Situating critical realism

Millennium: Journal of International Studies

Volumn 35, Issue 2, 2007, Pages 409-416

  Brown, Chris ^a  

^a LONDON SCHOOL OF ECONOMICS   (United Kingdom)

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[No Author keywords available]

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EID: 34249807635     PISSN: 03058298     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1177/03058298070350020201     Document Type: Article

References (28)

1. I use the terms 'scientific realism' and 'critical realism' as synonyms. Colin Wight's attempt to distinguish between the two positions, associating Bhaskar specifically with critical realism is plausible but seems to me not to tally with general usage, at least in the field of IR; Colin Wight, 'A Manifesto for Scientific Realism in IR: Assuming the Can-Opener Won't Work!', Millennium: Journal of International Studies 35, no.2 (2007), XXX, n.12. Hereafter, referred to as Wight.
2. Jonathan Joseph, 'Philosophy in International Relations: A Scientific Realist Approach', Millennium: Journal of International Studies 35, no.2 (2007), XXX-YYY;
3. Milja Kurki, 'Critical Realism and Causal Analysis in International Relations: Causes All the Way Down', Millennium: Journal of International Studies 35, no.2 (2007), XXX-YYY Hereafter, referred to as Joseph, and Kurki; and Wight.
4. Roy Bhaskar A Realist Theory of Science (Hassocks: Harvester Press, 1978). Andrew Collier Critical Realism: An Introduction to Roy Bhaskar's Philosophy (London: Verso, 1994) is the best introduction to Bhaskar's thought.
5. Karl Popper The Logic of Scientific Discovery (London: Hutchinson, 1959).
6. Karl Popper Conjectures and Refutations (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1963).
7. Thomas Kuhn The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1962).
8. Herbert Marcuse, One-Dimensional Man: Studies in the Ideology of Advanced Industrial Society (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1964).
9. See I.L. Horowitz (ed.), The Rise and Fall of Project Camelot (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1967).
10. See, e.g., Michel Foucault, The Archaeology of Knowledge (London: Tavistock, 1972), and, forerunner of postmoden-dsm and much else, Guy DeBord, The Society of the Spectacle (New York: Zone Books 1994 - original Paris: Buchet/Chastel, n.d. but c. 1967).
11. Paul Feyerabend, Against Method: Outline of an Anarchistic Theory of Knowledge (London: Verso, 1975). Wight's suggestion (p. 0) that Feyerabend's position is consistent with scientific realism depends upon a rather constricted reading of 'anything goes', which is against the spirit of the original.
12. Imre Lakatos and Paul Musgrave (eds.), Criticism and the Growth of Knowledge (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1970) is based on a conference held in 1965, and contains the key papers for this debate.
13. E.g. David Sanders, 'International Relations: Neo-Realism and Neo-Liberalism' in An New Handbook of Political Science, ed. Robert Goodin and Hans-Dieter Klingemann (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998).
14. Friedrich Kratochwil, 'Constructing a New Orthodoxy? Wendt's 'Social Theory of International Politics' and the Constructivist Challenge', Millennium: Journal of International Studies, 29, no.1 (2000): 73-101 is an attack on scientism specifically oriented towards critical realism, and vigorously critiqued in turn by Mi1ja Kurki and Colin Wight in this Forum.
15. See http://www.kent.ac.uk/politics/research/kentpapers/nicholson.html (n.d. but approximately 1990). The ideas in this paper have been expressed elsewhere in Nicholson's oeuvre (e.g. in Causes and Consequences in International Relations (London: Pinter, 1996) but nowhere as clearly as here.
16. Both quotations, www.kent.ac.uk/politics/research/kentpapers/ nicholson.html, 10 (if downloaded in Microsoft Word).
17. Ibid., 11.
18. Karl Marx, Capital: A Critique of Political Economy, 3 vols (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1976-81);
19. Friedrich Engels, Socialism: Utopian and Scientific (Westport Conn: Greenwood Press, 1977).
20. It is interesting that there are so many editions of Marx's early writings in the 1960s and 1970s, e.g. edited by Bottomore (1963), Easton and Guddatt (1967), McLellan (1971) and Colletti (1975), whereas the Greenwood Press edition of Engels's Socialism: Utopian and Scientific cited above is the only recent critical version of what used to be a key text for Marxists.
21. William Morris, cited in E.P. Thompson, William Morris (London: Lawrence & Wishart, 1977), p. 761.
22. Bill Warren, Imperialism: Pioneer of Capitalism (London: Verso, 1980).
23. Wight, 394.
24. The answer to this apparent conundrum is that Waltz is not a positivist in the context of any historical understanding of the term. Joseph, 348 fn5; 355 fn36.
25. I should add that I am not suggesting he would have set up this question in the way I have throughout this paper.
26. Joseph, 345
27. I have in mind the decision of the Socialist Workers Party to throw its lot in with George Galloway's Respect Party. They may think they are in control of this marriage of convenience, but time will tell if they are right.
28. H.B. Davis (ed.), The National Question: Selected Writings by Rosa Luxemburg (NY: Monthly Review Press, 1976), 122.