Elsa Leclerc A01290351 New Actors in International Relations

Critical International Theory
Being “critical” as an attitude in academic field involves going back to one’s own original assumptions and criticize, question, challenge these established frameworks or structures in order to finally transcend them. Critical theory in International Relations is a meta-theory: it is a philosophy which takes the already existing theories as its object of study. The point is to analyze how theories shape the world and contribute to its existing order by legitimating or disapproving it. The ultimate objective is to reach universal emancipation of Humankind by changing world order. Critical theory is a major rupture in the International Relations study field: it does not only criticize the content of the established Neo-realism and Neo-liberalism theories but is actually radically opposed to their common philosophical foundations i.e. their prior assumptions about what knowledge is and what a theory should be. Critical theory is exactly at the middle of a fundamental meta-theoretical divide in social sciences and a fortiori in International Relations. As Jackson R., Sorensen G. (2003) summarize it, the debate is ontological since it is concerned with the nature of the world, and epistemological since it is concerned with the ability to know it and the nature of the knowledge we can get from it. As a consequence of this debate, a methodological issue raises: how can we obtain our knowledge about the world? In the purely objective position, the world can be scientifically explained through theories that answer the question “why?” and are systematically concerned with establishing causal relationships. On the other hand, following the purely subjective position, the world can only be interpreted and understood in a certain way. Theories which belong to this current answer the question “how?” and try to develop the various steps of processes. 1. A methodological debate: