Step-by-step examples of how genealogy approach goes about. (Titus)
What is genealogy approach?
Genealogy approach investigates the evolution of our understandings of certain concepts, terms, conditions, etc, in a particular fashion.
Genealogy approach presupposes that concepts and phenomena that we find today come about less as a manifestation of certain indispensable, innate essences that upholds the concept, but more as a constantly evolving presentation of discontinuities and contradictions. Hence a phenomenon is inevitably inconsistent and incoherent in its expression.
So one presupposition of genealogy approach is that both the concept and the phenomenon are not always as it is; they are never constant but are made by layers and juxtaposition of history.
Der Derian:
A genealogy of diplomacy is not an enquiry into accumulated influences but of recurring configurations of conflict.
Genealogy is a history of present in the sense of discovering the transformations engendered by the instability and violent contests which diplomacy had mediated with discontinuous success.
For example, our understandings of God or deity, our concepts of justice or just war, our definition of democracy and good governance, our conceptualization of unequal treaty
A genealogy of diplomacy reveals how it has been formed and may be transformed by religious, ideological, and other disorderly and unconscious forces which stand outside the pale of modern 'common sense'.
Why is genealogy approach important? Or, why is genealogy approach relevant to political science and IR?
It's important because so many concepts that we take for granted or 'naturalize' in IR are actually intellectual products of a particular time-space (or multiple of them); for example, our definition of democracy has changed over time.
Der Derian:
To theorize, we must make strange what we have accommodated ourselves to. And that can include ourselves.
A genealogical approach to diplomatic theory allows us to challenge its traditional state-centricity without denying the centrality of power politics in IR.
An essential substance in diplomacy. The spirit which gave diplomatic institutions life.
We tend to do social scientific studies with the presupposition that the concepts are constant, but actually they are not.
The idea of democracy, just war, the importance of public administration, etc.
Then we end up judging the pre-modern phenomena with the modern concepts.
The notion of modernity is another example.
Oren:
Changing historical and cultural circumstances supply social science with its objects of investigation and shape "the construction of conceptual scheme which will be used in the investigation."
The enemy's image has shifted in a decidedly negative direction, and the shift has coincided with the onset of conflict.
The changes have been driven as much by America's changing rivalries as by the emergence of new facts about the regimes.
The fact that American political science have a record of holding an uncritical attitude toward foreign tyrannies raises doubts about the purported bond between political science and democracy
It supports Max Weber's claim that social science is always written from a particular point of view.
The pattern of correspondence between America's wars and changes in political scientists' portrayals of America's own image, and the effect of those wars on the relations between political science and the American state.
Just as major wars leave what Isaacs called "scratches" on the minds of Americans in general, they leave marks on the knowledge produced by American political scientists.
Focus on international context of intellectual development of American political science.
Theoretical presupposition of genealogy approach:
We live in the definition of political concepts, but we change them as well.
Steps:
I start by questioning the presupposition of objectivity in a discipline, or by challenging the taken-for-granted descriptions of a phenomenon.
That is, I re-examine a meta-theory or meta-narrative in a certain discipline or sub-field, like IR.
Then I trace the evolution of the meta-theory. Who created the theory in the beginning, who enriched it or revised it down the road, and who challenged the mainstream…plus changes in the environment as well.
Classical vs. contemporary examples of doing genealogy approach (Nate & Jason)
James Der Derian questions the Enlightenment definition of diplomacy as the practice of common sense. He defines diplomacy as diplomatic culture that is composed of various contradictory elements ingrained through different eras and cultures. So he highlights ruptures and disruptions rather than an essential continuity within diplomacy.
Common sense is as much a product of history as religion and culture are.
He proposes a multi-paradigmatic approach in recognition of multiplicity of discourses subsumed in the study of diplomacy.
Six inter-penetrating paradigms.
Theory of alienation
Reflexivity: We have seen how the relationship of the thinkers to the reality they wish to describe or explain through the use of alienation determines the critical, subjective nature of the concept.
Diplomacy should be understood as a Western diplomatic culture, and a study of diplomacy should be conceptualized as a historical study of Western diplomatic culture, a study of cultural history.
Alienation, estrangement, and mediation. From Old Testament, Augustinian to Machiavellian paradigms
Diplomacy will be investigated as the mediation of estranged peoples organized in states which interact in a system.
The diplomatic culture will be studied as the mediation of estrangement by symbolic power and social constraints. The diplomatic culture begins as a neutral link between alien quarters, but with the disintegration and diffusion of a common Latin power, it becomes a cluttered yet protected enclave, a discursive space where representatives of sovereign states can avoid the national tolls of the embryonic international society while attempting to mediate its systemic alienation.
John Gunnell started out with the following research questions: Why political theory in the American political science is the way it is now? Why has political theory become a distant relative to, and semi-autonomous from, mainstream positivist political science? Has the relationship between political theory and political science been like this without evolution? In short, he tried to address the identity problem of political theory in the context of American political science.
Gunnell is equally interested in explaining the evolution of the discourse of relationship between knowledge and power, that is, the discourse about the relationship between academic and public discourse of politics. Should the two be separate from each other, or should the former try to influence the contours of the latter?
He attempts to explain the evolution of political theory in American political science (both as a intellectual discipline and as an higher educational institution) by examining the "internal history" of the discourse of political theory since the mid-1800s.
Ido Oren challenged the notion of objectivity and universality of political science in the context of U.S. foreign relations.
Oren argues that our understanding of fundamental political concepts, like democracy, justice, and good government, are actually influenced by U.S. foreign policy with regard to enemy-making.
So our knowledge is always put in perspective, as Max Weber and Karl Mannheim suggest. As far as IR in American social sciences is concerned, its development (professionalization and compartmentalization) is closely connected and tailored to U.S. foreign policy,
Political science is actually an ideology originated in American nationalism.
When we debate abstract analytical concepts we actually debate America's identity, and what it should be.
American political scientists continually negotiate the identity of US by way of direct or indirect comparisons with foreign regimes.
What research questions are appropriate for genealogy?
Subjects that re-examine the taken-for-granted understanding or
Subjects that involve a critical self-reflection of intellectual development within certain discipline, political science, anthropology, sociology, IR, etc.
Conceptual range of genealogy (Nate, Jason, Titus)
Genealogy maybe a roof-top approach that examines historical layering of different discourses, rhetoric, practices and their configuration in the present.
So genealogy is compatible with other interpretive approaches, like ethnography or narrative analysis
Is it appropriate to apply genealogy approach to your research project?
Partially.
The concept of unequal treaty is a historical artifice that contains layers of understanding of international law, international relations, and Sino-Western relations.
Co-existence of contending and contradictory discourses/practices within the argument of abolishing unequal treaty. It's not one approach after the other, but they may be found in the same time in Nationalist regime's declarations and actions.
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