International relations as a formal discipline is relatively new and the feminist perspective in it has an even more recent history. This book is an important attempt at theorizing and designing methods to study feminism in international relations. Over the past two decades, feminism has made refreshing, often radical contributions to the study of International Relations (IR). Feminism is no longer a rare entry in critiques of well-established approaches within IR, as its inclusion in the core texts and scholarly collections of the field testifies.
Feminist Methodologies in International Relations edited by Brooke A. Ackerly, Maria Stern and Jacqui True (published by Cambridge University Press in 2006) is divided into three parts. First, methodological conversations between feminist and non-feminists in IR, second, methods for feminist International Relations and third, methodologies for feminist International Relations. The first part has writings by J.Ann Tickner, Marysia Zalewski and S. Laurel Weldon; the second part is on methods written by Carol Cohn, Annica Kronsell, Bina D’Costa, Tami Jacoby and Maria Stern and the third part has the contributions of Christine Sylvester, Fiona Robinson and Brooke A. Ackerly and Jacqui True with concluding remarks by the editors.
In the introductory chapter, there is a focus on the existing dominant IR conversations surrounding feminism in the discipline of International Relations. It emphasised the need to define a different feminist method in the discipline of IR, given the limits of the dominant methods. The question that triggered Tickner is the need for a different method. Why can’t mainstream methodologies be used? The book clarifies that the need arises because feminists ask questions which are not asked by mainstream thinkers.
Zalewski has followed upon the same by using the work of “Haunting and the Sociological Imagination’’ by Derrida and Gordon, and ‘Methodology Getting Lost’ who also borrowed some from French feminist Luce Irigaray. It depicts the refusal of feminist approaches in IR which is considered the most underrated and most tested concept. It has taken into consideration how feminist methods have been asked to fit into the lens of accepted academic frameworks. Even if feminist methods are taken seriously, what exactly could they contribute to the discipline? Conversations between feminists and non-feminist scholars are the stage of realization that it is the time for feminist methodology of its own.
Feminists, through this book, try to deconstruct the power and hierarchy of mainstream methods in the discipline of International relations. S. Laurel Weldon has spoken in her chapter ‘Inclusion and Understanding’ that feminists in the field of International relations have to take gendered perspectives seriously. This is said on account of not merely adding a new perspective to the discipline but this somehow diminishes the marginalized perspective of the theorization. Weldon has propounded a collective feminist account of science. This is developed in the backdrop of criticizing feminists for merely critiquing the mainstream and not developing anything on the constructivist account. Weldon has tried to theorise it by adding a pragmatist approach to theorizing scientific collective using John Dewey’s work and also listing its drawbacks on how and why it could be used in developing a feminist approach in international relations and why not. This is a very unique analysis and comparison that remains insightful to the developing feminist framework of knowledge. Her work in this book lists feminist methods of inclusion that are seen to have defined features of how a comprehensive method of inclusive feminist approach could be charted out.
The book has addressed that feminist methods are used to evaluate questions of state, security, wars, etc. before the formalization of the discipline. Methods used by scholars in part two of this book is the deconstruction of the methods used by scholars like Carol Cohn, Annica Kronsell, Bina D’Costa, Tami Jacoby and Maria Stern in their research. Chapters in this section of the book have tried to decode the research journey to develop and design a qualitative framework for feminist research in the discipline of international relations. The space that a researcher occupies In the field is only about her thrift for intellectual inquiry and it is beyond political, ontological, epistemological and other preconceptions. This is to define that setting mainstream methods in the subjective understanding like gender is difficult when asked to follow a mainstream set of methods. Otherwise, they are not seen as valid to produce authentic research.
Set methods are put into question by feminists in every form of knowledge as status-quo. Examples produced remain insightful like A.Kronsell’s in the chapter ‘Methods for Studying Silences: Gender Analysis in Institutions of Hegemonic Masculinity’ has questioned how a researcher studies an inherent form of silence on gender in the discipline of international relations. One has to opt for deconstructing the routine, patterns and format to build upon the feminist knowledge by deconstructing hidden and explicit hierarchies embedded and institutionalized. This has been explained by D’Costa’s methods in a research study on security in Bangladesh and partition and Tami Jacoby’s work in Israel. Scholars like Stern, Costa and Jacoby have deduced research and methods to produce a sense of ‘self-reflection’ in research methodologies when studying silences and politicized agendas of margins.
International relations as an academic discipline has reshaped and reconstructed its boundaries by questioning and deconstructing its meanings and horizons. Gendering international relations is an important movement redefining traditional and constrained parameters of gender. The subtle and underlying multi-sited, multi-dimensional and multi-method approach to study gender is stated in each chapter of the book. There is a constant reminder of ‘moving beyond the established mainstream agendas’ and the need to develop feminist methodologies in the discipline of international relations.
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Mansi Malhotra is a Ph.D. Researcher at the Department of Political Science and Public Administration, Guru Ghasidas Vishwavidyalaya, Bilaspur, Chhattisgarh.