An ontologist strikes back: a further response to Hollis and Smith

Abstract

This is a much-delayed and partial reply in what might ordinarily seem a small, even local, quarrel. However, it has become a more and more plausible view that international relations theory can only make progress if it grapples with embedded and assumed notions of objectivity, and makes room for more subtle and complex views of subjectivity. There is agreement, therefore, with Hollis and Smith that an engagement with the question how epistemology and ontology are related is important for International Relations.Martin Hollis and Steve Smith, 'A Response: Why Epistemology Matters in International Theory', Review of International Studies, 22:1 (1996), pp. 111-16. This reply to their position is, however, partial in that Vivienne Jabri would seek to establish a more complex view of Giddens than a discussion piece would allow. She has already begun to do this in her recent book, Vivienne Jabri, Discourses on Violence (Manchester, 1996). but for now she would say that Hollis and Smith have deformed Giddens in their reading of him. Leaving that largely but not totally aside, this reply is to do with other deformations. There is, firstly, a deformation of our view of cultural argument, labelling it an argument for relativism. Secondly, Hollis and Smith risk misplacing International Relations not only by a restricted reading of philosophy, but in relation to developments in other internationally concerned disciplines. We hope that Smith's self-images of a disciplineSteve Smith, 'The Self-images of a Discipline', in Ken Booth and Steve Smith (eds.), International Relations Theory Today (Cambridge, 1995). do not imply it is hermetically sealed, although I have noted elsewhere how 'Western' all these self-images seem to be,Stephen Chan, 'Seven Types of Ambiguity in Western IR Theory and Painful Steps towards Right Ethics', Theoria, 89 (1997). and that is precisely part of the point I am trying to make here.