Recovering International Relations: The Promise of Sustainable Critique

by Daniel J. Levine

Recovering International Relations bridges two key divides in contemporary between 'value-free' and normative theory, and between reflective, philosophically inflected explorations of ethics in scholarship and close, empirical studies of practical problems in world politics. Featuring a novel, provocative and detailed survey of IR's development over the second half of the twentieth century, the work draws on early Frankfurt School social theory to suggest a new ethical and methodological foundation for the study of world politics-sustainable critique-which draws these disparate approaches together in light of their common aims, and redacts them in the face of their particular limitations. Understanding the discipline as a vocation as well as a series of academic and methodological practices, sustainable critique aims to balance the insights of normative and empirical theory against each other. Each must be brought to bear if scholarship is to meaningfully, and responsibly,
address an increasingly dense, heavily armed, and persistently diverse world.

352 pages, Paperback

First published October 4, 2012

Reviews

[Jeffrey Hart · Rating 3 out of 5]

Levine’s main argument in this book is that international relations (IR) theorists must be self-consciously critical of one another in order to fulfill the dual mission of understanding reality and providing guidance to fend off international cataclysms. He provides a broad-ranging critique of major works in the field from the perspective of critical theory as articulated by Theodore Adorno and the Frankfurt School. In particular, the reification of central concepts, which the author admits in necessary for the pursuit of social scientific goals, needs to be questioned and discussed. This is the best example that I have encountered of this sort of work. It certainly deserves praise for its careful reading of a number of important books.