Meta-Moves: Fracturing, Ontologizing, or Reconstructing the International?

Abstract

The thriving field of international political sociology (IPS) has expanded explorations of the world while challenging the apparent abstractions of the international—and increasingly abandoning it altogether. Yet what early IPS called “the problem of the international”—the apparent productivity, ambiguity, and resilience of the concept—has lingered in the background, thus also provoking new responses to come to terms with it. While some call for “fracturing the international” for good, others reinstate “multiplicity” (of one kind or another) as foundational ontology. In this article, we bring these rival metatheoretical stances, or meta-moves, to the fore. Drawing on a typology of “epistemic modes” by Isaac Reed, we read fracturing and ontologizing as projecting particular “normativist” and (critical-)“realist” stances, respectively. As we argue, however, these moves have not so much engaged with as bypassed the conceptualization, production, and effects of the international—by assuming that it is either always already there or never should be. By contrast, “interpretivism,” a third epistemic mode inspiring approaches in the field, highlights how the world and understandings of it are inevitably entangled, thus promoting a meta-move aimed at reconstructing the international, not once and for all, but in myriad and changing constellations, contexts, and perspectives.