George Lawson

IR436 - Theories of international relations: narrative (week 20)Lecture slides

 

 

 

 

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Lawson, G. (2012) IR436 - Theories of international relations: narrative (week 20). [Teaching Resource]

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Narrative

IR436 Lecture 20 2011-12George Lawson

What is narrative?

Stone: elegant story telling; order and coherence; agency and causation

White: poetic ‘emplotment’; aesthetically appealing stories; order vs. ‘surplus meanings’

Roberts: turning mess into connected sequences

IR examples: Carr, Morgenthau, Allison

Why narrative?Idiographic: from the particular to the

general, i.e. ‘joining the dots’

Historicism: interpretation and explanation; complexity and coherence; micro and macro

Suganami on narrative: narrative as agency, contingency and cause

Sewell: ‘happenings’ as ‘events’

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History as theoryHistory has social logicsEvents are stabilisedAll social science uses emplotmentTherefore, we all tell superior stories

QED: ‘Embedded theory’ and ‘encompassing theory’ are not so different

after all

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Robinson and the ‘real mural’

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What is the ‘proper perspective’?The other side of the streetNext to the muralThe centre of the street (N.B. careful of the

traffic)Tacking between the detail and the abstractionAndrew Abbott: (relatively) fixed events as

configurations, e.g. revolutionsConfigurations (i.e. enduring, regular, stable

interactions) as ‘social facts’‘Social facts’ help us tell ‘good enough stories’,

i.e. ‘causal narrativity’

Take a deep breath …Deepening and broadening: IR as polo mint

and/or jammy doughnutTheory and ‘stuff’: remember that the Owl of

Minerva only flies at duskWhat is theory? Red and yellow and pink and

green

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