This article argues that the current self-understanding of IR theory is misconceived and that it is time to move beyond the stagnant positivism0 postpositivism debate. We argue that the attempt to occupy a middle ground compromise position between positivism and postpositivism is untenable because these two positions share much in common. In this sense a middle ground position between two problematic positions does not produce a less problematic position. What is needed is a metatheoretical analysis of the two extreme positions. We attempt to show how both positivism and postpositivism are embedded in a discourse of philosophical anti-realism. This anti-realism occurs as a result of what we call the post-Kantian-Humean "problem-field" of international relations from which most contemporary positivist, constructivist, and poststructuralist IR approaches stem. We then try to overcome this "problemfield" by means of radically reclaiming reality through a critical realist philosophy. Once outlined we try to show how this critical realist philosophy can help transcend some of the antinomies currently faced by IR scholars.

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Although peace research as a professional institution has lost some of its earlier appeal, the end of the Cold War did not cause any particular identity crisis within the field. Quite the contrary, peace research co-contributed to the end of the Cold War via Gorbachev's `new thinking'. In a world plagued by unnecessary violence, both actual and potential, peace research as an emancipatory conception can readily reorientate to the study of issues relevant in the post-Cold War era. Furthermore, there is plenty of potential to develop the methodological framework from where Galtung and others left off. The article discusses the challenge that critical theories pose for the ontology and epistemology of peace research, and argues that the task of peace research should be related to transformations from politics to violence and vice versa. Informed by critical realism and a pluralistic, republican notion of politics, this argument proposes a direction for both peace research and political praxis. Both should be consistent with realist ontology of open systems and history; with epistemological relativism appropriate for `heterodoxical' discourses; and with critical peace theories concerning violence-prone social processes such as mystification, reification and enemy-construction.

s model of cosmopolitan democracy is thus far the most articulate response to the quest to democratize global governance. After criticizing the territoriality, Eurocentrism and linearity of proposed cosmopolitan democracy, I argue that a necessary condition for a global democratization is the development of a global, and pluralist, security community. Therefore it is imperative to tackle questions of who 'we' are and where 'we' are heading, and also to address explicitly the problem of cultural violence. Further, I argue against totalizing blueprints that are not grounded in realist analysis of the relevant context, concrete embodied actors, social relations and mechanisms, and transformative possibilities. Finally, in terms of space, democratic alternatives should not automatically follow the logic of territoriality. With a post-colonial globalist consciousness, we should work for new forms of democratic governance, new forms of democratic participation, representation and accountability, in the context of radically open world history. Concrete utopias can also be innovative.

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