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Method or madness? Sociolatry in international thought

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 July 2015

PATRICIA OWENS
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Abstract

International theory has a social problem. Twenty years after the so-called ‘social turn’, the historical origins of distinctly social forms of thought are not subject to scrutiny, let alone well understood. Indeed, the problem of the ahistorical social is an issue not only for predominant liberal, realist, and constructivist appropriations of social theory, but also the broad spectrum of critical and Marxist modes of theorising. In contrast to practicing sociolatry, the worship of things ‘socio’, this article addresses the historicity of the social as both a mode of thought – primarily in social theories and sociology – against the background of the emergence of the social realm as a concrete historical formation. It highlights problems with the social theoretic underpinnings of liberalism, social constructivism, and Marxism and advances an original claim for why the rise of the social was accompanied by attacks on things understood (often erroneously) as political. To fully understand these phenomena demands a closer examination of the more fundamental governance form the modern social realm was purported to replace, but which it scaled up and transformed.

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Forum
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Review of International Studies , Volume 41 , Issue 4 , October 2015 , pp. 655 - 674
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© British International Studies Association 

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Footnotes

*

Research for this article was supported by a year long Fellowship at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, Harvard University. For comments on earlier drafts, I am grateful to three anonymous reviewers and co-panellists and audience members at the 2012 and 2013 ISA Annual Conventions and during presentations at the LSE, Oxford, Aberystwyth, Westminster, City University, Sussex, and Harvard.

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