Book Review: Cornelia Navari (ed.), Theorising International Society: English School Methods (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009, 248 pp., $85.00 hbk)
| Published date | 01 September 2011 |
| Author | Laust Schouenborg |
| DOI | 10.1177/03058298110400011207 |
| Date | 01 September 2011 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
Book Reviews 197
book sheds light on multi-causal and methodologically pluralist avenues for future IR
scholarship. Overall, Kurki’s work demonstrates the need for IR scholars to start taking
causation seriously in practice by engaging in key debates on the philosophy of causation
and incorporating its central concepts into their analyses. Based on such a reconceptuali-
sation of causation in IR theory debates, this broader understanding clears paths towards
utilising the concept in more complex ways in future scholarship.
Fatemeh Shayan
Fatemeh Shayan is a doctoral student of International Relations at the University of
Tampere, Finland. She will be a permanent teacher in the Department of Political Science
and International Relations at Isfahan University, Iran.
Cornelia Navari (ed.), Theorising International Society: English School Methods (Basingstoke:
Palgrave Macmillan, 2009, 248 pp., $85.00 hbk).
Cornelia Navari, the Editor of this new volume on English School methods, nicely sums
up the central tension of the book in the opening paragraph:
A consideration of English School methods may seem a contradiction in terms. The classical
English School theorists generally disdained discussions of methodology. As for method, it is
treated as somewhat in the nature of underclothing – assumed to be there but scarcely discussed
in polite society. (p. 1)
Why, then, take up this discussion? As the Editor makes clear, this is partly a conse-
quence of external pressure. The English School has enjoyed a renaissance over the past
20 years or so and has started to make inroads into the American academic community
where a larger emphasis is usually placed on questions of methods and standards of
proof. A growing chorus of scholars have therefore called on those working within the
tradition to explicate what its methods are.
The standard English School response to such requests tends to be critical or defen-
sive; examples of this position are also found in this volume, particularly the contribu-
tions by Robert Jackson and Peter Wilson. At the risk of doing injustice to their
respective arguments, they generally hold that consideration of methodology will
inevitably imply an acceptance of the core tenets of positivist social science, some-
thing they, as well as classical English School scholars such as Wight and Bull, are
vehemently opposed to. They prefer instead to speak of an English School ‘approach’
or ‘craft’.
However, as Reus-Smit points out in his contribution, which illustrates what the
English School shares with constructivism, this distinction between the school and posi-
tivist social science is often drawn too sharply:
Positivism, behavioralism, and quantification are generally rejected, but beyond this most
English School scholarship appears methodologically conventional. The idea of empirical
verification, for example, is alive and well in such scholarship, and the position of most scholars
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