Abstract
Eclecticism in International Relations (IR) claims to reject the rigid boundaries set by various theoretical traditions, yet, in practice, it falls short of moving the field “beyond paradigms” and tends to produce analytical exclusivity rather than eclecticism. This exclusivity is the result of Sil and Katzenstein’s investment in tenets of American pragmatism. These tenets favor consensus and universalism, leading to the reproduction and exclusivity of the theoretical status quo. Dissolving paradigmatic boundaries requires a more critical form of pragmatism. Drawing on the common origins of feminism and pragmatism paired with the contemporary feminist concept of intersectionality, this essay proposes a critical pragmatist ethos and an intersectional analytic eclecticism. This can produce a more inclusive form of analytic eclecticism and render visible the power dynamics that shape experiences as well as academic scholarship. Only when analytic eclecticism is informed by intersectionality and a critical pragmatism might it actually move IR “beyond paradigms.”
Keywords
International Relations (IR) has been—and continues to be—largely dominated by paradigm-bound research. Depending on one’s perspective, this can be beneficial—as it leads to the refinement of theories and creates professional identities—or detrimental—as it can lead to increased competition and stifle innovation. In neither case, however, is the primary focus on the utility of the research being produced. Even when paradigm-bound scholarship is focused towards producing policy-relevant research, researchers may be tempted to “black box” phenomena that are not easily accounted for in their chosen paradigmatic model. Given the increasingly globalized and interconnected international system, where many issues are simultaneously both global and local, such rigid approaches are inadequate at best, and inaccurate at worst.
Enter analytic eclecticism. Analytic eclecticism 1 is a complementary approach to such paradigmatic research. It does not look to replace traditional paradigms or to synthesize existing approaches into one. 2 Rather, its combinatorial logic refuses “to carve up complex social phenomena solely for … a particular style of analysis,” instead choosing to relax paradigmatic assumptions for selective integration of concepts and causal mechanisms from different theoretical traditions. 3 Though analytic eclecticism sacrifices theoretical sophistication and parsimony, it gains a more accurate, necessarily complex, multicausal story of real-world problems. Not only does this increase our understanding of contemporary issues, it provides tools to better diagnose and solve similar problems.
Sil and Katzenstein are not the first to suggest a combinatorial approach to political analysis. However, they are unique in their “efforts to create a more coherent and systematic understanding of what constitutes analytic eclecticism.” 4 They are not proposing a set of core assumptions or causal mechanisms—the hallmarks of paradigm-bound scholarship—but instead list three general criteria that, when met, designate research as eclectic: open-ended formation of research problems, middle-range theorizing, and pragmatism. 5 While all three elements are important, I will focus my discussion on their ethos of analytic eclecticism: pragmatism.
Pragmatic engagement is a distinguishing feature of eclectic research. 6 Sil and Katzenstein highlight “the late nineteenth and early twentieth century writings of American philosophers, most notably ‘the canonical trinity of John Dewey, Charles Peirce, and William James,” along with neopragmatists such as Richard Rorty and Hilary Putnam. 7 Though pragmatist philosophy is diverse, Sil and Katzenstein see a common set of tenets that provide a foundation for their analytic eclecticism.
The first tenet relates to consensus, focusing on the “aversion to excessively abstract or rigid foundational principles” in favour of “building a tentative consensus on ‘facts’ that can be deployed to cope with contemporary problems.” 8 The second tenet relates to knowledge production and the grounding of philosophy, suggesting “that knowledge claims, however produced and defended, are always in need of reconsideration and reconstruction on the basis of engagement with the experience of actors seeking to cope with real-world problems.” 9 The third tenet speaks to the social and discursive aspects of knowledge production. Taking aim at the barriers that separate academic debate and public discourse (and hinting at universalism), emphasis is placed on the “process of dialogue and reflection within a more open [i.e., universal] community in which participation and deliberation are counted upon to legitimize whatever consensus emerges in relation to specific problems.” 10 The final tenet relates to pragmatism’s open-ended ontology, highlighting how in social environments “the ‘self’ is constructed and reconstructed in continuous dialogue with others.” 11 This concept holds appeal for eclectic scholarship because it suggests that “how and why some agents choose to reproduce, while others redefine or transform existing material and ideational structures are questions of empirical inquiry that cannot be settled by fiat.” 12 While Sil and Katzenstein recognize that their distillation of pragmatic thought into four tenets “may appear oversimplified to philosophers of pragmatism,” they argue that these tenets “capture the ways in which analytic eclecticism represents a kind of pragmatist inquiry.” 13
In theory, armed with these pragmatic assumptions, analytic eclecticism puts no boundaries on the paradigms from which it draws logics and mechanisms. In practice, however, Sil and Katzenstein limit their discussion to the dominant triad of realism, liberalism, and constructivism, despite acknowledging that other approaches exist. They state, “analytic eclecticism is minimally operationalized as analysis that extracts and recombines elements of theories embedded in the three major paradigms in the process of building complex middle range causal stories for important matters of policy and practice.” 14 Sil and Katzenstein advocate an inclusive eclectic approach, yet their working eclecticism remains exclusive. While this framework may retain some benefits, it undermines one key goal of analytic eclecticism: to liberate scholarship from artificially imposed, but thoroughly policed, paradigmatic boundaries.
Analytic eclecticism holds significant promise for IR. However, as it is currently conceptualized, analytic eclecticism falls short of resulting in eclectic research. Instead, it has the opposite effect, reinforcing the hold of mainstream paradigms on the field. Why does analytic eclecticism fall short of its emancipatory promise? In this article, I trace this contradictory effect to the pragmatist ethos underlying analytic eclecticism.
The internal contradiction begins with the pragmatist tenets Sil and Katzenstein lay out. These tenets rely on a popular—but uncritical—understanding of pragmatism, one that fails to account for power. 15 This foundation is especially problematic as it makes invisible the disciplinary power dynamics which reify and are reified in the privileging of the dominant theoretical triad in IR. 16 Given this contradictory outcome, can analytic eclecticism’s promise of liberating scholarship from paradigmatic boundaries still be achieved? Perhaps, but not without a critical ethos.
Enter feminism. Feminism and pragmatism are intimately connected at their origins. Key thinkers in the canons of feminist theorizing engaged in dialogue with key thinkers in the canons of pragmatist theorizing as both evolved. 17 Looking to the writings of late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century protofeminists and women of colour, a critical strand of pragmatic thought is rendered visible, one that recognizes the necessity of difference and the importance of power to positioning and social location. When paired with contemporary feminist understandings of intersectionality, this work serves as a stronger and more inclusive foundation for analytic eclecticism than a less critical form of pragmatism could.
The perils of pragmatism
At first glance, pragmatism seems to provide an appropriate foundation for analytic eclecticism. Pragmatism’s investment in consensus combined with its recognition that knowledge is discursive and social—and thus open to reformulation—provides an alternative perspective to IR’s tendencies to understand knowledge as either the product of objective rationalism or subjective interpretivism. Where specific theoretical paradigms choose one approach or the other, pragmatism advocates the utility of both derivations. Thus, in theory, a pragmatist ethos allows eclectic research to sidestep metatheoretical debates and the challenges inherent in combining opposing perspectives. 18 In practice, by not acknowledging the power dynamics which shape these controversies in disciplinary IR, 19 a pragmatist ethos can have the effect of (re)producing the status quo, privileging rationalism, positivism, and the dominant theoretical triad.
This inattention to power, generally, and the disciplinary power dynamics of epistemological difference, specifically, can be linked to pragmatism’s investment in universalism. Universalism, or the belief in a common category or position salient across theoretical traditions, enables multiple perspectives to be combined without fear of incommensurability, an issue that Fred Chernoff addresses in more detail in his contribution to this forum. 20 Yet, by assuming that a universal category exists, pragmatism actually simplifies complex issues. Moreover, this focus on a universal category privileges that category as most important, marginalizing the relevance of other categories along with their potential explanatory power. This marginalization directly counters analytic eclecticism’s goal of attending to complexity and bringing diverse approaches to the forefront.
This investment in universalism also brings about a static view of categories. Universal categories are identified by their similarities, which are fixed and unchanging across time and theoretical tradition. Sil and Katzenstein identify the substantive referent (i.e., the research problem) to be the universal category, arguing that the research problem is not dependent on the theoretical approach(es) being employed. However, to identify a common category among different approaches, it must be determined a priori what similarities are to be contained within that category. Thus, for any determination to be made, artificial boundaries must be imposed upon the referent so that it can be identified. But imposing constructed boundaries upon the referent works to simplify the problem, which again contravenes the goals of analytic eclecticism.
Pragmatism also provides a questionable foundation for analytic eclecticism because it tends to privilege consensus over difference. 21 Achieving consensus renders dynamic and complex interactions among and within categories invisible. This both undermines the spirit of eclecticism and ignores the wider power dynamics that shape the field. Consensus is not always possible. Sometimes commonality cannot be found because no universal category or position exists, and forcing commonality can breed violences of inclusion. 22 Gayatri Spivak famously argues that the subaltern is rendered mute (and therefore can neither speak nor be heard) because of the complexities of finding consensus between the position of the subaltern and that of the oppressor. 23 Achille Mbembe argues that the illusion of consensus across wide power differentials is only possible in conditions of extreme violence perpetrated on those at the lower end of those differentials. 24
Taken together, these problems show how eclectic theorizing functions to exclude. Investment in consensus and universality inhibits the visibility of (disciplinary) power dynamics, even though they are central to shaping what is considered universal and who is considered part of any consensus produced by analytic eclecticism. When conceptualized with this kind of ethos, analytic eclecticism will always have exclusive effects because it lacks the tools to recognize or correct its own exclusivity. To achieve inclusivity, these foundations must be challenged.
Towards a critical pragmatism: Feminism and intersectionality
The origins of pragmatism are traced to the Progressive Era of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. During this time period, many feminists whose theorizing remains influential were in dialogue with founding pragmatist thinkers. 25 As a result, commonalities between the two exist, including an investment in the emancipatory potential of experience. 26 However, where pragmatism is silent on issues of power and identity, many feminisms, including those of pragmatists’ contemporaries, spoke directly to these issues. 27 Contemporary feminist philosophical interventions have sought to excavate this common origin, focusing on the writings of Jane Addams, to map out a feminist form of pragmatism. 28
Though not part of the “canonical trinity,” Jane Addams was an influential actor during the Progressive Era and extensively engaged with founders of pragmatism. Addams was not a trained philosopher, but she maintained relationships with fellow philosophers and pragmatists. As John Dewey was a trustee of Hull House, his philosophy of pragmatism was greatly influenced by his experiences there and his relationship with Addams. It has been argued that Dewey’s philosophy of pragmatism was grounded in Addams’ experiences and ideas. 29 Unlike Dewey, however, Addams was acutely aware of the disempowering effects of gender, race, and class upon community and society, making her pragmatism distinctly feminist.
Her involvement with Hull House, a settlement house focused on community and reciprocity and with hopes “to unite academic theories with action,” showed her commitment to living pragmatist philosophy. 30 Addams argued that scholars of pragmatism “should become members of the communities plagued by the problems that their theories aimed to solve.” 31 As a woman and a social worker, Addams was acutely aware of the ways power differentials can distort relationships, shape social interactions, and colour experience. She discussed the “cessation of energy and loss of power” that came with structural inequalities, and she compared individuals with circumstances that afforded them “the power to see life as a whole” and those who lacked such power. 32 Her pragmatism was necessarily critical, where “interdependent diversity or the need for hearing the voices of ‘others’ is essential to Addams’ pragmatism and feminism—indeed she believed that having many diverse experiences was a moral responsibility.” 33 While she argued that people’s “basic likenesses … easily transcend less essential differences of race, language, creed, and tradition,” she recognized the need to communicate across those differences. 34
Diversity and a multiplicity of voices are important to both feminism and pragmatism. Addams went a step further than most pragmatists by emphasizing moral responsibility for diversity. 35 This has been identified as “a distinct, feminist form of pragmatism” which was reflected not only at Hull House, but in the Hague Women’s Conference, the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom, and other early twentieth-century feminist institutions. 36 Contemporary feminist pragmatists continue to argue for the importance of pluralism, noting that “without these [diverse] voices, our knowing…remains distorted, error-ridden and partial. It is not merely a ‘nice’ thing to do to include previously-excluded voices, it is essential for any definition of truth.” 37
To many adherents, feminism is both an academic discourse and a commitment of social justice beginning at the margins. 38 Feminist scholarship in IR has centred around producing practical and experiential knowledge of real-world issues that concern ordinary individuals, not just academics or policy makers. 39 Therefore, a significant amount of feminist work resists universalism in favour of context and intersectionality. 40 In utilizing intersectionality as a tool for analyzing IR’s disciplinary power disparities, Brooke Ackerly and Jacqui True explain that “one does not need to be a feminist to observe sex-disaggregated findings. However, without gender and intersectional analysis, attempts to learn anything from gender-disaggregated data are incomplete.” 41 Intersectional analysis allows for considerations of diversity, pluralism, and reflexivity within the discipline and outside it in ways that pragmatism without feminist intersectionality cannot.
Intersectionality, much like Addams’ interdependent diversity, recognizes the importance of acknowledging multiple voices and identities as well as the power dynamics that accompany them. The concept is a versatile one, imbued with reflexivity or reformulation.
42
It came out of critiques of feminism by women of colour and draws attention to the categories of difference (i.e., race, class, sexuality, ability, etc.) that shape experience to produce qualitative and quantitative differences in privilege and positioning.
43
While the term intersectionality was coined by Kimberlé Crenshaw,
44
the insights captured by the term have a much longer history and can be found, for example, in the writings of Black female activists during the Progressive Era.
45
As the name implies, it draws attention to the intersections of oppressions, which are multiplicative rather than additive. As Crenshaw explains, women of colour have “to deal with not only one form of oppression, but with all forms … which link together to make a double, a triple, multiple, a many layered blanket of oppression.”
46
Its popularity and use has increased such that it now refers to both a normative theoretical argument and an approach to conducting empirical research that emphasizes the interaction of categories of difference (including but not limited to race, gender, class, and sexual orientation). … [I]ntersectionality considers the interaction of such categories as organizing structures of society, recognizing that these key components influence political access, equality, and the potential for any form of justice
47
Intersectionality was, in part, a response to identity politics’ claims of universal categories: that people can be categorized into discrete and independent groups characterized by uniform interests and experiences (e.g., “women” or “African-Americans”). 51 The search for universal categories in pragmatism parallels the search for fixed categories in identity politics. Pragmatism privileges a universal category much like identity politics privileges a common identity. Intersectionality thus provides a counterpoint to both because it renders “homogenous categories and subjects politically suspect by situating individuals within networks of relations that complicate their social locations.” 52 Instead of searching for the universal, intersectional approaches look at “commonality among difference,” which “entails viewing social categories as reflecting what individuals, institutions, and cultures do, rather than simply as characteristics of individuals.” 53 This shift enables the potential for alliances on temporarily constituted, socially constructed common ground even if no commonality exists. In so doing, an intersectional approach simultaneously highlights the power dynamics rendered invisible by non-critical approaches and provides a path for action. As Patricia Hill Collins explains, power configurations “are always multiple and in constant states of change,” 54 and therefore must be seen through intersectional lenses.
Since its development, intersectionality has been applied to analyze interactive relationships among dynamic and mutually constituted cultures, actors, institutions, and the categories of difference that shape them. 55 As Allison Bailey argues, intersectionality represents a “strategy for making plurality visible in academic conversations and policy discussions. In this sense it works more like a tool (e.g., spell-check program) for making inquirers mindful of complexity.” 56 Expanding intersectionality encourages analyses of differences among individuals and groups, categories and subject referents, without losing attention to the power dynamics that shape these differences, their positioning, or their complexity. Moreover, by eschewing universalism and consensus, an intersectional approach can conceptualize categories dynamically, as both causal and constitutive, 57 exactly as Sil and Katzenstein insist eclecticism should be.
Intersectional analytic eclecticism and a critical pragmatist ethos
Intersectionality provides a strong and dynamic foundation for a critical pragmatist ethos. Not only does it avoid the problems previously identified with pragmatism, it works well with the goals of analytic eclecticism. Intersectionality privileges both dynamic, open-ended questions over rigid paradigmatic assumptions and mutually constituted, intersecting categories over fixed, static categories. The importance it places on multiplicities of identities and voices encourages contributions from a variety of perspectives. Furthermore, its investment in commonality among difference is conducive to adapting and reformulating knowledge claims produced in separate and diverse research communities and theoretical traditions. Employing intersectionality thus produces scholarship that is more analytically sound, has greater policy relevance, and leads to more viable policy prescriptions. 58
When based in intersectionality and a critical pragmatist ethos, eclectic theorizing can both produce better research and begin to identify “fruitful and complex marginalized locations” that have yet to be investigated thoroughly or at all. 59 This opens up space for (re)combining epistemologies, methodologies, and research traditions, particularly those coming out of approaches that have traditionally been marginalized within IR. An intersectional analytic eclecticism can also produce better researchers. As Ann Garry explains, “the self-understanding and awareness of our social location that can result from intersectional thinking helps not only to improve our scholarship but also to face up to dominant group members’ unacknowledged privileges, including the privilege of remaining ignorant of marginalized people.” 60 This approach not only maintains the complexity of real-world issues, it recognizes the complexities of the researcher analyzing the issue, increasing “the awareness of relationality and hierarchical power relations.” 61 When informed by intersectionality, analytic eclecticism can embrace questions of power, render hierarchies visible, and illuminate implicit and explicit biases to produce scholarship that is relevant to a variety of actors without any need to claim universality or consensus.
Sil and Katzenstein identified four tenets of pragmatism to guide analytic eclecticism. I propose they be replaced by the following four tenets, drawn from Allison Bailey’s philosophical discussion on intersectionality, 62 to guide an intersectional analytic eclecticism. The first tenet is the recognition of the multiplicity of categories and/or mechanisms, both individually and in relation to one another. Categories are neither independent nor in direct competition but, instead, are linked together in varying degrees of interdependence and resistance. This idea opens space for combining frameworks and suggests open-ended efforts to academic inquiry and research in order to understand and address socially important problems. The second tenet is understanding that categories are mutually constituted and simultaneously experienced, thus theorizing should not privilege a particular category, or mechanism, but should instead focus on the interactions among categories and mechanisms. The third tenet recognizes that categories of difference “are neither reducible nor interchangeable with one another.” 63 This tenet highlights the complexity and multidimensionality that defines categories and real-world issues, yet this does not necessarily entail incommensurability when taken into account with intersectionality’s focus on commonality among difference. 64 Finally, there is an acknowledgement that “all frameworks and categories permeate, influence, align and intermingle in all social relations.” 65 This final tenet reinforces the connection between frameworks, categories, and lived experiences; supports the tendency toward middle-range theorizing; and fulfills the desire for political utility in research outcomes.
Conclusion: Rethinking (intersectional) analytic eclecticism
Analytic eclecticism holds promise for bridging gaps between theoretical paradigms by connecting theory to practice, both within and (more importantly, in my view), outside IR’s dominant theoretical triad. It could serve as a tool to level some of the power-imbued relationships between theoretical and epistemological approaches in disciplinary IR inquiry. However, this promise will remain elusive if analytic eclecticism remains imbued with an uncritical pragmatist ethos that tends towards universalism, privileges difference-erasing consensus, and neglects power dynamics. The result of this kind of analytic eclecticism in practice is analytical exclusivity rather than true eclecticism.
Instead of the pragmatist ethos described by Sil and Katzenstein, I argue that eclectic approaches must be intersectional and infused with a critical ethos. Reconceptualized as such, eclectic theorizing can successfully incorporate a wide range of frameworks—rational and interpretive, mainstream and critical—not only when such approaches converge, but also when they diverge. The result is eclectic theorizing that is more inclusive than exclusive, making scholarship that employs such an approach truly eclectic in both theory and practice.
Footnotes
Declaration of conflicting interests
The author declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The author received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
1
Rudra Sil and Peter Katzenstein, Beyond Paradigms: Analytic Eclecticism in the Study of World Politics (New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2010a); Rudra Sil and Peter Katzenstein, “Analytic eclecticism and the study of world politics: Reconfiguring problems and mechanisms across research traditions,” Perspectives on Politics 8, no. 2 (2010b): 411–431.
2
Rudra Sil and Peter Katzenstein, Beyond Paradigms, 3.
3
Ibid.
4
Ibid., 2
5
The first two criteria, and analytic eclecticism more generally, are explained in greater detail in Fred Chernoff, Jérémie Cornut, and Pat James, “Analytic eclecticism and international relations: Promises and pitfalls,” International Journal 75, no. 3 (2020).
6
Rudra Sil and Peter Katzenstein, Beyond Paradigms, 19.
7
Rudra Sil and Peter Katzenstein, “Analytic eclecticism and the study of world politics,” 417.
8
Rudra Sil and Peter Katzenstein, Beyond Paradigms, 47; Sil and Katzenstein, “Analytic eclecticism and the study of world politics,” 417.
9
Sil and Katzenstein, “Analytic eclecticism and the study of world politics,” 417.
10
Ibid.
11
Ibid.
12
Ibid., 417–418.
13
Ibid., 418.
14
Sil and Katzenstein, Beyond Paradigms, 37; emphasis added.
15
Charles J. Hoch, “Pragmatism, planning, and power,” Journal of Planning Education and Research, 4 no. 2 (1984): 86–95.
16
Even work on analytic eclecticism, which mentions power, does not focus on either power differentials generally or those power differentials in disciplinary sociology specifically. See, for example, Peter M. Haas, “Practicing analytic eclecticism,” Qualitative and Multi-Method Research 8, no. 2 (2010): 9–13; Alice D. Ba, “Reflections on analytic eclecticism and the field,” Qualitative and Multi-Method Research Newsletter 8, no. 2 (2010): 14–17; Jérémie Cornut, “Analytic eclecticism in practice: A method for combining International Relations theories,” International Studies Perspectives 16, no. 1 (2015): 50–66.
17
Charlene Haddock Siegfried, Pragmatism and Feminism: Reweaving the Social Fabric (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996); Charlene Haddock Siegfried, “Socializing democracy: Jane Addams and John Dewey,” Philosophy of the Social Sciences 29, no. 2 (1999): 207–230.
18
For debate of this claim, see, for example, Christian Reus-Smit, “Beyond metatheory?” European Journal of International Relations 19, no. 3 (2013): 589–608, and Fred Chernoff, “Pragmatism, pluralism and eclecticism: Sil and Katzenstein’s ‘analytic eclecticism’ in Beyond Paradigms,” International Journal 75, no. 3 (2020).
19
See, for example, Cynthia Weber, “Good girls, little girls, and bad girls: Make paranoia in Robert Keohane’s critique of feminist International Relations,” Millennium 23, no. 2 (1994): 337–349; Anna M. Agathangelou and L.H.M. Ling, “The house of IR: From family power politics to the poises of worldism,” International Studies Review 6, no. 4 (2004): 21–49.
20
Chernoff, “Pragmatism, pluralism and eclecticism,”
21
Sil and Katzenstein, “Analytic eclecticism and the study of world politics,” 417.
22
Jin Haritaworn, Adi Kunstman, and Sylvia Posocco, eds., Queer Necropolitics (London: Routledge, 2014).
23
Gayatri Spivak, “Can the subaltern speak?” in C. Nelson and L. Grossber, eds., Marxism and the Interpretation of Culture (Basingstoke: Palgrave MacMillan, 1988), 271--314
24
Achille Mbembe, Necropolitics (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2019).
25
Siegfried, Pragmatism and Feminism: Reweaving the Social Fabric. Siegfried discusses specifically Jane Addams, Alice Hamilton, Helen Thompson Woolley, Florence Kelley, and Ella Flagg Young interacting with (male) “Chicago School” pragmatists, including John Dewey, George Herbert Mead, James R. Angell, and Addison Webster Moore.
26
Ibid.
27
Siegfried, “Socializing democracy,” 207–230.
28
Siegfried, Pragmatism and Feminism: Reweaving the Social Fabric; Maurice Hammington and Celia Bardwell-Jones, eds., Contemporary Feminist Pragmatism (New York: Routledge, 2012); J. Ann Tickner and Jacqui True, “A century of International Relations feminism: From World War I women’s peace pragmatism to the women, peace, and security agenda,” International Studies Quarterly 62, no. 2 (2018): 221–233.
29
Siegfried, “Socializing democracy,” 215.
30
Judy D. Whipps, “Jane Addams social thought as a model for a pragmatist-feminist communitarianism,” Hypatia 19, no. 2 (2004): 120; Jane Addams, Twenty Years at Hull-House with Autobiographical Notes. (New York: Macmillan, 1910), 72.
31
Tickner and True, “A century of International Relations feminism: From World War I women’s peace pragmatism to the women, peace, and security agenda,” 224, citing Siegfried, Pragmatism and Feminism: Reweaving the Social Fabric, 58.
32
Addams, Twenty Years at Hull-House with Autobiographical Notes, 59, 143.
33
Whipps, “Jane Addams social thought as a model for a pragmatist-feminist communitarianism,” 123.
34
Addams, Twenty Years at Hull-House with Autobiographical Notes, 65–66, 226, 230.
35
Ibid., 112.
36
Tickner and True, “A century of International Relations feminism,” 22.
37
Elizabeth Minnich, Transforming Knowledge (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1990), 163.
38
For example, see Soumita Basu and Maya Eichler, “Gender in International Relations: Interdisciplinarity and the study of conflict,” in S. Yetiv and P. James, eds., Advancing Interdisciplinary Approaches to International Relations (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016), 189–227.
39
For a theoretical and methodological basis for this position, see, for example, Cynthia Enloe, Bananas, Beaches and Bases (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1989); J. Ann Tickner, Gender in International Relations (New York: Columbia University Press, 1992); Brooke A. Ackerly, Maria Stern, and Jacqui True, eds., Feminist Methodologies for International Relations (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006). For recent discussions and examples, see, for example, Elisabeth Prugl, “Feminist methodology between theory and practice,” Review of International Studies 46, no. 3 (2020): 304–314; Helen M. Kinsella and Laura J. Shepherd, “The ‘brutal fecundity of violence’: Feminist methodologies of International Relations,” Review of International Studies 46, no. 3 (2020): 299–303; Maria-Adriana Deiana, Gender and Citizenship: Promises of Peace in Post-Dayton Bosnia-Herzegovina (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018); Swati Parashar and Jane L. Parpart, eds., Rethinking Silence, Voice, and Agency in Contested Gendered Terrains (London: Routledge, 2019); Erin Kamler, Rewriting the Victim: Dramatization as Research in Thailand’s Anti-Trafficking Movement (New York: Oxford University Press, 2019).
40
For example, Marsha Henry, “Problematizing military masculinity, intersectionality, and male vulnerability in feminist critical military studies,” Critical Military Studies 3, no. 2 (2017): 182–199; Johanna Kantola and Emanuela Lombardo, Gender and the Economic Crisis in Europe. (London: Springer, 2017); Brooke A. Ackerly and Jacqui True, “An intersectional analysis of International Relations: Recasting the discipline,” Politics & Gender 4, no. 1 (2008): 156–173; Nira Yuval-Davis, “Intersectionality and feminist politics,” European Journal of Women’s Studies 13, no. 3 (2006): 193–209; V. Spike Peterson, “Gendered identities, ideologies, and practices in the context of war and militarism,” in L. Sjoberg and S. Via, eds., Gender, War, And Militarism: Feminist Perspectives (Santa Barbara: Praeger, 2010), 17–29.
41
Ackerly and True, “An intersectional analysis of International Relations,” 157, emphasis in the original.
42
Sil and Katzenstein, “Analytic eclecticism and the study of world politics,” 417, advocate for reflexivity, which is discussed in more detail in Eric Blanchard, “Analytic eclecticism and the challenge of theoretical multilingualism,” International Journal 75, no. 3 (2020).
43
Combahee River Collective, “A black feminist statement,” in The Combahee River Collective Statement: Black Feminist Organizing in the Seventies and Eighties (Albany: Kitchen Table: Women of Color Press, 1986 [1977]); Gloria Anzaldua, Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza (San Francisco: Aunt Lute Books, 1987); Winifred Breines, The Trouble Between Us: The Uneven History of White and Black Women in the Feminist Movement (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006).
44
Kimberlé Crenshaw, “Demarginalizing the intersection of race and sex: A black feminist critique of antidiscrimination doctrine, feminist theory and antiracist politics,” University of Chicago Legal Forum 1 (1989): 139–167; Kimberlé Crenshaw, “Mapping the margins: Intersectionality, identity politics and violence against women of color,” Stanford Law Review 43 no. 6 (1991): 1241–1299.
45
Patricia Hill Collins, Another Kind of Public Education: Race, Schools, the Media, and Democratic Possibilities (Boston: Beacon Press, 2009).
46
Crenshaw, “Mapping the margins,” 1245.
47
Ange-Marie Hancock, “When multiplication doesn’t equal quick addition: Examining intersectionality as a research paradigm,” Perspectives on Politics 5, no. 1 (2007): 64, original emphasis.
48
Hancock, “When multiplication doesn’t equal quick addition,” 67.
49
Patricia Hill Collins and Sirma Bilge, Intersectionality (London: Polity, 2016), 2.
50
Ann Phoenix and Pamela Pattynama, “Editorial: Intersectionality,” European Journal of Women’s Studies 13, no. 3 (2006): 187.
51
Crenshaw, “Mapping the margins,” 1241–1299.
52
Alison Bailey, “On intersectionality and the whiteness of feminist philosophy,” in G. Lancy, ed., The Center Must Not Hold: White Women Philosophers on the Whiteness of Philosophy (New York: Lexington Books, 2010), 54.
53
Elizabeth Cole, “Intersectionality and research in psychology,” American Psychologist 64, no. 3 (2009): 172, 175.
54
Patricia Hill Collins, Black Feminist Thought: Knowledge, Consciousness, and the Politics of Empowerment (London: Routledge, 2002), 275.
55
Hancock, “When multiplication doesn’t equal quick addition,” 63–79; Bailey, “On intersectionality and the whiteness of feminist philosophy,” 51–70; Ann Garry, “Intersectionality, metaphors, and the multiplicity of gender,” Hypatia 26, no. 4 (2011): 826–850.
56
Bailey, “On intersectionality and the whiteness of feminist philosophy,” 53.
57
Hancock, “When multiplication doesn’t equal quick addition,” 63–79.
58
Anna Bredstrom, “Intersectionality: A challenge for feminist HIV/AIDS research?” European Journal of Women’s Studies 13, no. 3 (2006): 229–243.
59
Garry, “Intersectionality, metaphors, and the multiplicity of gender,” 828.
60
Ibid., 827.
61
Ibid., 829.
62
Bailey, “On intersectionality and the whiteness of feminist philosophy,” 51–70.
63
Ibid., 67.
64
Like Sil and Katzenstein, Beyond Paradigms: Analytic Eclecticism in the Study of World Politics, and Chernoff, “Pragmatism, pluralism and eclecticism: Sil and Katzenstein’s ‘analytic eclecticism’ in Beyond Paradigms,” I agree with Rudra Sil, “Analytic eclecticism — Continuing the conversation,” International Journal 75, no. 3 (2020), and see incommensurability as a manageable challenge. An intersectional analytic eclecticism is not concerned with whether causal mechanisms are commensurable with one another, but rather if they relate to the problem under investigation.
65
Bailey, “On intersectionality and the whiteness of feminist philosophy,” 67.
Author Biography
The late Dr. Jessica Peet taught at the University of Florida, the University of Southern California, and Bucknell University, USA. She recently published (with Laura Sjoberg) Gender and International Civilian Victimization (Routledge, 2019).