Rediscoveries and Reformulations
Humanistic Methodologies for International Studies

In this book Hayward Alker presents his principal methodological 'rediscoveries'.

Hayward R. Alker (Author)

9780521466950, Cambridge University Press

Paperback, published 30 May 1996

488 pages, 26 b/w illus. 8 tables
23.5 x 15.8 x 3 cm, 0.805 kg

"Indeed, vicarious voyagers may find the zest and courage that shines through this extraordinary book all the reason they need to venture out on their own." Nicholas Onuf, American Political Science Review

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.

List of figures
List of tables
Acknowledgments
Introduction: voyages of rediscovery
Part I: Recovering Western Antiquity: 1. The dialectical logic of Thucydides' Melian Dialogue
2. Aristotelian political methodologies
3. Toynbee's Jesus: computational hermeneutics and the continuing presence of classical Mediterranean civilization
Part II.The Humanistic Science of the Modern Classics: 4. The humanistic moment in international studies: reflections on Machiavelli and Las Casas
5. Can the end of power politics be part of the concepts with which its story is told? A Leibnizian reply
6. Rescuing 'reason' from the 'rationalists': reading Vico, Marx and Weber as reflexive institutionalists
7. An Orwellian Lasswell: humanistic scientist
Part III. Contemporary Humanistic Reformulations: 8. Fairy tales, tragedies and world histories: testable structuralist interpretations
9. Beneath Tit-for-Tat: the contest of political economy fairy tales within SPD protocols
10. Emancipatory empiricism: toward the renewal of empirical peace research
11. The presumption of anarchy in world politics: on recovering the historicity of world society
12. The return of practical reason to international theory
References
Index.

Subject Areas: International relations [JPS]