Overview

Question 1

Who is the intellectual father of positivism?

Answer 1

Comte

Question 2

What is positivism?

Answer 2

Approach to study of society that looks specifically at:

• Scientific evidence (experiments/stats)
• Single truths

(wants to reveal the true nature of how society operates)

Question 3

What is post-positivism?

Answer 3

Unlike positivism:

• no single truth
• strongly normative approaches

Question 4

exemplify a post positivist theory

Answer 4

Social constructivism

Question 5

what does post positivism mean when it looks at the politics of theory?

Answer 5

Like social constructivism: what does it mean to be an immigrant or a migrant?

• There is no single truth

Question 6

What is critical theory?

• Exemplify with two thinkers and their theories

Answer 6

• The relationship between our theories and the way we act
• ALL KNOWLEDGE IS IDEOLOGICAL
• greatly informed by marxist ideas on capitalism
• Ideas on hegemony (e.g. Gramsci culture of hegemony)
• Globalisation as exploitative etc
• Habermas, how may we come to inter subjective understanding of IR issues. He calls his source

Question 7

What does constructivism try to do?

Answer 7

• Build on IR discussion and interests of states in international relations. It looks at how these interests are formed
• Wants to explain shared norms generated at international levels and policy formation

Question 8

Exemplify constructivism trying to explain change in IR:

A contemporary and contextual example

Answer 8

• Did EU member states change their position on Russia in the Ukraine crisis?
• Were states adopting a foreign policy that they would not do normally?

Question 9

What is the focus of poststructuralism?

Answer 9

• The production of knowledge

particuarly in relation to language

Question 10

Because post structuralism focuses on knowledge and language what are examples of the binaries and dichtomies it has been known to focus on?

Answer 10

• Men/Women

- Civilised/Barbaric

Question 11

Who was a key post structuralist thinker in showing how artificial binaries are?

Answer 11

• Derrida

Question 12

The post structuralist foucault looked at what?

Answer 12

• Genealogy, how was history generated?

Question 13

While post structuralism sometimes talks about the state it tries to destabilise what paradigm?

Answer 13

• it tries to destabilise the state paradigm.
• Challenges state boundaries
• socially constitutive
• e.g. knowledge, how do states present history, how do states commemorate WW1 for example

Question 14

Describe Post colonial theory

Answer 14

• legacy of post imperial world

- western critique

Question 15

What is critical terrorism studies?

Answer 15

• looks at contexts and why
• state terrorism
• social constructions
• political aims
• WOT discourse –> legitimisation of counter terror

Question 16

exemplify debates within positivism

Answer 16

• Liberalism V realism

- Neo Neo debate

Question 17

what is the neo neo debate?

Answer 17

• Liberalism accepts realist interntional anarchy, the debate is how states understand cooperation under anarchy

Question 18

what is the debate between realism and neo realism?

Answer 18

• an effort to make realism more scientific, focus from nature and practice to system and structure
• such as waltz who looks at structure

Question 19

describe realism

Answer 19

• selfish state behvaiour
• inevitable conflict
• self preservation
• Thucydides, Hobbes , Machiavelli

Question 20

how does Diez define social constructivism?

Answer 20

• a broad church, middle ground in IR theory between readily observable phenomena and subjective world views
• structure and agency are mutually constitutive