What's Queer about Political Science?
| Date | 01 February 2015 |
| Author | Donna Lee,Nicola J. Smith |
| Published date | 01 February 2015 |
| DOI | 10.1111/1467-856X.12037 |
| Subject Matter | Article |
What’s Queer About Political Science?
Nicola J. Smith and Donna Lee
Research Highlights and Abstract
• The study of gender, sexuality—and, in particular, queer theory—is central to the
social sciences and humanities.
• Our analysis of citation practices shows that queer theorist Judith Butler is one of the
most cited social theorists of all time.
• Yet political science remains distinctly untroubled by queer theory, and gender and
sexuality are frequently treated as marginal (not central) concerns.
• We argue that queer theory has much to offer political science, not only by high-
lighting the importance of sexuality and the body but also in analysing ‘power’ and
in politicising ‘the political’ itself.
• We suggest that the ‘queering’ of political science is long overdue, not least through
politicising processes of knowledge-production in the discipline.
There is something queer (by which we mean strange) going on in the scholarly practice of political
science. Why are political science scholars continuing to disregard issues of gender and sexuality—
and in particular queer theory—in their lecture theatres, seminar rooms, textbooks, and journal
articles? Such everyday issues around common human experience are considered by other social
scientists to be central to the practice and theory of social relations. In this article we discuss how
these commonplace issues are being written out of (or, more accurately, have never been written in
to) contemporary political science. First, we present and discuss our findings on citation practice in
order to evidence the queerness of what does and does not get cited in political science scholarship.
We then go on to critique this practice before suggesting a broader agenda for the analysis of the
political based on a queer theoretical approach.
Keywords: Queer theory; gender; sexuality; political science
Introduction
Contemporary textbooks suggest that the scope of political science has broadened
significantly in recent years following the emergence of critical and postmodernist
perspectives to add to the traditional, and perhaps still dominant, schools of thought
such as behaviouralism and institutionalism (see inter alia Hay 2002; Ethridge and
Handelman 2009; Marsh and Stoker 2010; Roskin et al. 2012; Grigsby 2012; Hague
and Harrop 2013). As a result of this growing diversity of analytical strategies in
political science, the specification of what the ‘political’ includes has expanded
beyond consideration of processes of power that occur within the sphere of gov-
ernment and within the state (and in international relations (IR) the system of
states and intergovernmental governance), to consideration of processes of power
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doi: 10.1111/1467-856X.12037 BJPIR: 2015 VOL 17, 49–63
© 2014 The Authors. British Journal of Politics and International Relations © 2014
Political Studies Association
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