Abstract

The encompassing scale and scope of International Political Economy (IPE) is rare in the social sciences. Our subject matter affects the way our field organizes and produces knowledge: we study complex overlapping systems where the challenges of adequate description and causal explanation are especially difficult, and as such IPE scholarship borrows from a vast range of social theory and methods. While holding enormous productive potential, this space for pluralism, as currently practiced, risks culminating in the fragmentation of knowledge: what I call ‘alienated pluralism’. A different, ‘engaged pluralism’ as I propose would retain the diversity of IPE’s many approaches and traditions, but would promise greater knowledge synthesis. I argue that stronger adherence to a scientific ethos can assist in building this ‘engaged pluralism’.

摘要

在社会科学中，国际政治经济学（IPE）的涵盖范围和范围是罕见的。我们的主题影响着我们领域组织和产生知识的方式：我们研究复杂的重叠系统，在这些系统中，充分描述和因果解释的挑战尤其困难，因此IPE奖学金借鉴了广泛的社会理论和方法。在拥有巨大的生产潜力的同时，按照目前的实践，这种多元化的空间有可能在知识的分裂中达到高潮：我称之为“异化的多元化”。我提议的一种不同的“参与多元主义”将保留IPE的许多方法和传统的多样性，但有望实现更多的知识综合。我认为，更坚决地遵守科学精神可以帮助建立这种“参与的多元主义”。