WTF, post-positivism
Sometimes my assignments make my brain hurt.
Highlights of "Prospects of International Theory in a Post-Positivist Era":
I submit that 'paradigmatism'--in the specific sense of an enhanced post-positivist concern with meta-scientific constructs which incorporate integral thematic components as a precondition of scientific intelligibility--presents itself as one of the most notable characteristics of the third debate.
(What? Just...WHAT?)
The relentless efforts to produce current inventories of international relations paradigms have resulted in counts ranging from zero to a maximum of no less than twenty-four candidates...And if the popularity of Lakatos's methadology continues to rise among theorists, one may safely anticipate that we will soon have as many, if not more, correspondingly reconstructed 'research programs'...Surely this provides grounds for optimism, for now--at least in terms of loosely defined meta-theoretical constructs--the international relations discipline canconsider itself on a par with many other social and even natural sciences.
(So...if we change our definitions, we can change how we evaluate the field to date? And this lets us pat ourselves on the back and say we're as cool as physics? Okay...)
By pointing, nonetheless, to the nonempirical sphere of thematic promises and presuppositions, perspectivism has facilitated a relative 'liberation of theory from observation'...And this liberation was destined to be interpreted by at least some scholars as a good reason for renewed hopefulness. 'Having passed through a phase in which facts dominated theory,' one of them notes approvingly, 'the logic of our scholarship iscarrying us into a phase in which theory dominates facts.'
(I just...huh? Don't let facts get in the way of your theory? I...I am clearly a positivist and not a post-positivist, because this just BAFFLES me.)
If I'd decided to do American instead of IR, I bet I wouldn't even have to acknowledge this stuff. The Americanists are very much anti-theory, and even more anti-metathory, from what I can tell. Of course, I don't like American, because the people there are fuckwits and the topic is too limited. OY. ::goes back to trying to figure out post-positivism; once I nail that down, I can start on feminist IR theory, whoo, and a third one, which I can't remember at the moment but I bet it's batshit::
I use the Fraser icon for no reason but the pretty.
Highlights of "Prospects of International Theory in a Post-Positivist Era":
I submit that 'paradigmatism'--in the specific sense of an enhanced post-positivist concern with meta-scientific constructs which incorporate integral thematic components as a precondition of scientific intelligibility--presents itself as one of the most notable characteristics of the third debate.
(What? Just...WHAT?)
The relentless efforts to produce current inventories of international relations paradigms have resulted in counts ranging from zero to a maximum of no less than twenty-four candidates...And if the popularity of Lakatos's methadology continues to rise among theorists, one may safely anticipate that we will soon have as many, if not more, correspondingly reconstructed 'research programs'...Surely this provides grounds for optimism, for now--at least in terms of loosely defined meta-theoretical constructs--the international relations discipline canconsider itself on a par with many other social and even natural sciences.
(So...if we change our definitions, we can change how we evaluate the field to date? And this lets us pat ourselves on the back and say we're as cool as physics? Okay...)
By pointing, nonetheless, to the nonempirical sphere of thematic promises and presuppositions, perspectivism has facilitated a relative 'liberation of theory from observation'...And this liberation was destined to be interpreted by at least some scholars as a good reason for renewed hopefulness. 'Having passed through a phase in which facts dominated theory,' one of them notes approvingly, 'the logic of our scholarship iscarrying us into a phase in which theory dominates facts.'
(I just...huh? Don't let facts get in the way of your theory? I...I am clearly a positivist and not a post-positivist, because this just BAFFLES me.)
If I'd decided to do American instead of IR, I bet I wouldn't even have to acknowledge this stuff. The Americanists are very much anti-theory, and even more anti-metathory, from what I can tell. Of course, I don't like American, because the people there are fuckwits and the topic is too limited. OY. ::goes back to trying to figure out post-positivism; once I nail that down, I can start on feminist IR theory, whoo, and a third one, which I can't remember at the moment but I bet it's batshit::
I use the Fraser icon for no reason but the pretty.