Poststructuralism and international relations: Bringing the political back in.

a traditional approach, it published an edited volume and disbanded (W. T. R. Fox, ed., Theoretical Aspects of International Relations, 1959). Its legacy was soon swept away by the rising tide of social science positivism that drew its inspiration from sociology, psychology, economics, and the philosophy of science and that went on to dominate the study of international relations in the United States over the next four decades. Tim Dunne has written a highly readable history about development of the English School and the work of some of its leading representatives. In an opening chapter he outlines the approach they take, stressing, quite rightly, their emphasis on a "tradition of inquiry," their "interpretive approach," and the importance they assign to normative theory. He devotes two chapters to the Rockefeller-funded British Committee, which left a deposit of significant writings, the most important being a volume edited by Herbert Butterfield and Martin Wight, {Diplomatic Investigations, 1968), which contains seminal contributions not only by the editors but also by Hedley Bull, Michael Howard, and several other scholars. There are separate and insightful chapters on Wight, Butterfield, Bull, and John Vincent. All of that, and more, will enlighten and inform anyone who may be interested in learning about the classical approach that survived and even flourished on the other side of the Atlantic during the same period that the social sciences colonized the study of international relations in North America. Unfortunately, Dunne was not content merely to present and assess the academic contribution of the English School. He tried to incorporate into it something alien, namely, the work of E. H. Carr and of critical IR theorists (and constructivists) more generally. Carr was never a member of the British Committee. He did not write in the same vein as Butterfield, Wight, Bull, or Vincent. His work does not strive to enter into the political uncertainties and moral dilemmas of statesmen, which the English scholars felt obliged to do in order to understand the profoundly human character of diplomacy, foreign policy, war, and international relations more generally. Carr had very different scholarly inclinations. He downplayed the situational ethics of statecraft and understood power in an altogether more sociological and materialist way. Power was a determining force in world affairs, not merely an agency or apparatus that statesmen could employ for good or ill. He was, as Dunne rightly notes, a prototypical critical theorist. "Power for Carr, unlike Bull or Vincent, goes all the way down" (p. 36). That is far removed from the classical humanism of Wight, Butterfield, or Bull. Presumably Dunne assigned Carr to the English School to buttress his claim that a new version of international society theory has been perfected that escapes the state-centric predilections and politically agnostic detachment of Butterfield, Wight, Bull, and Vincent. These progressive international society theorists, led by Ken Booth and Andrew Linklater, are ambitiously seeking to provide intellectual direction that will enable humanity to realize its destiny of freedom and justice by breaking the chains of political nationality and state citizenship. But that purported fraternity between the classical international society theorists and the critical theorists, which Dunne captures using the elastic expression "critical international society theory," is two different schools of scholarship, not one. The classical theorists and the critical theorists approach the study of international society in ways that are as unlike as, shall we say, Grotius and Burke, on the one hand, and Marx and Engels, on the other. That is the only major flaw of this otherwise informative and useful study. Poststructuralism and International Relations: Bringing the Political Back In. By Jenny Edkins. Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 1999. 163p. $49.95. Navigating Modernity: Postcolonialism, Identity, and International Relations. By Albert J. Paolini. Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 1999. 227p. $52.00.