Interpreting International Politics

Interpretive approaches to the study of international relations span not only the traditional areas of security, international political economy, and international law and organizations, but also emerging and newer areas such as gender, race, religion, secularism, and continuing issues of globalization. But how are we to bring interpretivist methods and concerns to bear on these topics? Cecelia Lynch focuses on the philosophy of science and conceptual issues that make work in international relations distinctly interpretive. This work both legitimizes and demonstrates the necessity of post- and non-positivist scholarship.

Lynch address each of the major, "traditional," subfields in International Relations, including International Law and Organization, International Security, and International Political Economy, situating, describing, and analyzing major interpretive works in each of these fields to draw out critical research challenges posed and progress in the field made by interpretive work. Furthermore, the book also pushes forward interpretive insights to areas that have entered the IR radar screen more recently, including race and religion, demonstrating how work in these areas can inform all subfields of the discipline and suggesting paths for future research.

Cecelia Lynch is professor in the department of political science at University of California, Irvine. She is one of the original members of the "Methods Cafes" at the American Political Science Association, a forum for discussing interpretive methodologies. She has lectured at the Institute for Qualitative and Multi-Method Research (IQMMR) and at the Interpretive Methods workshop formed as part of the Northeastern Political Science Association, and acted as a faculty mentor at the NSF-funded Interpretive Methods and Methodologies workshop.