Minding the Brain: IR as a Science?
| Date | 01 January 2015 |
| Published date | 01 January 2015 |
| Author | Charlotte Epstein |
| DOI | 10.1177/0305829814557558 |
| Subject Matter | Responses to Iver Neumann’s Inaugural |
Millennium: Journal of
International Studies
2015, Vol. 43(2) 743 –748
© The Author(s) 2014
Reprints and permissions:
sagepub.co.uk/journalsPermissions.nav
DOI: 10.1177/0305829814557558
mil.sagepub.com
MILLENNIUM
Journal of International Studies
1. Iver Neumann, ‘International Relations as a Social Science’, Millennium 43, no. 1 (2014):
330–50.
2. Ibid.
Minding the Brain: IR as
a Science?
Charlotte Epstein
University of Sydney, Australia
Abstract
Invited by the editors to respond to Professor Neumann’s inaugural lecture,1 in this article I take
issue with his core, unquestioned assumption, namely, whether IR should be considered as a
science. I use it as a starting point to re-open the question of how the stuff that humans are made
of should be studied in IR today. Beyond Neumann’s piece, I critically engage with two emerging
trends in the discipline, the so-called new materialisms and the interest in the neurosciences,
and articulate my concern that these trends have not addressed the deterministic fallacy that
threatens to undermine their relevance for the study of a world made by humans. To the latent
anxiety as to whether the discipline has finally achieved recognition of its epistemological status
as a science, I respond by recalling that other grand tradition in IR, interpretive methods. The
study of meaning from within, without reducing it to countable ‘things’ or to neuronal traces,
is, I suggest, better attuned to capturing the contingency, indeterminacy and freedom which
constitute key characteristics of the constructed, social world that we study in IR.
Keywords
discourse, interpretive methods, neuroscience, new materialisms, practices
I would like to take issue with a particular variety of determinism that is taking shape in
Iver Neumann’s inaugural lecture,2 which stems from his attempt to posit the material as
a reference point for knowledge construction, for the explicit purpose of securing IR’s
Corresponding author:
Charlotte Epstein, University of Sydney, Merewether Building H04, Sydney, New South Wales NSW 2006,
Australia.
Email: charlotte.epstein@sydney.edu.au
557558MIL0010.1177/0305829814557558Millennium: Journal of International StudiesEpstein
research-article2014
Responses to Iver Neumann’s Inaugural
To continue reading
Request your trial