Abstract
As a relatively new social science discipline, International Relations (IR) and its practitioners have been vexed about its status, orientation and distinction. New methodologies have taken it to a new terrain and the discipline has mapped itself differently from where it began in 1919. The book under review represents the fresh directions IR is moving towards conceptually, methodologically and temporally. This work pushes the conduct, objective and practice of IR into unchartered terrain. It posits a fresh definition of science.
Students of IR are familiar with the brief history of the discipline and the three great debates that have taken place in this century. Between the realists and the utopian, the neorealists and the neoliberals, and the reflectivists and rationalists lies a contest for the best way to do IR, where self-identified scientists debate about styles of doing science. These raging debates, however, have not pushed us to understanding or arriving at a global consensus on what defines a field of enquiry in science (p. 11). Each theory attempts to outdo the other, contesting for the magical word ‘science’. Jackson’s book is an illuminating work on the fruitless exercise of theories competing with each other. His central argument is that science is defined by its goals and not methods, thereby dislodging the idea that there exists ‘the’ scientific method, rather than ‘a’ scientific method. Building on Weber’s definition of science, Jackson proposes a redefinition of the term ‘science’, with the ostensible purpose of accommodating diverse ways of doing IR, without compromising on the goals and quality of scholarship. With catholicity unusual in debates in the philosophy of science, Jackson undertakes the admirable task of understanding the production of knowledge in the discipline of IR, positing that there is no global consensus on what constitutes a scientific work.
The book can be sliced into three even segments. The author first outlines the manner in which science has been granted a superior position, exercise and process. As it is in every social science discipline, there is discernible ‘science envy’ prevalent amongst social scientists, eager to demonstrate that their work is as scientific as that of natural science and ‘the question of science remains almost unavoidable for IR scholarship’ (p. 10). The author examines the debates on what constitutes science, concluding quite rightly that the debates have been celebratory or dismissive of a particular theory, without feeling the compelling need to explain the norms of science. He points out why a broad definition of science might be more productive to generating good IR work as well as useful to solve the perennial ‘science’ envy of IR. In order to address this problem, Jackson turns to Weber to resolve the debate. While it is not possible to construct rules to discipline (what constitutes science and what does not), Weber argues that the defining feature of science is the goal of that enquiry and not the method. The same words and concepts can be used to declare a position, as well as order empirical reality and both can be folded into the large tent to accommodate social science. Jackson’s proposition is that the rigid walls of science need to be chipped away to make it an accommodating space, where ‘the careful and rigorous application of a set of theories and concepts produce a ‘thoughtful ordering of empirical reality’.
Flippant terms such as wager rarely find themselves in works on the philosophy of science. For Jackson, it forms his final and pivotal argument, that methodological claims are ‘wagers’, a wager symbolizes the hunch and the manner in which the researcher relates to the researched and the core assumptions and questions of faith. Wagers or hook ups symbolize how one unjustifiable takes a theoretical standpoint from another. Each hook up only presents a different combination of axes of ontology and epistemology, representing how a researcher relates to the world. The vocabulary he proposes reorganizes this diversity to demonstrate that none of these diverse strands of theory are reducible to a single logic of inquiry. Each stands on its own philosophical ground.
The ecumenical outlook of The Conduct of Enquiry is refreshing in its efforts to reject the trenches drawn in the theoretical maps of IR. Lest this relaxed redefinition of science be taken as one where every argument is valid, Jackson points out that internal validity parameters remain sharp. The status of whether it is scientific or not is not the trial every work needs to be put through as long as it is empirical research organized logically.
For a discipline not yet a century old, practitioners and thinkers of IR are demonstrating a commendable degree of candour and secularism in opening the gates of IR theory. These practices and expectations have not yet translated into a fresh set of paradigms to view and understand IR yet. This and other works, such as Vincent Pouliot’s International Security in Practice: The Politics of NATO–Russia Diplomacy (2010), and Amitav Acharya and Barry Buzan (Eds.), Non-Western International Relations Theory: Perspectives on and beyond Asia (2010), provide a good reason to believe, however, that the gatekeepers of IR theory are open to negotiation and that there is ample room for latecomers.