Rediscoveries and Reformulations: Humanistic Methodologies for International Studies

Front Cover
Cambridge University Press, May 30, 1996 - Philosophy - 464 pages
This book provides a distinctive and rich conception of methodology within international studies. From a rereading of the works of leading Western thinkers about international studies, Hayward Alker rediscovers a 'neo-Classical' conception of international relations which is both humanistic and scientific. He draws on the work of classical authors such as Aristotle and Thucydides; modern writers like Machiavelli, Vico, Marx, Weber, Deutsch and Bull; and post-modern writers like Havel, Connolly and Toulmin. The central challenge addressed is how to integrate 'positivist' or 'falsificationist' research styles within humanistic or interpretive ones. The author argues that appropriate, philosophically informed reformulations of conventional statistical and game-theoretic analyses are possible, and describes a number of humanistic methodologies for international relations, including argumentation analysis, narrative modeling, computational models of political understanding and reconstructive analysis.
 

Contents

Some contrasting views on various issues of social page
8
Wrights grouping of International Relations page
20
The dialectical logic of Thucydides Melian Dialogue
23
Can the end of power politics be part of the concepts
184
Reading
207
Humanistic scientist
238
Testable
267
The contest of political economy
303
Toward the renewal of
332
The return of practical reason to international theory
394
References
422
Index
451
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