Chiasmatic crossings: A reflexive revisit of a research encounter in European security

Abstract

This article makes an argument about chiasmatic knowledge production that seeks to cut across the entrenched division between the subject and object of inquiry, on the one hand, and the narrative and normative authority of the scholar, on the other, that is inherent in most writing in international relations. We revisit our own research encounter in the field of European security to explore the premises and implications of fieldwork relationships between researchers and practitioners and show their potentially transformative effects. Classifying such engagements as acts of professional transgression by both sets of parties overlooks their promise to facilitate the understanding of security practice ‘from within’ and to provide for tangible scholarly and political criticality. It is argued that, in the restricted realm of security, extensive interaction with practitioners could be a proxy for participant observation. Yet, we look further than that. We develop a concept of ‘chiasmatic crossings’ that reflects and helps theorize the ideational give-and-take and conceptual ruptures in the process of co-authorship that are indicative of distinct trajectories in European security research. This challenges the knowledge claims and static positions of both ‘problem-solving’ and ‘critical’ scholars in the field.

Doing and mediating critique: An invitation to practice companionship

“…It is on the shoulders of this ‘cultural dope’ (Garfinkel, 1967) that critique has long established the distance upon which it has built its intellectual, social, and political legitimacy. Put simply, ‘“critical” researchers too often seem to perceive a need to outwit their interlocutors’ (Kurowska and Tallis, 2013: 74).…”

Interpretive Scholarship in Contemporary International Relations

“…(cf. Kurowska, Tallis, 2013). The famous example of Cohn's research among defence intellectuals (Cohn, 1987) where she recounts being caught in using their own securitising and gendered language despite her initial rejection of such mindset (2006) illustrates the complexity of that type of knowledge production.…”

Rejoinder: A nuclear exchange on survivable normative biases

“…Being close to policymakers helps a political scientist to understand them. One rarely accuses an anthropologist for being familiar with their subjects and the charge of “going native” does not adequately describe the productive “chiasmatic crossings” that are possible between researchers and practitioners (Byman and Kroenig, 2016; Kurowska and Tallis, 2013). Previous scholarship was too quick to label behavior as illogical simply because they did not understand it (e.g.…”