The practices of knowledge claims: Reflections from the drive toward constructing 'East Asian International Relations Theory'

Abstract

The rise of East Asia has generated debate about how International Relations (IR) Theory should respond to ongoing structural change. Most significantly, a vibrant body of literature now exists that advances – or critiques – the imperative and feasibility for East Asian IR Theory (EAIRT). This thesis addresses an understudied but unique dimension of the EAIRT debate: how claims about EAIRT have altered the way academics approach their research, education and other professional activities. This question has been almost completely ignored by both those who study EAIRT directly (whatever their perspective on that debate) and by those who study the relationship between academia and practices more generally.

Driven by the question ‘how have academic practices changed in response to the call for EAIRT’, this study investigates the connection between the various claims about EAIRT and the actual practices of academics in bringing their claims to life. In addressing this issue, this research answers three sub-questions: why knowledge claims occur the way they do; how theorists validate and implement these claims in their daily life; and what actually drives those claims and shifting practices (if any). Addressing these questions provides vital and hitherto missing insight into the status, significance and depth of the contemporary EAIRT debate and enables a better appreciation of the theory-practice relationship.

To answer these questions, this thesis constructs a ‘sociology of science’ framework and then applies it to assess the Chinese, Japanese, and American IR communities in an EAIRT context. This study finds that whilst there have been some changes adopted by scholars involved in the EAIRT debate, the degree and form of changes vary across cases. In China, the biggest developments are the formulation of a vibrant theory-led debate and a resource mobilization process to pave the way for the construction of a ‘Chinese style’ IR Theory. In Japan, the EAIRT discourse initially presented itself in the form of re-examining the existence of ‘Japanese IR’ in the past. However, it has increasingly shifted toward a ‘post-Western IR’ agenda. Meanwhile shifting EAIRT practices in the US are most clearly found among a small number of American-based East Asia specialists who have attempted to bring the Eastern agency into IR Theory. Yet ‘mainstream American IR’, given its hegemonic status in the field and the adherence of most IR academics in the US to this approach, has proven resilient to EAIRT.

This thesis argues that these different responses to EAIRT can be attributable to the uneven impact of social factors on the practices of knowledge claims. These social factors can be classified into two main categories: structural consideration (power shift, socio-political concerns, and academic institutions) and agential choice (personal background, vision of science, and moral choice). These structural and agential factors often intersect and exert impact to varying extents on different national IR academies and individual academics, and therefore shape their respective responses to the call for EAIRT. That explains why claims for EAIRT take various forms in theoretical debates and are implemented in different ways in scholars’ daily practices.