Discourses of Global Politics: A Critical (Re)Introduction to International Relations

270 Pages·1994·29.132 MB·English

by  Jim George (auth.)

Discourses of
Global Politics
- - 0 - -
Critical Perspectives
on World Politics
----0
R. B.]. Walker, Series Editor
Discourses of
Global Politics
A Critical (Re)Introduction
to International Relations
- - - 0 - - -
Jim George
Lynne Rienner Publishers • Boulder, Colorado
Published in the United States of America in 1994 by
Lynne Rienner Publishers, Inc.
1800 30th Street, Boulder, Colorado 80301
© 1994 by Lynne Rienner Publishers, Inc. All rights reserved
Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 1994 978-0-333-61868-4
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
George, Jim, 1946- ·
Discourses of global politics : a critical (re) introduction to
international relations I Jim George.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-333-61685-7 ISBN 978-1-349-23564-3 (eBook)
DOI 10.1007/978-1-349-23564-3
1. International relations. I. Title.
JX1391.G467 1994
327-dc20 93-32719
CIP
The paper used in this publication meets the requirements
9
of the American National Standard for Permanence of
Paper for Printed Library Materials Z39 .48-1984.
Published and distributed outside North and South America, the
Philippines, Australia, New Zealand, and Japan by:
The Macmillan Press Ltd.
Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 2XS, England
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
For my daughter,
Sara
Contents
Preface ix
1 (Re)lntroducing the Theory as Practice of International Relations 1
2 Discourses of Modernity: Toward the Positivist Framing of
Contemporary Social Theory and International Relations 41
3 The Making of International Relations:
From Modernist Tradition to Cold War Discipline 69
4 The Positivist-Realist Phase:
Morgenthau, Behavioralism, and the Quest for Certainty 91
5 The Backward Discipline Revisited:
The Closed World of Neo-Realism 111
6 Critical Social Theory:
Thinking Beyond the "Orthodox Consensus" 139
7 Thinking Beyond International Relations:
The Critical Theory Challenge 171
8 Thinking Beyond International Relations:
Postmodernism-Reconceptualizing Theory as Practice 191
9 Conclusion 221
Bibliography 233
Index 253
About the Book and the Author 265
Other Books in the Series 266
vii
Preface
This book stands at that intersection of social theory and International
Relations which in recent years has seen a range of critical scholars call to
account the given, axiomatic, and taken-for-granted realities of orthodox
theory and practice in the search for more incisive and less dangerous per
spectives on contemporary social life. In this context it takes issue with an
intellectual and policy agenda that, in the last quarter of the twentieth cen
tury, still resonates with cultural, political, and gendered privilege and nar
rowly conceived images of global reality. Its critical status, consequently,
is related to a discursive regime of exclusion, silence, and intolerance that,
as "International Relations," reduces a complex and turbulent world to a
patterned and rigidly ordered framework of understanding, derived from a
particular representation of post-Renaissance European historical experi
ence, articulated in orthodox Anglo-American philosophical terms. In the
1990s, however, as ethnic hatreds, religious passions, and the ongoing
struggles of race, culture, and gender illustrate the inadequacies of univer
salist schemas and grand theories of order and control, the traditional doc
trines and protocols of International Relations are coming under wide
spread critical challenge.
This book takes up this challenge in acknowledging that, for all its
dangers and uncertainties, the space beyond the Cold War provides us with
the opportunity to confront the narrowness and closure of traditional per
spectives and redirect our energies to more tolerant, inclusive, and sophisti
cated thought and behavior. In this regard, however, it has no quick-fix,
alternative grand theories of global politics to offer. The issues at stake are
too serious for such simplistic posturing. Rather, in critically (re)introduc
ing International Relations in the 1990s, it offers a comprehensive reassess
ment of a range of ideas, issues, events, and perspectives that have rarely
been addressed in the International Relations literature in the way they are
addressed here. It seeks, in this way, to provide a contemporary audience
with the opportunity to think beyond orthodox dogma and engage creative-
ix
X PREFACE
ly with a diverse body of critical work, marginalized or excluded in the
mainstream agenda.
In doing so, this book relocates International Relations as a discursive
microcosm of a much larger cultural and philosophical enterprise that, in
the post-Enlightenment era, has successfully transformed a particular
meaning of reality into reality per se. This singular, homogeneous, and nar
rowly focused image of human society has become International Relations,
in the post-World War II period, establishing the boundaries of legitimate
and relevant theory and research and underpinning the "art of the possible"
in policy terms.
Chapters 2 to 5 in particular speak to this issue, illustrating how, via an
unproblematic appropriation of a particular way of understanding the mod
ern world and its peoples, International Relations resonates with the prob
lems, tensions, paradoxes, and potentials intrinsic to a dominant modernist
agenda. These problems include a dichotomized frame of reference at all
analytical levels (e.g., subject/object, fact/value, is/ought, self/other,
domestic/international, Realist/idealist); an objectivist, linear sense of
(Western) history; essentialist reading/writing practices; universalist strate
gies of categorization, definition, and exclusion; and a dangerously restric
tive understanding of knowledge and reality that, in effectively detaching
the observer/analyst from the vicissitudes of the world "out there," abro
gates social and individual responsibility to one (perceived) irreducible
foundational source or another (e.g., structural anarchy, human nature, his
torical recurrence and repetition).
This perspective is challenged here in a manner that does not simply
dismiss the modernist traditions that have made contemporary International
Relations what it is but also emphasizes how the critical potentials within
these traditions (e.g., via Descartes, Hume, Kant, Marx, Weber, and
Popper) have been largely ignored or marginalized in the search for a sim
ple, self-affirming narrative of global life, represented as Realism (or neo
Realism) since World War II. I argue, nevertheless, that to begin to move
beyond the narrow and dangerous confines of Realism as International
Relations, it is necessary to expose it as a particular (interpretive) process
of understanding the world and indicate how this process might be con
fronted and repudiated and its "reality" challenged, in theory and practice.
Chapters 6 to 8 are concerned primarily with this theme. As indicated
already, they offer no easy answers, for there are none to offer. Their aim,
rather, is to facilitate a broader, more inclusive understanding of global
human relations by illustrating how it is possible to think and act beyond
the seemingly irreducible principles of the International Relations ortho
doxy. I seek, in this way, to provide for students of International Relations
alternative points of entry into contemporary debates concerning a complex
and dangerous global environment in the 1990s. In particular I explore the
analytical possibilities inherent in perspectives such as critical theory and
the discourse approach of postmodernist scholarship.
PREFACE Xl
As an exercise in facilitation I have sought to make the book as acces
sible as possible, occasionally, perhaps, at the expense of nuance.
Consequently, this (re)introduction to International Relations attempts to
communicate sophisticated and often very complex themes in a manner that
does them some interpretive justice, while accounting for the interested
reader who might otherwise be inhibited or intimidated by the "foreign
ness" of some of the literary fare on offer. Accordingly, the discussion to
follow is, for all its "foreign" influence, couched in a conventional lan
guage, and, wherever possible, the references used are from traditional
sources.
The point is that it is not necessary to invoke a Foucault, a Derrida, or
a Habermas to comprehend that which has been left unsaid, unthought, and
unwritten in International Relations. On the critical margins of modern
Western thought there have always been those working to open "thinking
space," and even in the scholarship that has been integral to the framing of
modern ways of thinking there were opportunities for critical reflection that
have been effectively ignored, by Anglo-American social theory in general
and by International Relations in particular. For all this, a discursive per
spective on International Relations has never been more necessary than it is
at present, because it explains how and why this continues to be the case
and because it illustrates the power and (largely unrecognized) dangers of
the unsaid, the unreflected, and the unwritten in a world that everyday and
in so many ways defies simplistic, grand-theorized invocations of its "reali
ty."
In this broad context this book represents a contribution to an ongoing
conversation among a diverse range of scholars who, both directly and
indirectly, have been sources of stimulation and insight for me over the past
decade or so. In the indirect category I include, among others, Robert Cox,
John Vasquez, Jane Flax, Roger Tooze, William Connolly, Susan Hekman,
R. N. Berki, Mark Poster, Hayward Alker, Ralph Pettman, and Ian Clark.
More directly, there is a group of people in North America in particular
who via their fine minds and generous natures have given much to this pro
ject and its author. Michael Shapiro's kindness and encouragement is great
ly appreciated in this regard, as is that of Rob Walker and Richard Ashley,
who gave me the opportunity and confidence to push beyond traditional
boundaries of understanding. I am indebted also to Michael Dillon, Bradley
Klein, James Der Derian, Richard Leaver, Jim Richardson, and John
Girling for their support at different stages of this enterprise. David
Campbell has been integral to this work since its earliest articulations in
various Antipodean hostelries, and he remains a friend and colleague inte
gral to its critical purpose. So does Michael McKinley, whose everyday
friendship, generosity, and moral example are sources of continuing stimu
lation and wonder. Finally, Susan Engel deserves special thanks for her
friendship and commitment to me and to this project.
Jim George