What is it about?
Recent discussions of the epistemological and political implications of the situatedness of knowledge in International Relations (IR) have raised important questions regarding the future development of the discipline. They pose the challenge of understanding under what conditions human beings develop more or less reality-congruent knowledge about world politics, and what are the implications of such knowledge to emancipatory political activity. This article argues that process sociology should be understood as a relevant complement to these discussions. Assuming a fundamentally ‘realist’ orientation, process sociology provides a sociologically-informed analysis of the material, ideational and emotional forces shaping the development of knowledge. As such, it can help those concerned with the implications of the situatedness of knowledge in IR reinforce their capacity to both understand the social conditions under which it is possible to develop more detached and reality-congruent knowledge about the world and better identify and explain the historically-emergent values that should orientate the emancipatory transformation of world politics.
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Why is it important?
A process sociological approach to the challenges posed by the situatedness of knowledge in International Relations.
Perspectives
This articles offers a post-philosophical, process sociology-informed approach to the challenges raised by the situatedness of all knowledge processes, which confronts the social sciences, and International Relations in particular. Its innovation lies in the fact that it does not rely on the usual philosophical categories with which the problem is commonly approached, but rather offers a sociological approach which, the article argues, open us new avenues to address the problem and discuss its implications for emancipatory politics.
Andre Saramago
University of Coimbra
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Reality-congruence, emancipatory politics and situated knowledge in International Relations: A process sociological perspective, International Relations, October 2019, SAGE Publications,
DOI: 10.1177/0047117819879473.
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