The eternal divide? History and International Relations - article Flashcards
What is the topic of the article?
The articles tackles the use of history within the study of international relations and the social sciences. It also looks at the way in which the social sciences and history are naturally entrenched.
What are some of the most common distinctions made between the use of history by historians and political scientists?
The key distinction is that historians study history for the sake of studying past events and political scientists look at history as a way of supporting or discrediting theoretical hypothesis. Political scientists will study history insofar as it enables them to test and refine a theory. This is a first order demarcation.
Second order demarcations include: methods; aims; orientation; sensibility; notions of causation; levels of analysis and so on.
What does Lawson mean by ‘history as scripture’ and what are his criticisms of this approach?
History as a scripture allows for the application of timeless ‘lessons’ and inviolate rules removed from their context and applied to ill-fitting situations e.g. the US retreat from Vietnam is invoked to halt talk of withdrawal in Iraq.
This essentially leads to pre-existing theoretical frameworks being supported through a selection bias of events and narratives which are devoid of detail, avoidant of anomalies and lack disciplined historical analysis.
What does Lawson mean by ‘history as butterfly’ and what are his criticisms of this approach?
History as butterfly is a focus on contingency, accident and indeterminacy. This has the opinion of looking at history as an open problem. In this sense, nothing is concrete.
Although this approach has its benefits, it falls into can fall into overdetermination - the provision of a laundry list of causes that includes all sorts of weak and insignificant factors. In doing so there is a possibility of missing bigger, more important commonalities.
What are the four ‘mechanisms’ that Lawson identifies in the second half of the article? What does each one mean and why does Lawson focus on these?
Context - Context refers to an aspect of study which is primarily associated with the study of history. It refers to looking at the environment of a specific time period which is studied. He explains that methods of historical enquiry look at the social process which take place within their time period whether this be the economic, social, or political aspects of social science. This can be seen in different methods of tackling the study of history: history-from-below, E.H. Carr in looking at the historian and the broader context, or Skinner in looking at intellectual or linguistic contexts.
Eventfullness - Eventfullness looks at the significance of big historical events, establishing the ways in which they become linked, threaded and sequenced in broader configurations. An eventful approach in turn, allows researcher to see how historical events enable social formations to emerge, reproduce, transform and, potentially, break down. This displays the inherent relationship between history and social science through plot structures which are underpinned by social formations.
Narrative - This emphasises the way in which narrative as a social process can illuminate links between history and social science. This is done through a social logic in which history and social science are less removed from each other and are rather part of a broader panorama of story telling disciplines.
Ideal-typification - this looks at simplifications, to provide a simpler picture in order to examine the empirical reality of historical events. It represents a science of actuality in which history and social science are inexorably conjoined.
What are the most important arguments in this article? Put differently, what academic contributions does this article attempt to make?
It makes the case for history being a social science in the way we study it, through its approach of emplotment, narration and analysing casual stories as well as the four mechanisms displayed. Furthermore, it argues that our particular mode of selection when studying history should incorporate the social science as form a single intellectual journey.
What do you think of this article? What are its strength/weaknesses? Or, how would you use this article?
It overemphasises the use of history within the article. Although it makes contributions to the way in which history and social science are co-implicated, it does so from the perspective of a historian - this is despite arguing for the equal use of both social sciences and history equally important in each disciplines work. Furthermore the use of social science is itself too generalised, not focusing on the specific disciplines and the length to which each contributes in varying amounts. This may have been more improved in focusing on the various social sciences. It does however make contributions, as previously said, to the historians perspective in developing the argument for social science being entrenched in the way we study history, allowing for broader and more inclusive study of history.
