This module is an introduction to understanding the uses and functions of methods in doing international politics research. Nineteenth-century Marxists and positivists attacked idealism, laying the foundations for modern social science’s distrust of actors’ own explanations for their behaviour. More recent authorities such as Pierre Bourdieu remained suspicious of ‘biographical illusions’. This course introduces students to these debates by asking what we can and cannot learn from people giving an account of themselves. It will begin with the study of how various actors give accounts of themselves (activists, diplomats, lawyers, migrants), with further case studies in semester B, culminating in a series of sessions on racial capitalism and the reinvention of (auto/)biographical methods by actors and theorists within the Black Radical Tradition (Cedric Robinson).
The course returns to a central question for political studies – the (in)significance of actors’ own explanations for their actions – with a focus on how this issue affects methods of doing international politics research. In interrogating this question from many different angles, you will be introduced to key theoretical debates in politics and the social sciences more broadly. During the course, students will also be invited to make connections between international political actors and themselves as actors.
