The promise of critical IR, partially kept

Abstract

The critical turn in IR promised a continuous archeology of the field, an empathetic understanding of those we study, and a social science unwedded to the pursuit of universally valid laws. In the United States, this movement was rooted more in a critique of peace research, than in a critique of the ‘NeoNeo’ mainstream, to which it became sort of ‘official opposition’. The promise has not been fulfilled because the research strategies of critical theorists have rarely given them direct access to the understandings of those outside the privileged core of world society. Other research programmes, including that of the Human Development Reports and of some feminists and ethnographic scholars in IR, have been more successful.