Post-Eurocentric grand narratives in critical international theory

Introduction

One of the central tasks critical international theory assumes is the provision of theoretical frameworks based on which people might come to better understand their conditions of existence, how those conditions came to assume their contemporary characteristics, and how they might attain a greater degree of conscious and collective control over their future development. Hence, critical international theory possesses a fundamental orientating role, in the sense that it provides a standpoint from the perspective of which people might orientate themselves in understanding their conditions of existence and the progressive potential, immanent in those conditions, for a future expansion of their capacity for conscious self-determination.

However, this role confronts critical international theory with a fundamental ‘problem of orientation’. To provide adequate orientating frameworks, critical theorists must be able to, at least partially, escape particularistic time- and space-bound perspectives to discern progressive or regressive patterns in human history and its possible futures. They must develop what can be characterized as a more ‘cosmopolitan’ perspective on the human condition. But the attainment of such a cosmopolitan standpoint of orientation is always necessarily limited by the historical and spatial positionality in which embodied human beings find themselves (see Karki, 2015, 2020).

This article analyses the adequacy of different answers to the problem of orientation within the critical theoretical tradition. Its main argument is that the problem of orientation requires that critical international theorists rely on grand narratives of human development to attain a more cosmopolitan standpoint of orientation. However, the approaches to grand narratives that have hitherto been predominant in the field, either within the Kantian-Habermasian or the neo-Gramscian traditions, are inadequate. Be it because of a reliance on philosophy of history and metaphysical categories or because of a stadial conception of history, these approaches tend to reproduce forms of Eurocentrism and to pose a separation between the theoretical account of human development and actual empirical history that ultimately undermines critical international theory’s role as a framework of orientation.

One of the reactions to the inadequacy of such grand narratives has been a growing concern with reflexivity, which seeks to identify underlying, and frequently unacknowledged, forms of exclusion and oppression structuring critical theoretical thinking. However, the growing concern with reflexivity, while helping avoid the trap of Eurocentrism, has also led to an increasing reliance on philosophical abstraction that compromises critical international theory’s connection between theory and practice. Critical international theory thus continues to find itself incapable of adequately responding to the critical challenge raised by E. H. Carr (2001), and later by Robert W. Cox (1981), of maintaining a mutually constitutive synergy between realist historical analysis and utopian aspirations for societal change.

This article proposes that a more adequate answer to the problem of orientation is to be found in what is here called a historical–sociological approach to grand narratives. This alternative is discussed with reference to the recent work of Andrew Linklater and Richard Devetak although, as argued subsequently, traces of it can be found in several recent critical approaches in International Relations. Linklater’s work, in particular, opens the way for a form of grand narrative theorizing that attains a more cosmopolitan perspective on the human condition through the identification of the historical–sociological processes that are universal to the development of all human societies while tracing how these processes can assume extremely varied expressions in different societal and temporal contexts. As such, it is an approach that retains a connection with empirical history while opening the possibility of a post-Eurocentric form of grand narrative.

This argument is developed in three sections. The first section discusses the problem of orientation in critical international theory, its relationship with cosmopolitanism and grand narratives. The second section addresses the role of grand narratives as an answer to the problem of orientation in both the Kantian-Habermasian and the neo-Gramscian traditions in critical international theory and considers their shortcomings. This section also discusses how the ‘reflexivity turn’, while safeguarding critical international theory against the trap of Eurocentrism, has entailed a growing retreat into philosophical abstraction, theoretical fragmentation and separation from practice, which compromises its role as a means of orientation. This leads to a discussion, in the third section, of an alternative historical–sociological approach. This is done via an exploration of recent historical approaches to critical theorizing with particular emphasis on Richard Devetak’s proposal for a ‘critical international theory in historical mode’ and Andrew Linklater’s project to develop a ‘sociology of global morals with emancipatory intent’ through a synthesis between process sociology and the English School. This alternative mode of critical theorizing is argued to open the way for a post-Eurocentric and post-philosophical approach to grand narratives on the basis of which it is possible to develop a more adequate answer to the problem of orientation, one that relies on a permanent connection between theory and empirical history and which does not reproduce forms of Eurocentrism.

Orientation, grand narratives and critical international theory

The notion of orientation assumes an important role in the history of political thought. Kant (1991b) argues that human beings need to orientate themselves in thought in the same way they need to do so spatially. In the absence of spatial directions, orientation in thought depends on ideas that serve as a compass that orientates the capacity for judgement. Here, he mentions the ‘rational belief’ in an intelligent and limitless creator, who is the source of ultimate morality and good, as one such orientating idea. Only on its basis, Kant (1991b: 245) argues, can people orientate their judgement of everything that is limited in accordance with the conception of a universal and timeless moral law. The categorical imperative, for example, fulfils this orientating function to the extent that it permits to assess the morality of the maxims that regulate behaviour through the test of their universality (Kant, 1991b: 245).

However, the notion of orientation also assumes a central role outside the field of speculative thought. As Hutchings (2011: 192) notes, Kant is particularly concerned with ‘the impossibility of discerning an ethical direction (progressive, regressive, static) to human history on the basis of empirical evidence’ because it makes it impossible to exercise critical judgement in the analysis of history and discern its possibilities for moral progress. This is a difficulty that can be characterized as a problem of orientation. In other words, the incapacity to discern a pattern to history derives from human beings’ own embedded perspective in that history, being as they are always limited in their points of view by their positioning in time and space.

The possibility for critical judgement is thus to be found in the search for another standpoint of orientation, one that permits a more ‘universal’ or ‘cosmopolitan’ perspective, not locked to the more restricted and circumscribed perspectives of particular human beings, societies or social groups. Hence, similar to the way in which the rational belief in an intelligent and limitless creator and in a timeless moral law provides orientation concerning one’s behaviour, the critical judgement of history can be oriented by a rational belief in its progressive movement. For critical judgement to be possible, history must be conceived of as the process through which people progressively become more rational and develop increasingly more universal perspectives that recognize the moral law and permit the actualization of their inherent capacity for freedom as rational beings.

Kant (1991a) notes that it is not possible to prove this teleological movement through an analysis of empirical history. Its teleological character should not be taken literally, as describing the actual movement of history, but must instead be understood as serving two orientating purposes. On one hand, it constitutes a way of navigating through the chaotic history of the species so that it can be intelligibly organized in such a way that highlights the ordered character of the progressive improvement of reason. On the other hand, it serves a moral purpose to the extent that it helps people achieve a more cosmopolitan perspective on their conditions of existence, guided by the belief that, despite human failings and historical mistakes, the species moves inexorably towards a future condition of freedom, morality and universal expansion of sympathy across borders. The teleological character of Kant’s solution to the problem of orientation thus fulfils ‘heuristic and moral purposes’ (Williams, 2001: 721).

The search for a more cosmopolitan perspective as a standpoint of orientation is thus inherently connected with the disclosure of a grand narrative of human development. Grand narrative here is understood as the means through which the critical theorist establishes ‘linkages’ between the apparently disparate aspects of human historical development (Lyotard, 1988; see also Browning, 2000; Lyotard, 1984). It relates to the attempt at attaining not only a ‘sense of the architecture of the human past, why parts of it are different from others, and how they all fit together’, but also how the human past structures the present and possible futures of the species (Sherratt, 1995).

The reliance on grand narratives to attain a more cosmopolitan standpoint of orientation thus possesses an inherent normative dimension (Beardsworth, 2011: 13). The critical thinker cannot privilege the point of view of certain human groups over others. He or she seeks a universal perspective that inherently relativizes differences, be they of an ethnic, gender, religious or ideological character. In the process, such a perspective denaturalizes historically built frontiers, seeing them as historically contingent and artificial forms of division of an underlying common humanity. As such, the cosmopolitan solution to the problem of orientation has inherent implications for the development of a critical approach to the study of world politics.

As much is discernible in the ‘critical turn’ in International Relations that identifies clear limitations in the mainstream theoretical approaches of the discipline, such as neorealism and neoliberalism, as standpoints of orientation. These approaches are locked in what has been described as a form of ‘presentism’; that is, the conviction that world politics can be explained through an analysis of their contemporary characteristics alone and that the focus of the discipline should be to discover transhistorical social laws underlying the interactions between societies (Buzan and Little, 2000). This type of approach is locked in the characteristics of the present as its standpoint of orientation and, consequently, tends to exclude from the analysis the notion of change. It assumes that the contemporary characteristics of world politics – such as the acknowledgement of the sovereign state as the predominant form of political community, or the condition of anarchy – are essential and immutable characteristics of the human condition (Buzan and Little, 2000). The dominant theoretical schools in International Relations are thus revealed as incapable of recognizing the ‘singular’ character of contemporary world politics, at the same time that they obscure their past (Hobson, 2010: 10). In this manner, they are revealed as inadequate standpoints of orientation, rather constituting a frequent source of disorientation, to the extent that their assumptions about the immutability of world politics block the possibility of critical judgement concerning the potential for transformation and for the development of more rational and cosmopolitan forms of political organization.

In contrast to dominant International Relations theories, critical international theory seeks to improve the discipline’s role as a standpoint of orientation by placing the notion of change at the centre of its approach. It seeks to develop a ‘theory of history’ in the sense that it is concerned with the ‘continuous process of historical change’ (Cox, 1981: 129). This implies the search for a more cosmopolitan perspective based on a grand narrative of human development; one that recognizes that all perspectives, including its own, are inherently circumscribed by the historical conditions under which they are produced (Cox, 1981: 130). It is self-reflexive about its own conditions of knowledge and about the place it occupies in space and time, constantly recognizing the limited and circumscribed character of its perspectives. Through such reflectivity, critical international theory seeks to attain a ‘perspective on perspectives’, a more cosmopolitan point of view that functions as a more adequate standpoint of orientation (Cox, 1981: 128). Critical international theory thus seeks the development of a ‘conceptual system that is concerned with the species as a whole’ (Linklater, 1982: 16). Such cosmopolitanism carries ‘revolutionary’ normative implications to the extent that it seeks a ‘politics of impartiality’ that takes into account all human beings, irrespectively of the society or the time period in which they live (Linklater, 1982: 49).

The solution to the problem of orientation in critical international theory thus possesses two dimensions, defined by Benhabib (1986) as, respectively, the ‘explanatory-diagnostic’ dimension and the ‘anticipatory-utopian’ dimension. The first focuses on the development of theoretical frameworks capable of capturing the main dynamics of human historical development from a cosmopolitan perspective. These frameworks fulfil an orientating function to the extent that they provide an explanation of the social processes that have shaped the historical development of the political, economic, social and emotional life of the species (Linklater, 1982: 49). The second is focused on the identification of the potential gathered in the present by these long-term social processes for the development of more rational forms of social organization, which permit an expansion of human self-determination. In other words, critical international theory seeks to assess what the analysis of the past and present reveals about the future possibilities of the species in what concerns human beings’ capacity to exercise a greater degree of conscious and democratic control over their conditions of existence. This dimension has an orientating function to the extent that it helps people understand how, and through what forms of political agency, they might come to realize the immanent potential in their social relations for a further actualization of reason in history.

This second dimension is inseparable from the explanatory dimension to the extent that critical international theory does not seek to produce a moralist manifesto in favour of a utopian world, disconnected from the empirical history of humanity. Without the explanatory dimension, critical theory dissolves into mere normative philosophy, while if it excludes the anticipatory dimension, it is not distinguishable from other theories that seek normative neutrality in their analysis of the social world (Benhabib, 1986: 142). Critical international theory thus seeks to position itself between the empirical and the normative, between the explanatory analysis of the historical conditions of human existence and the anticipatory projection of the emancipatory potential that these conditions have gathered from the perspective of a cosmopolitan standpoint of orientation (Beardsworth, 2011: 13).

However, the reliance on grand narratives by critical international theory also poses several challenges that can ultimately undermine its adequacy as a means of orientation. The next section discusses some of these challenges to argue that the approaches to grand narratives that have become predominant in the field, namely inspired by the Kantian-Habermasian and neo-Gramscian traditions of critical theorizing, ultimately reintroduce forms of Eurocentrism associated with 18th- and 19th-century European grand narratives that compromise critical international theory’s orientating role.

The Eurocentric critique of world politics

Two of the most prominent schools of thought in critical international theory follow, respectively, the Kantian-Habermasian and the neo-Gramscian traditions of critical theorizing, both of which rely on different approaches to grand narratives as an answer to the problem of orientation. The Kantian-Habermasian approach follows Habermas’s attempt to recover Kant’s rational belief in the progressive character of history in the context of a theory of social and moral evolution that captures the universal logical pattern of development of human competences, such as reason and morality, without assuming that this logic is reproduced in concrete events in history (Habermas, 1979: 8). In this context, sociological considerations are not ‘called for’ because ‘they fall short of the level of abstraction on which the structural conditions of possibility of learning processes relevant to evolution must be given’ (Habermas, 1979: 28).

A theory of social and moral evolution conceptualized in this manner fulfils an orientating function to the extent that it provides a cosmopolitan perspective on the universal pattern of development of human competences. A perspective from which it becomes possible to identify ‘innovative potential’ at certain historical junctures, without seeking to ‘explain’ the formation of that potential. Such a theory avoids the Kantian tendency to write a ‘macro-history’ of a ‘generic subject’, which inevitably becomes an artificial imposition on the convoluted and complex character of actual empirical history (Habermas, 1979: 42). Rather, the cosmopolitan perspective of Habermas’ theory is to be found at a more abstract level, one that is ‘separate from the events with which the empirical substrata change, [and thus] needs assume neither the univocity, nor continuity, nor necessity, nor irreversibility of the course of history’ (Habermas, 1979: 42). The theory expresses only the ‘logical’ sequence of stages of human competences in accordance with the rationally reconstructible pattern of development of ‘anthropologically deep-lying general structures’. Such sequence of stages describes the ‘logic terrain’ in which the development of human competencies can occur, as well as the general direction that it assumes, but ‘whether or when new structural formations develop depends on contingent circumstances’ that cannot be captured by the theory (Habermas, 1979: 42).

According to Habermas (2003), the hitherto most advanced disclosable stage in this sequence of human competences is the modern ‘post-conventional’ stage of moral orientation. At this stage – and on the contrary of what occurs at a previous ‘conventional’ stage of moral development – people are no longer capable of accepting the validity and legitimacy of social norms purely through appeals to group loyalty or the argument that these norms are expressive of the ‘culture’ of their political communities (Habermas, 2003). Instead, in the absence of the immediate legitimacy of social norms derived from cultural loyalty, their legitimacy can now be attained only through the rationally compelling character of their content. A rationality whose assessment requires the discursive consensualization of these norms by all the people who stand to be affected by them. A principle captured in Habermas’s (1987, 2003) notion of ‘discourse ethics’, which becomes the only criterium of legitimacy that is valid for human beings at a post-conventional stage of moral orientation. Discourse ethics is thus the ‘zenith of a post-conventional morality’; the only criterium that is left – once religion and culture have lost their unquestionable character – for people to orientate themselves in the assessment of the legitimacy and reasonableness of the social norms that regulate their collective life (Linklater, 1998: 91).

Immanent in Habermasian discourse ethics is the vision of a ‘universal communication community’ that poses the species as the ultimate legitimate constituent (Habermas, 2003). This vision has become the standpoint of cosmopolitan orientation for much of critical international theory inspired by Habermas’s work (see Hoffman, 1987, 1991; Linklater, 1982, 1998; Risse, 2000). The universal communication community constitutes the cosmopolitan point of view that is immanent in the grand narrative of the logic of development of human moral competencies and that permits a critical judgement of world politics. It constitutes what Linklater (1998: 48) calls a ‘procedural ideal’; a standpoint of critique that assesses the validity and legitimacy of social norms not in accordance with their content but rather with the procedure through which they were consensualized and adopted. The argument is that if, from a procedural point of view, all norm consensualization processes include all of those who stand to be affected by them, then there is a high probability that their content also enjoys not only legitimacy but is assessed as fair and rational by all those who are involved in the decision-making process (Linklater, 1998: 92).

The establishment of discourse ethics as a standpoint of orientation frames, for example, Linklater’s (1998) critique of the sovereign Westphalian state as a form of political community that is incapable of fulfilling the legitimacy criteria of human beings at a post-conventional stage of moral orientation. The restriction of their domestic decision-making processes to national citizens is identified as being incompatible with the principles of discourse ethics, given how they necessarily exclude all non-nationals that frequently are also affected by the norms consensualized in the interior of the state (Linklater, 1998: 56; see also: Linklater, 1982: 12). Furthermore, Linklater (1998) criticizes the sovereign state not only for being a particularistic form of political community but also for being, in a way, too ‘universalist’ (p. 47). Here, he refers to the way states seek to erase all identity expressions that deviate from the culturally defined national standard. In this manner, the Westphalian state is a form of political community that not only separates its citizens from the rest of humanity – converting them into potential enemies of the rest of the species – but also seeks to homogenize its population according to a single national and cultural standard (Hutchings, 1999, 2000). The sovereign state can thus be described as a limited, particularistic, exclusivist and potentially oppressive form of political community that better expresses a conventional stage of moral orientation, but that is no longer adequate for the post-conventional moral competencies found in the personality structures of modern individuals.

But immanent in post-conventional orientations is also the potential for a ‘cosmopolitan’ transformation of the sovereign state into a ‘post-Westphalian’ form of political community (Linklater, 1998: Ch. 6; see also: Shapcott, 2013). A political community that shares sovereign competencies with supranational organizations responsible for consensualizing transnational social norms between all those that might be affected by them and that delegates decision power towards local and regional levels of political organization. Such a transformation came to be understood by Habermas-inspired scholars as part of a wider transformation of world politics towards a form of post-national deliberative cosmopolitan democracy that would create a network of decision-making processes at various levels (Beardsworth, 2011; Held, 1995, 2010). In the process, human beings would acquire the political and institutional means necessary to expand their democratic control over the global social processes that have escaped the control of sovereign states.

However, the Kantian-Habermasian answer to the problem of orientation has also been criticized for its reliance on a grand narrative structured by philosophical history and metaphysical categories that detach it from a concern with actual empirical history to rather focus on the identification of an abstract pattern of progress in human development. The approach is thus charged with uncoupling itself from the study of the historical activity and struggles of concrete embodied human beings in a manner that leads it to reproduce forms of Eurocentrism that ultimately undermine its adequacy as a means of orientation in the critical study of world politics.

Kantian-Habermasian critical international theory has been argued to ‘rely on the assumption that there is fixed and linear “logics of development” [. . .] that determine the fundamental formative stages through which human societies must go’ (Schmid, 2018: 202; see also: Fluck, 2012). In this way, it ‘reproduces some of the more questionable features of the orthodox Marxist philosophy of history that [it] had set out to distance [itself] from in the first place’ (Schmid, 2018: 203). Among these characteristics is ‘the notion that human history can be read as an inherently directional and progressive unfolding, to be reconstructed retrospectively as a moral-learning process’ (Schmid, 2018: 203). This has two main consequences, in Schmid’s (2018: 203) assessment: on one hand, ‘it lends itself to a triumphalist and undialectical reading of history that highlights its successes while removing its ambivalences’ and, on the other hand, ‘it supports the belief that the future course of history can be speculatively predetermined by means of a normative theory of legal and moral evolution’.

Kantian-Habermasian critical international theory is thus seen as responsible for promoting a separation between theory and practice by interpreting historical events according to its pre-established theoretical framework, characterized by a linear sequence of stages of development. The empirical history and social struggles of concrete human beings are interpreted as progressive or regressive, as having critical emancipatory potential or constituting setbacks in the march of progress, in accordance with the way in which these can or cannot be framed in the a priori established ‘stadial’ grand narrative of human development, in the form of a theory of social and moral development (Sherratt, 1995). In this context, ‘the idea of moral progress is elevated to the status of an absolute, a meta-narrative principle that overrides the need for substantive, critical analysis’ (Schmid, 2018: 203).

By adopting a cosmopolitan standpoint of critique based on a philosophical framework that separates itself from empirical inquiry, Kantian-Habermasian critical international theory ends up imposing a ‘unilinear conception of socio-historical development’ whereby history becomes simply the ground on which the philosophical framework is illustrated (Anievas, 2010: 153). History is seen as ‘unfolding through an inherent teleological structure’, with key historical events being translated into a ‘unilinearity of successive levels of moral development’ while ‘the unequal, multilinear and interactive nature of social development is [. . .] neglected’ (Anievas, 2010: 154). The stadial grand narrative underlying Kantian-Habermasian critical international theory thus reproduces a form of Eurocentrism to the extent that the privileged cosmopolitan standpoint of orientation for the critique of world politics, the stage of post-conventional moral development, is understood as being most fully expressed in the personality structures of modern Western individuals. The West becomes the ‘meridian of the present’; the point of view that has attained the more advanced stage of moral development and that, consequently, provides the more cosmopolitan standpoint of orientation for the critique of world politics (Hutchings, 2011: 196). From that perspective, non-Western societies that have followed alternative paths of development are inevitably classified as occupying more primitive stages on the same progressive road through which all societies travel towards post-conventional modernity or as incurring in some kind of error (Hutchings, 2011). A perspective that can lead to the conclusion that ‘spatio-temporally distant people [. . .] [are in] need of education to set them right’ (Hutchings, 2011: 194).

But the problematic reproduction of Eurocentrism is not limited to the Kantian-Habermasian approach to grand narratives and the problem of orientation in critical international theory. The other major critical theoretical tradition in International Relations, neo-Gramscianism, has also been found to express a form of ‘subliminal Eurocentrism’ (Hobson, 2007, 2012: Ch. 10). While expressly critical of the West and Western imperialism, neo-Gramscianism also relies on a grand narrative that reproduces the perspective of a self-generating West that projects its global power outwards through a ‘one-way diffusionism’ (Hobson, 2007: 93).

Neo-Gramscian critical international theory adopts a more historical and less philosophical approach in its grand narrative of human development than Kantian-Habermasian critical international theory, emphasizing the role of domestic and transnational class struggles in shaping state structures and world orders (Cox, 1987, 1996; Gill, 1990; Robinson, 2005). However, neo-Gramscianism still orientates its critique of world politics from a cosmopolitan perspective that derives from a grand narrative of Western ascendency and diffusion, in the context of which Western domestic class struggles and their transnationalisation assume a central place. In that grand narrative, non-Western societies tend to adopt the role of either passive adopters or counter-hegemonic resistants vis-à-vis Western global hegemony that is understood as the predominant force shaping the history of the species (Hobson, 2007: 93).

This criticism is reinforced by the observation that neo-Gramscian critical international theory’s answer to the problem of orientation in the form of a grand narrative of an ascending West also relies on the universalisation of its analytical categories, such as ‘states’ and ‘world orders’ or notions such as ‘passive revolution’ (Bieler and Morton, 2018; Hesketh, 2017; Morton, 2007, 2010). This universalisation is part of the search for a more cosmopolitan perspective that makes sense of the structure of human development and permits a critique of world politics. But by relying on categories that derive from the analysis of Western historical development as a self-contained phenomenon, it also seems to drag neo-Gramscianism back into the confines of philosophy of history and a stadial conception of human development with the West representing both the centre of the process and the image of the future for non-Western societies whose agency as anything other than resistants disappears from view (Devetak, 2018: 142 see also: Devetak, 2017).

The problematic relationship between grand narratives and Eurocentrism has led to a growing suspicion of grand narratives in critical international theory. This suspicion is part of what has been described as a tendency within critical international theory to delve into increasingly abstract philosophical inquiries into the consequences for critical analysis of the frequently unacknowledged assumptions underlying critical theoretical frameworks (Kurki, 2011: 136).

This concern with reflexivity (Amoureux and Steele, 2015; Guzzini, 2013; Hamati-Ataya, 2012; Neumann and Neumann, 2015), with the normative, ontological and epistemological consequences of the situatedness of knowledge and of the perspectives from which critical theorists think world politics, has made a fundamental contribution to critical international theory in its various feminist (Ackerly and True, 2008; Tickner, 2011), critical realist (Joseph and Kuroki, 2018; Patomäki and Wight, 2000), constructivist (Lynch, 2008), or post-colonial (Blaney and Tickner, 2017) persuasions. But it has also come at the cost of an increasing concentration of critical international theory in meta-theoretical inquiry and a focus on a ‘rather narrow and “technical” set of philosophical questions at the expense of broader political questions’ (Kurki, 2011: 136). In the process, the concern with reflexivity carved out a moral-intellectual space of philosophical debate that remained disconnected from empirical and historical knowledge and led to critical international theory becoming increasingly fragmented into distinct and self-contained approaches that adopt what Marysia Zalewski (1996: 351) has described as a ‘spirit of jousting verging on the hostile’ in their mutual criticisms of how their respective philosophical assumptions reproduce forms of Eurocentrism and inadequate standpoints of orientation. Increasingly lost from view then is the vision of critical international theory as a diverse but collective endeavour, an ‘open-front’ fight against unreflexive positivism (Kurki, 2011: 137), concerned with providing means of orientation that help human beings understand their past and present conditions of existence and the immanent potentials these gather for future emancipatory change.

Towards a historical–sociological approach to grand narratives

The perceived plunge of critical international theory into ever-deeper philosophical abstraction has recently led to calls for the need to re-ground critical theorizing in historically oriented forms of knowledge that reconnect it with the ‘broader experiences of everyday life that make the international possible’ (Caraccioli, 2018: 34). Critical international theory is perceived as in need of recovering ‘worldly relevance’ while retaining the lessons of the reflexive turn (Hom, 2017).

Several avenues towards reconnection with empirical practice have been opened in recent years. These range from calls to greater engagement with practitioners and policy makers (Bridoux and Kurki, 2014; Kurki, 2011), to reflections on the critical potential of experiences of exile (Beattie, 2015) or teaching and pedagogical activities (Caraccioli, 2018; Hom, 2017). It entails calls for the need to rethink the place of ‘human beings’ in International Relations (Jacobi and Freyberg-Inan, 2012, 2015) and attempts to provide historically grounded discussions of key critical concepts previously discussed in a philosophical mode (Hoseason, 2021). A trend can thus be identified towards the development of a critical international theory that, while not dismissing the importance of philosophical inquiry, forefronts historically grounded and practice-oriented approaches that seek to disclose the emancipatory potential in everyday political and social life (Saramago, 2020).

One of the main exponents of what might be called the ‘post-philosophical’ trend in critical theorizing is Richard Devetak (2011, 2017, 2018; Devetak and Walter, 2016). Devetak (2018) has been critical of critical international theory’s growing tendency towards philosophical abstraction. Such an approach, he argues, ‘requires treating the structures and practices of international relations as abstract principles detached from empirical political history’ and inherently considers ‘political structures, whether domestic or global, as reflections or realizations of normative-philosophical principles rather than contingent historical products’ (Devetak, 2018: 154). From that perspective, the determinants for the success of any critical emancipatory project can be assessed ‘simply by reflecting on philosophical principles independently of empirical political realities; that is, on the basis of dialectical philosophy’; an approach that implies the ‘most optimistic utopianism’ (Devetak, 2018: 154). Critical international theory’s tendency to separate itself from empirical history into increasingly more abstract meta-theoretical debates is thus understood as fundamentally compromising its role as a means of orientation to the extent that it entails a radical break between theory and practice.

The alternative of a more historical and sociological approach to critical theorizing has been explored by Devetak (2018: Ch. 5) in his attempt to recover what he describes as an ‘alternative critical tradition’ which, he argues, can be found in the ‘rival Enlightenment’ that developed in the context of Renaissance Humanism, Absolutist historiography and the civic histories of the Enlightenment. This rival Enlightenment is argued to contain the necessary elements for the development of a critical international theory in ‘historical mode’ (Devetak, 2014, 2018). An approach that abandons the metaphysical categories of philosophy to instead focus on capturing the dynamics of empirical history and the way it is shaped by the historically contextualized concerns and social struggles of concrete human beings.

Such an approach is argued to permit capturing the emergent contextual ethics in different historical contexts as a criterion of critical orientation. In other words, it captures how the historical expression of critical orientations can be understood not as ‘reflections or realizations of normative-philosophical principles’ but rather as ‘contingent historical products of legislators, diplomats, jurists, and bureaucrats engaged in the activities of statecraft’ (Devetak, 2018: 155). From this perspective, then, the attainment of a critical standpoint of orientation depends not on an a priori exercise of philosophical abstraction in the mind of the critical theorist in search of a cosmopolitan point of view but is rather understood as something arising from the historical process itself, as an outcome of the emergent ethical criteria of concrete human beings engaged in concrete struggles and historical challenges in specific contexts, namely, in the context of the exercise of state power and the challenges it poses to civic government and civil life.

Devetak’s project for a critical international theory in historical mode constitutes a fundamental contribution to the post-philosophical trend in critical international theory. It is an approach that seeks to address the problem of orientation by abandoning the need for grand narratives to attain a more cosmopolitan standpoint of orientation, substituting them for contextualist historical analysis of the ethical criteria orientating different historical moments and contingent social struggles.

However, while Devetak’s approach ensures the connection between theory and practice that has been severed by an increasingly abstract philosophical critical international theory concerned with the trap of Eurocentrism, it is open to discussion whether it provides an adequate historical–sociological answer to the problem of orientation. While Devetak’s project is still in its first stages of development, and thus it might be too soon for a fair assessment, hitherto, his historical–sociological approach appears to avoid the problems of grand narrative universalism to potentially fall back upon contextualist relativism.

In other words, how does Devetak’s critical approach assess between competing ethical claims, be it those of competing social groups within a society or those in the relations between Western and non-Western societies? Following his contextualist approach, it is unlikely that Devetak will want to universalize the ethical values disclosed by Western political elites as a standpoint of orientation, thus reproducing a form of Eurocentrism. But are there criteria to critically assess the validity of competing ethical standpoints originating in different cultural backgrounds, and defended by competing social groups and political communities, or are these assessed as equally valid if judged as such in their respective backgrounds?

Hitherto, Devetak’s approach remains ambivalent on how it deals with the extremes of Eurocentric universalism and relativist contextualism in its answer to the problem of orientation. A similar observation can be made of other attempts to historicize critical international theory by focusing on the activity of policy makers (Kurki, 2011) or the critical potential of pedagogical activities (Caraccioli, 2018). These approaches privilege context-specific perspectives. In the process, by eschewing the search for a more cosmopolitan standpoint of orientation, they avoid the Eurocentric danger of philosophical grand narratives but substitute it with an opening to forms of contextualist relativism that can also undermine critical international theory’s role as a means of orientation. The question follows then, whether it is possible to conceive of an approach to the problem of orientation in critical international theory that simultaneously avoids the pitfalls of Eurocentric grand narratives, the abstraction of purely philosophical inquiry or the inadequacy of relativist contextualism.

The rest of this section argues that the beginning of such an approach, which further pushes the opening towards a historical–sociological form of critical theorizing made by Devetak, Kurki, Caraccioli and others, but in such a way that recovers the importance of grand narratives as an answer to the problem of orientation, can be found in the more recent work of Andrew Linklater.

In Linklater’s (2011, 2016, 2021) attempted synthesis between process sociology and the English School in the context of a research project about the long-term historical development of ‘cosmopolitan harm conventions’, an approach to critical theorizing can be disclosed that seeks to recover a reliance on grand narratives but that approaches them in a historical–sociological mode of critical theorizing that permits avoiding the problems of Eurocentrism, philosophical abstraction, and contextual relativism. Linklater’s work can thus be understood as an important complement to the overall trend towards a post-philosophical critical international theory.

Devetak (2018: 145) has described Linklater’s recent work as a ‘decisive move away from the cold rationalism associated with Kant’s categorical imperative’. The process sociological tradition inspiring Linklater is specifically defined by its proponents as a research project that seeks to improve humanity’s ‘means of orientation’ (Elias, 2011). This concept refers to the ‘the symbolic reference points [. . .] which people draw upon in order to navigate themselves successfully in the complex and shifting inter-group relations of society’ (Kilminster, footnote in Elias, 2011: 120). The argument is that human means of orientation can frequently reveal themselves to be inadequate, expressing a higher level of ‘fantasy content’ than ‘reality-congruence’ (Elias, 2007). Process sociologists are particularly critical of ‘philosophical’ means of orientation that approach the study of human societies from the perspective of a philosophy of history and highly abstract metaphysical categories whose connection to actual empirical history is ensured only by the theorist’s discretion. Such an approach is particularly liable to infuse those means of orientation with ‘heteronomous evaluations’, that is, unacknowledged normative preferences that arise not from the analysis of empirical history itself, but rather from the theorist’s particular positioning in time and space and that are then, in a frequently unconscious manner, imposed on the analysis (Elias, 2007: 71). The unacknowledged Eurocentrism affecting the Kantian-Habermasian and neo-Gramscian approaches to the critical study of world politics can be understood as expressions of the influence of such heteronomous evaluations.

Alternatively, process sociology seeks the development of a historical–sociological approach that ‘safeguards against the intrusion of heteronomous evaluations’ and is rather structured by ‘autonomous evaluations’, that is, by analytical and normative categories that arise from the detached analysis of actual empirical history (Saramago, 2015, 2020). It is in this context that process sociology has also been described as ‘post-philosophical’ (Kilminster, 1998, 2007, 2011). Rather than relying on an abstract philosophy of history and metaphysical categories, process sociology seeks to understand the actual sociological dynamics that structure the development of all human societies. It is a perspective that, rather than privileging the point of view of a supposedly higher stage of social and moral development found in Western modernity, opens the way for a multilinear developmental conception that seeks to ‘discern the dynamics through which one kind of society changes into another and to grasp the specificity of a particular society at a given stage of development’ (Kilminster, 2007: 4).

However, and unlike the historical contextualist approaches discussed earlier, process sociology’s historical–sociological approach does not entail an abandonment of grand narratives as a means of orientation. As Elias (2012a: 512) notes, the Eurocentric shortcomings of 19th-century grand narratives and their contemporary inheritors have led to a reaction in the social sciences characterized by a ‘retreat into the present’ and an embrace of particularistic short-term analysis. This ‘presentism’ (Buzan and Little, 2000: 18) has led to an abandonment of attempts to understand the emergent dynamics shaping the long-term development of human societies. In the process, ‘the baby has been thrown with the bath water’, and the social sciences have lost from sight the possibility of framing the particularistic analysis of space and time-bound contexts in long-term processes of social change (Elias, 2012a: 512). To Elias (2012a: 511), such framing is essential to avoid substituting the Eurocentrism of grand narratives with the relativism of contextualism that idealizes the present object of analysis, whatever form it may assume, in ways that mix ‘is and ought’. From a critical international theory perspective, such mixture is no less a source of disorientation than the Eurocentrism of grand narratives.

Process sociology proposes an alternative form of historical–sociological grand narrative theorizing that is focused not on disclosing the stages of human development using the methods of philosophy of history but rather on understanding what are the sociological dynamics shaping the long-term development of all human societies. This entails disclosing what Elias (2012b: 99) designates as the ‘universals of human society’ in the form of what might be called ‘process-concepts’. Rather than universalizing categories found in the development of specific societies, process-concepts seek to capture those dynamics of development that are transversal to all human societies, but which assume highly varied time- and society-specific expressions.

An example of such a process-concept is the notion of the ‘triad of controls’ (Elias, 2012b). This concept refers to the way in which all human societies, to ensure their continued survival and reproduction, need to constantly develop some form of control in three essential dimensions: (1) control over non-human complexes of events – that is, control over external non-human nature, so as to protect themselves from natural threats and transform nature into that which is required for the satisfaction of human biological and social needs; (2) control over interpersonal relationships – that is, control over social processes via the establishment of norms that regulate social life; and (3) control of human beings over themselves as individuals – that is, control over their internal drives and impulses as a prerequisite to live in society. These three dimensions of control ‘are interdependent both in their development and in their functioning’, being that, for example, ‘the extension of control over nature is directly interdependent with changes in both self-control and in control over interpersonal relations’ (Elias, 2012b: 152). The triad of controls is described by Elias (2012b: 99) as one of the ‘universals’ of human societies to the extent that, though the specific pattern that the triad assumes in different societies and historical contexts varies greatly, all human societies, on penalty of collapse, have to engage in some pattern of the triad to ensure their survival. As Linklater (2019: unpaginated) underlines, all societies must guarantee that

first, in infancy every person undergoes a process of acquiring control over [their] ‘animalic’ drives or biological impulses in order to become a functioning member of society. Second, [that] people in groups engage in restraining each other’s capacity for threatening or violent or other forms of harmful behaviour if they are to live together amicably. Basic social taboos [and social norms] are integral to all forms of life for that reason. [And] third, controls over non-human nature are an inextricable part of the quest to satisfy basic needs (as are forms of self-control and associated restraints between those concerned).

The triad of controls thus constitutes a process-concept that can be the basis of a grand narrative that is focused not on tracing the stages of human development through which all human societies must pass and that, consequently, tends to universalize the path of development of a specific society and is thus liable to reproduce forms of Eurocentrism, but is rather focused on identifying the emergent sociological dynamics shaping long-term processes of human development, which are understood to assume a wide range of specific expressions depending on the historic, spatial and societal contexts in which they express themselves. Consequently, this approach to grand narrative theorizing opens the way for the development of a multilinear grand narrative of human development that traces how the triad of controls assumes different expressions, in different temporal contexts and in different societies along multilinear paths of development which, furthermore, interinfluence and interpenetrate each other.

The triad of controls is just one of several such universal process-concepts proposed by process sociology – other examples being the notion of ‘monopoly mechanism’, ‘established-outsider relations’ or ‘double-bind processes’. Furthermore, the identification of such process-concepts is not restricted to the process sociological tradition and has in fact emerged with particular strength in International Relations, even if not conceptualized as part of a recovery of grand narratives in critical international theory. Particularly relevant here are the studies on uneven and combined development propelled by Justin Rosenberg (2006, 2012) or John Hobson’s (2004, 2007) proposal for a post-Eurocentric, post-racist International Relations structured around concepts such as ‘dialogues of civilisations’, ‘dialectics of civilisations’, ‘dialectical frontiers’ or ‘resource portfolios’. The theoretical synergy between these process-concepts and those proposed by process sociology is still to be explored.

This approach to grand narrative theorizing permits an alternative answer to the problem of orientation to that of stadial grand narratives or that of historical contextualism. By identifying the emergent historical–sociological dynamics shaping long-term processes of human development, it recovers the search for a more cosmopolitan perspective on the human condition that provides both explanatory and anticipatory orientation. Identifying the underlying universal sociological dynamics shaping the development of human societies permits recognizing their context-specific expressions while framing these in a wider understanding of the overall pattern of the historical development of human capacities. Hence, an assessment becomes possible not only of how the long-term multilinear development of the human species led to contemporary conditions of existence in different contexts but also how it gathered immanent potentials, both in those different contexts and at the level of universal human capacities, that open multiple potential pathways of future development. From that perspective, then, it becomes possible to provide more adequate orientation that helps human beings both understand how their specific conditions of existence came to be what they are and what are the possible futures immanent in those conditions and in the historically developing transversal capacities of the species. Such an approach avoids being locked either in the perspective of the historical context of specific societies or in the universalized point of view of Western modernity while maintaining an intimate connection between the theoretical assessment of the main dynamics shaping the long-term process of human development and actual concrete empirical history.

This argument can be illustrated with particular clarity with reference to Andrew Linklater’s recent work. While Linklater does not directly engage with the problem of orientation in the terms discussed here, he deploys process sociological process-concepts in the context of what he has described as a ‘sociology of global morals with emancipatory intent’ (Linklater, 2007). In its context, Linklater (2011) assesses how, throughout the long-term process of human development, different political communities established different institutions and norms that embody specific ‘harm conventions’ that promote different patterns of the triad of controls regulating their members’ capacity to cause harm to each other, to members of other political communities and to non-human nature. Linklater’s argument is that all human societies need harm conventions defining patterns of the triad of controls that ensure their survival and reproduction, although the actual historical expressions of these harm conventions vary widely in society-specific ways and develop in a multilinear manner. But their historical emergence and development also express the universal development of a human capacity to exercise self-control over the forms of harm human beings are capable of inflicting to each other and to other species.

Linklater (2011: 8) is thus interested in tracing the interplay between the development of society-specific harm conventions and the historical emergence of what he designates as ‘cosmopolitan harm conventions’. In other words, in tracing the slow and convoluted development of international norms and institutions that seek to establish minimum criteria of co-existence between human societies, each with their society-specific harm conventions, in the context of a process characterized by harsh asymmetries of power and conflicts between different worldviews. The historical emergence of such cosmopolitan harm conventions is expressive of the historically developing capacity of human beings, transversal to the species, to both learn how to tame their more violent impulses and to universalize their perspectives in the search for harm conventions that are acceptable to different societies with different worldviews. It thus exhibits the immanent potential, within the long-term process of development of the species, for the development of cosmopolitan harm conventions that have ‘the purpose of protecting all people from unnecessary harm, irrespective of their nationality, ethnicity, citizenship, class, race, gender, sexual orientation and so forth’ (Linklater, 2011: 8). A protection that, furthermore, is increasingly recognized as in need of being extended to non-human species (Linklater, 2021: 247–248).

Such an approach to a grand narrative of human development is thus potentially capable of, simultaneously, tracing the multilinear development of harm conventions in society-specific contexts, thus avoiding universalizing a Eurocentric standpoint of orientation, while maintaining the capacity to critically assess between competing worldviews and immanent possible futures by exhibiting a normative preference for those that further develop the historically emergent human capacity to develop patterns of the triad of controls that reduce unnecessary harm to all human and non-human life. Furthermore, it is an approach that consistently maintains a connection with actual empirical history, in all its contingency and multilinear expression, rather than substituting it with an abstract linear stadial account of human development.

Of course, there are limitations to Linklater’s historical–sociological answer to the problem of orientation, namely since, like with Devetak, his research project is still in development. Linklater’s recent work has been the target of several criticisms, namely concerning the ways it maintains a predominantly anthropocentric perspective (Hoseason, 2018; Taylor, 2017) or how it fails to develop a more adequate sociological analysis of global capitalism (Schmid, 2018). But the criticisms that are most relevant in the current context are those that consider Linklater has not escaped the confines of Eurocentrism. While the content of these critiques varies, their common feature is the idea that Linklater’s analysis of the historical development of harm conventions in the context of Western states-systems does not take sufficiently into account the role of non-Western political communities and social groups (Çapan, 2017; Chong, 2017; Go, 2017; Lawson, 2017; Ling, 2017). The analysis thus incurs in Eurocentrism to the extent that it effaces non-Western agency from the development of the West and understands the latter as a self-generating and diffusionist process.

In this context, John Hobson (2017) has suggested that a potential reply to these criticisms is that Linklater’s (2016) work can be interpreted as reproducing a form of ‘critical Eurocentrism’, which intentionally excludes non-Western voices from the analysis to emphasize the centrality of Western imperialism and global hegemony in world politics (see also: Wallerstein, 1997). Linklater’s (2017) reply to his critics has emphasized that the point of his project was rather to trace the emergence of specifically Western conceptions of ‘civilization’ associated with Western harm conventions and how these came to influence world politics. This enquiry has been further extended in The Idea of Civilization and the Making of the Global Order (Linklater, 2021), where Linklater uses the same process sociological approach to trace not only non-Western reactions to Western ‘civilizing offensives’ but also how these influenced an ongoing ‘global civilizing process’ in the context of which it is possible to trace the historical emergence of ‘cosmopolitan harm conventions’. This later study shows how Linklater has taken on board the arguments of his critics and further actualized the post-Eurocentric potential of his approach.

However, the argument here is that, irrespective of the specific uses Linklater or other authors make of the process-concepts of process sociology, these open the possibility of a post-philosophical and post-Eurocentric approach to grand narrative theorizing as an answer to the problem of orientation. An approach that attains a more cosmopolitan standpoint of orientation through the identification of the process-concepts that capture the universals of human development and permit analysing both their expression in specific societies and historical contexts, but also their long-term development through multilinear processes of inter-societal influence and combination.

Furthermore, this opening towards a post-philosophical and post-Eurocentric critical international theory is not exclusive of studies inspired by process sociology. As mentioned earlier, this emerging tendency can also be identified in other recent developments within the field, such as in the context of studies on uneven and combined development or proposals for a post-Eurocentric, post-racist International Relations structured around concepts such as ‘dialogues of civilisations’. These are all process-concepts that inform a post-Eurocentric approach to the study of human development in a long-term perspective in such a way that permits the achievement of a more cosmopolitan perspective on the human condition.

While research applying process sociological process-concepts to the study of non-Western societies is still scarce (see Sarat and Santos, 2012; Suzuki, 2009), and there is still little engagement between process sociological approaches and those of uneven and combined development or ‘dialogues of civilisations’, the potential for a recovery of grand narratives in a post-Eurocentric guise is clearly present within the wider tendency for a historical–sociological approach to critical international theory. Of course, the jury is still out on the ultimate adequacy of this approach to grand narrative theorizing, and further research is required, but it appears as a valid avenue of inquiry in the recovery of the relevance of a critical international theory increasingly trapped in the abstraction of philosophical inquiry.

Conclusion

Critical international theory’s role as a means of orientation is inseparable from its approach to the study of world politics. Both in its explanatory and in its anticipatory dimensions, critical international theory seeks to provide orientating theoretical frameworks based on which people might better understand their conditions of existence and their immanent emancipatory potential. However, this role also poses a fundamental problem of orientation. The disclosure of the regressive or progressive potential of human history depends on the assumption of a more cosmopolitan perspective that, at least partially, detaches from more circumscribed time- and space-bound points of view. Grand narratives of human development have thus played a central role in critical theorizing, being the means through which such a cosmopolitan standpoint of orientation is attained. However, as has been discussed throughout this article, the predominant forms of grand narrative theorizing in critical international theory, be it in the Kantian-Habermasian or in the neo-Gramscian traditions, have frequently relied on stadial conceptions of history and metaphysical categories that imply not only a break with empirical history but frequently also reproduce forms of Eurocentrism that undermine their adequacy as means of orientation.

The article thus considered an alternative answer to the problem of orientation in the form of a historical–sociological critical international theory that seeks to reconnect theory and practice and derive the standards for critique from the analysis of empirical history itself. Two trends within the historical–sociological approach to critical international theory have been discussed. On one hand, one that finds expression, for example, in the work of Richard Devetak, and is characterized by an abandonment of the reliance on grand narratives to emphasize historical contextualism as a standpoint of orientation. While this approach indeed reconnects theory and practice and avoids the trap of Eurocentrism, it is still not clear how it retains a critical orientation when assessing between competing ethical claims.

On the other hand, another approach was considered, that finds expression, for example, in Andrew Linklater’s work – though traces of it can also be found in other approaches within International Relations – and which seeks to substitute philosophical and stadial grand narratives with grand narratives based on what has here been called process-concepts. These process-concepts capture the universal sociological dynamics shaping the long-term development of all human societies but which can assume highly varied society-specific expressions. This approach has been argued to open the way for a form of critical international theory that simultaneously avoids the trap of Eurocentrism while retaining the capacity for critical judgement between competing ethical claims. It does so by framing the specific societal and historical expressions of different human cultures in a long-term understanding of the emergent historical development of universal human capacities. Hence, it is an approach that combines historical contextualism with the continued commitment to the search for a more cosmopolitan perspective on the human condition, from the standpoint of which both explanatory and anticipatory orientation becomes possible.

Further research is required on the extent to which this historical–sociological approach to grand narrative theorizing indeed constitutes a more adequate answer to the problem of orientation in critical international theory. Fundamental in this context is research into non-Western societies and processes of historical development framed by the approach to grand narratives here being suggested. Concomitantly, further research is also required on potential synergies between this approach and other process-oriented approaches within International Relations, such as those promoted by the research agendas set by Devetak, Rosenberg or Hobson. But an avenue is clearly open for an alternative form of critical international theory that avoids the trap of Eurocentrism and the abstraction of purely philosophical inquiry.