Beyond (Post)Positivism: The Missed Promises of Systemic Pragmatism1

Abstract

Hamati‐Ataya, Inanna. (2012) Beyond (Post)Positivism: The Missed Promises of Systemic Pragmatism. International Studies Quarterly, doi: 10.1111/j.1468‐2478.2011.00710.x © 2012 International Studies Association This paper explores Pragmatism’s potential for transcending the antagonism between positivism and post‐positivism, through the work of Morton Kaplan, who combines a Pragmatist theory of knowledge with a systems theory of world politics. A reconstruction of Kaplan’s synoptic philosophy shows how Pragmatism can help us move beyond the dual fallacy of truth as correspondence and truth as self‐consciousness, to a non‐foundationalist epistemology that acknowledges the historicity of knowing without annihilating the realism of the common world we live in. Moving from the realm of knowledge to the realm of judgment, this paper also reconstructs Kaplan’s moral analysis, thereby revealing its significance for the discipline’s renewed concern for the problems of values and reflexivity.

A pragmatist vocation for International Relations: The (global) public and its problems

“…We offer an alternative way in which the contributions made possible by the pragmatist tradition speak to IR, neither paradigmatically nor methodologically, but vocationally. More specifically, working with a reading of Dewey that starts with politico-vocational commitments, that foregrounds an “activist-ethos” (Hamati-Ataya, 2012a: 301) as productive of theoretical practice, permits a vision of pragmatic IR to be outlined that helps us think the politics of producing knowledge in novel ways. Without unfairly rendering the diverse traditions of “practice” and “pragmatism” in IR, the most recent turns toward reorienting a fragmented discipline around concrete and “real-world” problems leave us wanting.…”

The Drive towards Application of Pragmatic Perspective in Educational Research: Opportunities and Challenges

“…To be useful, a pragmatic approach emphasizes key issues that are important to address for successful implementation or evaluation of specified educational interventions (Hamati-Ataya, 2012).At all times pragmatism has been considered as a process rather than a result, and it is an approach that attempts to validate all participatory variables in a solution specific to educational problems. This means that in pragmatism the task, then, is to find solutions that make the most sense in the simplest way possible.…”

The “Problem of Values” and International Relations Scholarship: From Applied Reflexivity to Reflexivism

“…The grounding of knowledge/judgment in a reality that exists through the practical significance that it acquires for subjects placed in an evolving context of observation/action therefore also allows for a problematization of the relationship between science and politics, based on the “insight—on the wager—that the temporary isolation of a given value‐commitment from the ordinary flow of daily life might be the best chance of refining that value‐commitment to allow it, and the actors who stand by it, to face the open‐ended future” (Jackson 2009:659). This implies that as knowledge is produced out of evolving and ever‐renewed constructions of pragmatic meaning, the assessment of what is , can be , or ought to be is altered as contextual knowledge/praxis evolves (Hamati‐Ataya 2012).…”

“…This entails the development of explanatory models that can ground themselves in history as a factor that affects and shapes both the social determination of knowledge and the standards of its epistemic validity, thereby establishing some measure of pragmatic objectivity for our standards of assessment (Hamati‐Ataya 2012). Reflexivism in this sense does not withdraw from the realm of theorizing, as if “meta‐theory” were an “unproductive distraction from the ‘real substance’ of the discipline,” but rather establishes itself as a type of meta‐theory that is both “the indispensable foundation of competent scholarly activity, and vital for ensuring the adequacy of the explanatory accounts which are developed” (Neufeld 1993:54) and a form of first‐order theory proper (see Pouliot 2007:379 and Hamati‐Ataya 2010).…”