphoric reasoning are fundamental for causal claims-making in the discipline. On this basis, we define three dominant causal types used in sociology today, which we label the Probabilistic, Initiating and Conditioning types. We theorize this outcome as demonstrating the primary role that cognitive models play in providing inference-rich metaphors that allow sociologists to map causal relationships on to empirical processes.
In the past 30 years, international relations has developed as a largely autonomous part of political science. Even though it has shared many of political science’s vicissitudes — battles among various orientations, theories, and methods — it also has a story of its own. What follows is an attempt at neither a complete balance sheet nor a capsule history — merely a set of reflections on the specific accomplishments and frustrations of a particular field of scholarship.1
Why, we have to ask, have putatively inadequate ‘Western’ IR theories been applied over and over again to explain and understand Asian international relations? How can we develop more satisfying explanations of the international politics of Asia? In relation to such questions, this article demonstrates how academic disciplinary socialisation entails competition and selection, which tends towards the elimination of approaches or explanations that do not fit into the socialised practice, without generating new ones. It is argued here that interweaving existing IR theories with Asia's empirical material and remoulding the theories through gathering empirical evidence on the regional reality and converting it into theoretical variables, comparable in the field of IR, should be our goal. In order to apprehend Asian international relations better and to contribute to advancing the discipline of IR, we need an accumulation of theoretical knowledge sensitive to and attentive to local difference.
British International Relations (IR) theory is distinguished by a concern with institutions and norms, and by an emphasis
on history, philosophy, and law rather than the formal methods of the social sciences; in both respects, but especially the
latter, it differs from American IR theory. The origins of British IR theory are traced, and the importance of the ‘English
School’ (ES) is stressed, partly because of the work it stimulates, but also because of its role as a brand which helps to
establish the independence of British IR from the otherwise dominant American profession. Along with ES scholarship (pluralist
and solidarist), political theory and IR, and critical theory, including critical security studies, are the major areas where
contemporary IR theory in Britain is located. This is likely to persist, but the generally critical approach taken to social
scientific theorizing may be changing, with the increasing importance of historical sociology and critical realist work. It
may also be the case that the privileged status of IR theory in British IR may be under challenge.
The dominant position on research methodology and methods among British sociologists has for many years been that of ‘methodological pluralism’. However, concerns have lately been expressed about the lack of research involving quantitative methods, not least by the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC). A study of the four mainstream British journals over two years, together with associated sources, demonstrates national patterns of research methods used in published work, the topics tackled and variations between authors in the methods chosen. The findings suggest empirical support for the concerns recently expressed by the ESRC, and an argument, not for less qualitative research, but for more quantitative research.
Why does International Relations (IR) still remain `a not so international discipline'? What promotes/constrains the diffusion of non-American ideas to national IR epistemic communities beyond the trans-Atlantic community as well as Europe? In this article, I tell the story of how the English School (ES) as a non-mainstream approach to theorizing about IR has travelled to China. I examine the way in which the transmission of ideas associated with the ES has influenced the IR theoretical discourse in China to date. Borrowing insights from recent constructivist theorization on how norms and ideas diffuse, I offer sociologically informed explanations of how and why the American intellectual hegemony in IR has been reproduced in a national IR academic community. They suggest that the enduring dominance of the American scholarship in peripheral IR epistemic communities has less to do with either the power or the persuasiveness of ideas than with the American entrepreneurship in promoting international studies. The lessons learned from this story argue strongly for an additional agenda for the reconvened ES.
The universal concepts of sociology are those that form the basic foundation of the discipline found in all human societies and valid for all times. Examples are the concepts of sanction, class, social stratification, social mobility, group, culture, values, religion, custom and others. These concepts are universally valid in the general and abstract sense but their historical and concrete manifestations are conditioned by their temporal, spatial and cultural frameworks. It is in the studies of these unique historical phenomena that the autonomous tradition has its roots. What is lacking in the non-western world is an autonomous social science tradition, generated and developed by local scholars, guided by the selection of problems from within the society, applying an independent concept of relevance in the collection and accumulation of research data and comparative attention to problems outside the country or region.
This essay examines current developments in International Relations theory in China. First it comments on Song Xinning's essay, agreeing that IR theory in China is limited by ideology, the dominance of policy-oriented research, and the state. But rather than seeing culture ('IR theory with Chinese characteristics') as a problem that can be solved by a more scientific approach to IR theory, the essay argues that the scientism of realism and IPE has similar problems. Thus the essay switches from the universals of science to the contingency of interpretation to understand global politics, drawing on recent books which combine IPE with historical and cultural studies. The concept of sovereignty is deconstructed to show how it is not universal, but is bound up in knowledge practices in both the West and China. The essay concludes by suggesting that we broaden both the concepts and the resources of IR research to consider the transnational economic‐cultural relations of Greater China. In this way China can be part of the globalization of IR theory, for such concepts exemplify current theoretical debates about the meaning of globalization. This approach moves from territorial notions of sovereignty where power is based on an expansion of economic and political relations—which reify borders—to popular notions of sovereignty where power is measured by movements of people across borders in a qualitative struggle of cultures and knowledge.
As an atmosphere conducive for scientific inquiry and research improves in China, many Chinese scholars are optimistic about the future development of International Relations (IR) studies. A younger generation of IR scholars has started to pay more attention to IR theory and begun to research issues like national sovereignty and China's national interests. This paper reviews the development of IR theory in China and the basic arguments among Chinese scholars on theory building, especially concerning the attempt to build an IR theory with 'Chinese characteristics'. It examines the reasons for the continuing challenges, amid progress, of IR theory in China and looks into the prospects in the near future.
American sociology is a chaotic discipline. There is disagreement on foundational issues that give disciplines coherence.
For example, sociologist disagree on the appropriateness of a scientific orientation, the role of activism and ideology in
inquiry, the best methodologies to employ, the primacy of microversus macro-levels of analysis, the most important topics
to study, and many other contentious issues. The recent call for a “public sociology” in which four wings of the discipline—policy
(applied), professional (scientific), critical (ideological), and public (civic engagement) sociologies—are to be integrated
is less of a remedy for what troubles sociology than an admission that we are a discipline divided (Burawoy, 2005). Among
the social sciences, economics is the most coherent, with the other social sciences revealing varying degrees of incoherence
or chaos. Sociology is probably the least integrated of the social sciences, although cultural anthropology has increasingly
become much like sociology. In this paper, my goal is to offer an explanation for how sociology came to it present state and
what, if anything, can be done to integrate the discipline. Let me begin by outlining what makes a discipline coherent.
Two approaches to the theory of international relations at present compete for our attention. The first of these I shall call the classical approach. By this I do not mean the study and criticism of the “classics” of international relations, the writings of Hobbes, Grotius, Kant, and other great thinkers of the past who have turned their attention to international affairs. Such study does indeed exemplify the classical approach, and it provides a method that is particularly fruitful and important. What I have in mind, however, is something much wider than this: the approach to theorizing that derives from philosophy, history, and law, and that is characterized above all by explicit reliance upon the exercise of judgment and by the assumptions that if we confine ourselves to strict standards of verification and proof there is very little of significance that can be said about international relations, that general propositions about this subject must therefore derive from a scientifically imperfect process of perception or intuition, and that these general propositions cannot be accorded anything more than the tentative and inconclusive status appropriate to their doubtful origin.
Last December, in the university town of St Andrews, the British International Studies Association (BISA) celebrated its 30th anniversary conference. As it was a rather special occasion, BISA members took this opportunity to indulge in some reminiscences about its founding, some studies of the work that had been carried out since the founding of the Association and reflect upon the relationship of British scholarship in international studies to scholarship elsewhere. It has been customary for there to be, at the BISA conference, a plenary address given by a prominent British or overseas scholar or (on occasion) a practitioner. It has also long been a tradition that The Review of International Studies, the Journal of the Association produced in association with Cambridge University Press, publishes the plenary of the conferences. For the thirtieth anniversary, however, BISA commissioned three plenary lectures. In this edition of the Journal, therefore, we devote a section to the lectures that were given by Professors Chris Brown, Lawrence Freedman and Geoff Roberts. We will come on to the content of these lectures in a moment, but thought that, by way of introduction, it would be timely to reflect upon the circumstances in which BISA was born, and say something about the changes in the environment of British International Studies from the mid 1970s until today.
Between 1870 and 1914, a great deal of creative sociological research was completed in France. But this activity did not follow any sort of regular, coherent process of development; there were several quite separate lines of investigation which generally corresponded to distinct social groupings. And while the term “school” may imply too rigid a demarcation, there were at this time a number of what we may term “clusters” of researchers.
Anniversaries are occasions for celebration and reflection. The thirtieth anniversary of BISA presents the opportunity to look back over what has been achieved in the eventful years since the foundation of the Association, but also the duty of identifying things that have gone wrong, paths not taken or promising avenues that turned out to be dead-ends. We owe it to the people who founded BISA - some still here, others, sadly, gone - to preserve the critical spirit even when celebrating our achievements, and I will certainly honour that debt in this talk.
In this paper the author argues that the Chinese theory of All-under-Heaven is the best philosophy for world governance. All-under-Heaven is a deep world concept with a trinity of meanings: the earth, people's hearts and a world institution. And it introduces a political principle, 'world-ness', that arguably transcends the principle of 'internation-ality'. The author argues that the theory of All-under-Heaven is a more appropriate 'world theory' than 'international theory' in dealing with world problems. The author also considers the philosophies of the UN and EU. 'Empire' is not only a geographical but also a cultural institutional concept. There have been great empires in the past, always reminding us of their splendid victories and fatal collapse. The modern age has been mainly an age of nations/states, in which the concept of empire has been distorted in terms of the imperialism that should assumed responsibility for the most terrible wars recorded in history. As is now realized, because of penetrating globalization and astonishing technological developments, the modernity of the nations/states system has been weakened, while a still-vague new age emerges, 1 an age of globality as the consequence of globalisation. But what is the most likely form of global governance? Personally I feel as if the steps toward a new empire could be now be heard, and indeed it has already been discussed (see Hardt & Negri, 2001). What ideal of empire could we expect for a new empire? It seems an important and serious question.. And here I would like to introduce the Chinese traditional conception of world governance, which is quite different from the usual understanding of empire, and which might give a more constructive and positive way to rethink the best Idea of an acceptable empire.
This article reviews the state of the discipline of international relations. It starts from statements made by the editors in their editorial published in the first issue of this journal. The editors noted that there seemed to have been less adherence to positivism in international relations than in other areas of political science and that there was both more opposition to positivism and more methodological and epistemological openness in international relations than in political science generally. The article outlines the current state of the field, focusing on the rationalist mainstream and then on the reflectivist alternatives, before looking at social constructivism, seeing it as the likely acceptable alternative to rationalism in the mainstream literature of the next decade. It then turns to examine whether international relations is still an American social science, before looking at the situation in the United Kingdom. It concludes that the editors' comments were indeed accurate, but that the fact that there is both more opposition to positivism in international relations and more openness in the UK academic community does not mean that the mainstream US literature is anything like as open or pluralist. The UK community is indeed more able to develop theory relevant to the globalised world at the new millennium, but the US academic community still dominates the discipline.
Lately, there has been increasing interest among international relations (IR) scholars in Chinese thought, both as an alternative to Eurocentric IR, and because the PRC as an emerging power will soon have the institutional power to promote its view of the world. Rather than look for suitable Chinese parallels to “international,”“security,” or other mainstream concepts, this article will examine the concept of “Tianxia All-under-Heaven” to understand Chinese visions of world order. Tianxia is interesting both because it was key to the governance and self-understanding of over two millennia of Chinese empire, and also because discussion of Tianxia is becoming popular again in the twenty-first century as a Chinese model of world order that is universally valid. After outlining a popular discussion of the “magnanimous” and all-inclusive Tianxia system, the article will examine some of the theoretical problems raised by this reading of Tianxia, in particular how its approach to “Otherness” encourages a conversion of difference, if not a conquest of it. It will conclude that Tianxia’s most important impact will not be on the world stage, but in China’s domestic politics, where it blurs the conceptual boundaries between empire and globalism, nationalism, and cosmopolitanism. Hence rather than guide us toward a post-hegemonic world order, Tianxia presents a new hegemony where imperial China’s hierarchical governance is updated for the twenty-first century.
International relations is no longer an American social science: the subject is taught in universities in dozens of countries and is becoming a global discipline. The English School of international relations is the oldest and arguably the most significant rival to the American mainstream. The English School purports to offer an account of international relations that combines theory and history, morality and power, agency and structure. One obvious consequence of this level of theoretical ambition is that the boundaries of the English School often appear to be unclear, which in part explains the ongoing debate about who belongs in the School and how it differs from other theoretical accounts of world politics. To shed light on these questions, Section 1 of this article considers in more depth the contextual emergence of the English School, and in particular its determination to develop an original account of interstate order. Section 2 takes its central claim-that the practice of states is shaped by international norms, regulated by international institutions, and guided by moral purposes-and explores this in relation to the countervailing forces of the states system and world society. In Section 3 the focus shifts away from debates inside the English School and toward a wider reflection on its place within international relations as a whole. It is argued that while the English School has a great deal to learn from constructivism, it should maintain its distinctive voice primarily because it has greater synthetic potential and is more openly committed to certain ethical standpoints.
Sociologists, like other professionals and academic practitioners, have engaged in a collective project-"becoming a science." This article traces the occupational and intellectual components of that project, focusing especially on the model of science employed, the limits of that model, and the limits of the science model in general. It is argued that sociology is a quasi-science and a quasi-humanities. Unfortunately, sociology has not systematically pursued its links to the humanities. The article argues for maintaining the empirical and explanatory thrust of the science model, while recognizing the extent to which concepts and theories are civilizationally embedded. The article ends with suggestions for systematically enriching sociology by closer links to the humanities.
Positivism has been declared dead in sociological theory circles, yet questions remain as to its viability among researchers. The authors present diagnostic evidence about positivism in sociological practice through a content analysis of journal articles published in the late 1960s and the late 1980s in the sociological journals of the USA and Britain. Using an index based on seven elements of positivism that were characteristic of the 'theory construction' movement of the late 1960s, the authors find evidence of the effects of time and nation on the use of positivism. Disaggregation of the index reveals that most of the observed change is associated with the elements of 'instrumental' positivism, particularly statistics. The results raise questions about the relationship between theory and research and about sociologists' philosophies of science.
Responding to the growing gap between the sociological ethos and the world we study, the challenge of public sociology is to engage multiple publics in multiple ways. These public sociologies should not be left out in the cold, but brought into the framework of our discipline. In this way we make public sociology a visible and legitimate enterprise, and, thereby, invigorate the discipline as a whole. Accordingly, if we map out the division of sociological labor, we discover antagonistic interdependence among four types of knowledge: professional, critical, policy, and public. In the best of all worlds the flourishing of each type of sociology is a condition for the flourishing of all, but they can just as easily assume pathological forms or become victims of exclusion and subordination. This field of power beckons us to explore the relations among the four types of sociology as they vary historically and nationally, and as they provide the template for divergent individual careers. Finally, comparing disciplines points to the umbilical chord that connects sociology to the world of publics, underlining sociology's particular investment in the defense of civil society, itself beleaguered by the encroachment of markets and states.
The following is the lecture given for the BJS 2005 Public Sociology Debate given at the London School of Economics and Political Science on ll October 2005
This lecture on the character of British sociology provides a pretext for a more general inquiry into public intellectual life in postwar Britain. The argument put forward falls into several distinctive sections. First, British social science has depended heavily on the migration of intellectuals, especially Jewish intellectuals who were refugees from fascism. Second, intellectual innovation requires massive, disruptive, violent change. Third, British sociology did nevertheless give rise to a distinctive tradition of social criticism in which one can argue there were (typically home-grown) public intellectuals. The main theme of their social criticism was to consider the constraining and divisive impact of social class, race and gender on the enjoyment of expanding social citizenship. Fourth, postwar British sociology came to be dominated by the analysis of an affluent consumer society. Finally, the main failure of British sociology in this postwar period was the absence of any sustained, macro-sociological analysis of the historical decline of Britain as a world power in the twentieth century.