Interdisciplinary integration: constructivist FSS and the fragmentation of knowledge
Why is constructivism ill-suited to grounding interdisciplinary research? To provide an answer to this question it will be necessary to begin this section by providing an outline of the main differences between interdisciplinarity and (1) intra-disciplinarity, (2) disciplinary reductionism, (3) multi-disciplinarity,w and (4) anti-disciplinarity." These categories have, after all, been used in com-pcting/incompatiblc ways throughout a wide range of disparate intellectual and institutional contexts. As space is limited, this section will not attempt to reconcile or adjudicate between these uses; rather, it will simply define or understand the above categories to mean the following:
Intra-disciplinarity: research which takes place within a single discipline, studies the subjects/answcrs the questions/addresses the kinds of problems that arc characteristic of this discipline, and uses the tools/mcthods/modcs of analysis that arc familiar to or prevalent within it.
Disciplinary reductionism: a philosophical (primarily ontological) position that claims that the subject matter of one discipline is ultimately reducible to the subject matter of another discipline (c.g. psychological cntitics/proccsscs are nothing but biological cntitics/proccsscs, biological cntitics/proccsscs arc nothing but chemical cntitics/proccsscs, etc.).
Multi-disciplinarity: a philosophical and methodological position that claims that interaction and communication between researchers with contrasting disciplinary backgrounds should be promoted to study a subject/answcr a question/address a problem. While numerous areas of study arc thus provided with ‘a scat at the table’ by multi-disciplinarity, it remains largely additive, differentiated, and non-integrative in nature because of its focus on multiplicity/hctcrogcncity.
Anti-disciplinarity: a philosophical and methodological position that claims that researchers should transcend all disciplinary distinctions to study a subject/ answer a question/address a problem. Research is understood as a unified endeavour and disciplinary boundaries arc argued to be mere conventions or artificial/unwarrantcd/arbitrary/damaging impositions. In contrast with multi-disciplinarity, anti-disciplinarity is therefore undifferentiated and holistic.
How docs interdisciplinarity differ from or relate to these categories? It is useful to begin the process of answering this question by highlighting that a number of them can be organised along a continuum, ranging from completely fragmented on the one hand, to fully holistic on the other. In particular, a systematic commitment to intra-disciplinarity would result in complete fragmentation, whereas multi-disciplinarity allows for interaction and communication between different types of researchers, and anti-disciplinarity eliminates disciplinary distinctions and boundaries altogether. From the critical realist perspective that is advanced throughout this chapter, interdisciplinarity should be understood as a philosophico-mcthodological position that occupies a space along this continuum that is located in-between multi-disciplinarity and anti-disciplinarity; more specifically, it occupies a space that docs not deny the need for and uses of disciplinary diffcrcntiation/spccialisation and - simultaneously -allows for the (rc)intcgration of diffcrentiatcd/spccialiscd knowledge claims. It is because interdisciplinarity is necessarily integrative, then, that it amounts to more than multi-disciplinary interaction and communication among researchers, and it is because it necessarily accepts (or even welcomes) the need for and uses of disciplinary diffcrcntiation/spccialisation that it amounts to less than anti-disciplinarity.
In contrast, interdisciplinarity differs from/relatcs to disciplinary reductionism in a contingent fashion. While it docs not deny the need for and uses of disciplinary diffcrcntiation/spccialisation, after all, it docs not follow from this that it also provides a priori support for (or fctishiscs) the existence of every and any kind of discipline. Rather, whether or not the existence of a discipline is warranted is a question that - from a critical realist perspective - can only be answered in an a posteriori fashion because it is dependent on the provision of a robust rationale. When such a rationale cannot be provided, therefore, interdisciplinarity is compatible with the specific reduction in question. Contrariwise, it is incompatible with a generalised commitment to such reductions as this produces a deflationary spiral that results in anti-disciplinarity.
If some light has been shed both on the concept of interdisciplinarity itself and the ways in which it differs from and relates to contrasting/compcting notions, however, we arc now in a position to return to the question that was posed at the start of this section; that is to say, we can now ask why it is that constructivist FSS is ill-suited to grounding interdisciplinary research? As discussed above, my answer to this question will focus on (1) the onedimensional, tcxtualist focus on discoursc/mcaning that this approach has adopted, (2) its inability to sustain an account of agency, (3) its anthropocentrism, and (4) its unidirectional understanding of causality.
With regard to the first of these issues, the ‘thick’ constructivist stance that many prominent FSS authors have adopted has resulted in seemingly all-encompassing forms of textualist monism that arc fundamentally incompatible with interdisciplinary research; if the study of being is ultimately reducible to the study of tcxts/discourses, after all, both disciplinary distinctions themselves and the idea that interdisciplinary (re)integration is required are lacking in any kind of ontological warrant. In fact, from a consistent monist perspective, FSS should be a fully anti-disciplinary endeavour. As Holland has noted (in a different context), if it is true that reality/being is undifferentiated ‘it is unclear why science should be differentiated and why scientific integration is desirable’ (2013, p. 47, emphasis mine). In terms of its inability to ground interdisciplinary research, however, this textualist monism is not altogether dissimilar to the physicalist monism that is favoured by some positivist authors. The proponents of physicalism have argued, after all, that a fully developed form of science would be able to reduce all phenomena - whether these arc conventionally described as ‘biological’, ‘psychological’, ‘social’, or whatever - to one set of basic causal laws (grounding a unified ‘theory of everything’) and entities (generally understood as ‘fundamental’ or ‘elementary’ particles). Such claims arc incompatible with interdisciplinarity because, if it is true that all forms of being are ultimately reducible to a set of basic laws and entities, disciplinary distinctions appear - once again - to lack any ontological justification. Indeed, to the extent that positivism is physicalist, the internal logic of this onedimensional approach suggests - absurdly - that biologists, psychologists, sociologists, etc. should simply retrain as physicists. An analogous criticism applies, however, to the constructivist focus on discoursc/mcaning; rather than retraining as physicists, this approach suggests - equally absurdly - that researchers of various kinds should retrain as (critical) discourse analysts.
In light of such criticisms, it deserves emphasis that some constructivist authors have countered that their work (1) does not involve a tcxtualist monism at all, and (2) docs not deny the reality of non-/extra-discursive forms of being either. These claims - along with their limitations - can be helpfully illustrated by sketching the outlines of an on-going debate within both FSS itself and the broader feminist and gender-studies literatures.
On one side of this debate arc proponents of the view that biology matters in ways that are irreducible to its sociocultural construction. This perspective depends on the second wave feminist distinction between sex and gender, as well as on its attendant notion of sex/gender systems. On the other side are proponents of third wave feminism who have either expressed significant scepticism about or wholly rejected the idea that sex has a reality which is irreducible in this manner.12 The FSS literature - including its influential constructivist wing - is characterised by significant equivocation about this issue.13 Nonetheless, third wave feminist thought has clearly made its presence felt. Christine Sylvester (2002), for instance, systematically refers to ‘people called women’ rather than simply ‘women’, while Melanic Richter-Montpctit maintains that feminists should transcend ‘analytics such as male/fcmale, victim/perpctrator, war/pcacc, national/intcmational, and powcr/rcsistancc’ (2016, p. 96). Importantly, analyses such as these do not deny the reality and material existence of bodies as such; however, they have resulted in a pronounced tendency to conceive of sex not as a cause but as an effect. As Lena Gunnarsson notes in a critique of Judith Butler’s work, ‘it is in the regulatory norms of sex that all causality and structure is located, whereas the bodily and material are understood mainly as effects’ (2014, p. 27; sec also Hull 2006, pp. 57-63).14 While this not-wholeheartedly-tcxtualist version of constructivism therefore does not -strictly-speaking - adopt a monist ontological position, its onc-dimcnsional emphasis on socialisation/cnculturation does result in a unidirectional understanding of causality. Such an understanding is, however, incompatible with interdisciplinary research as well; to the extent that interdisciplinarity involves both disciplinary diffcrentiation/specialisation and the (rc)intcgration of diffcren-tiatcd/spccialiscd knowledge claims into multidirectional explanations, after all, even this toned-down version of constructivism remains at odds with it.
This is of significant importance as FSS is in clear need of integrated, interdisciplinary accounts of the evcnts/phenomcna that it studies. Its accounts of SGBV, for instance, are both incoherent and unintelligible without the ability to draw on knowledge claims from a range of disciplines, especially biology, psychology, and the sociocultural sciences. What, for instance, is rape without (1) human corporeality (as understood by biologists), (2) agency/intcntionality/ trauma/etc. (as understood by psychologists), and (3) the breaking of societal rulcs/norms by coercively transforming sociocultural relationships (as understood by sociocultural scientists)? All three of these disciplines - or rather, the causal powers/mcchanisms that they study - must arguably be integrated if we arc to provide well-rounded accounts of this phenomenon. Such accounts arc ruled out, however, if FSS authors adopt a constructivist approach, as (1) references to corporeality become inadmissible when, instead of referring to women and men, we arc asked to refer to ‘people called women [and men]’ (Sylvester
2002), and (2) references to agency must be shoehorned into accounts that are otherwise anti-humanist in orientation.
The adoption of a constructivist approach therefore has very significant - and adverse - consequences. These become especially apparent when we consider its inability to sustain an account of agency. There arc few phenomena that arc of concern to FSS, after all, that would remain intelligible without it having resort to the distinction between behaviour and intentional behaviour. The targeting of women as part of ‘ethnic cleansing’ (e.g. Nikolic-Ristanovic 1998), for instance, is unintelligible without this, and - troublingly - claims about both the injustice that is done to the survivors or victims and the moral responsibility of the perpetrators collapse. Moreover, the consequences of eliminating human corporeality from our analyses are clearly discernible in the work of FSS authors like Christine Sylvester and Laura J. Shepherd. The former asserts, for instance, that ‘men and women arc [just] the stories that have been told about “men” and “women”’ (1994, 4), while the latter quotes Sharon Marcus’ claim that ‘rape is a question of language, interpretation and subjectivity’ (2007, p. 248). Importantly, such accounts should play a significant role in interdisciplinary research on this topic. However, an approach that focuses solely on language and interpretation is also radically impoverished; not only docs this focus provide us with a very narrow understanding of the sociocultural realm (as composed exclusively of language and its subjective interpretation) and seem to suggest that survivors could just choose to reinterpret or re-dcscribe what happened to them, after all, it also elides human corporeality.
Overall, then, it might be concluded that constructivism tends towards a unidirectional understanding of causality. It therefore provides the FSS subfield with an ‘over-socialised’ analytical framework. In so doing, however, its philosophico-methodological logic is - once again - not all that different from the logic of (nco-)positivism. Specifically, the (quasi-)nomothctic understanding of causality that (nco-)positivists adopt, like the constructivist emphasis on socialisation/enculturation, tends towards unidirectionality. If we conceive of causality in terms of the universal laws that govern empirical events, after all, the act of granting something causal power suggests that it will straightforwardly determine outcomes. If genetic factors arc conceived of as causal in bringing about SGBV, for instance, (neo-)positivism results in (or at least facilitates) an esscntialist or biological determinist account of these factors as being its sole determinants.
Further to this, the one-dimensional understanding of being/rcality that constructivist FSS authors adopt puts them at risk of further thcory/praxis inconsistencies. While some of these authors have expressed scepticism about or wholly rejected the idea of biological sex at a theoretical level, for instance, they have arguably remained firmly committed to its reality in practice. Without such a commitment it seems impossible, in fact, to sustain their abovementioned claim that mainstream Security Studies has systematically excluded the rolcs/voiccs/ expcrienccs/intercsts/viewpoints/ctc. of women from consideration. If this is the ease, after all, even constructivists must have found some way of differentiating
After constructivism 239 male from female bodies. Moreover, even the most radical FSS constructivists have commonly continued to make SGBV a key focal point in their work. It seems impossible for them to do justice to this phenomenon, however, from a perspective that denies that sex is irreducible to its sociocultural construction; for instance, it seems impossible for the proponents of such a perspective to account for the rapebased impregnations that have been perpetrated against women during periods of genocidal violence (e.g. Nikolic-Ristanovic 1998). Likewise, it seems counterproductive in the extreme to adopt a third wave feminist perspective to examine the pro-natalist policies that certain governments have adopted during times of war (e.g. Bayard de Volo 1998). Such scenarios cannot but remain unintelligible if we fail to provide philosophical space for the biological reality that (1) it is only bodies with clusters of female characteristics than can be impregnated, and (2) it is only bodies with clusters of male characteristics than can impregnate them.15 When explicit denials of the overwhelming pervasiveness of sexual dimorphism16 arc combined with the study of issues that implicitly presuppose its reality, therefore, this results in thcory/praxis inconsistencies. Indeed, this provides us with yet further illustrations of the fact that reality has a habit of biting back.
As a result, it seems clear that any satisfactory approach to grounding interdisciplinary FSS research must take this ‘habit’ into account; specifically, it must reintegrate the non-/extra-discursivc features of reality that constructivism represses in a way that allows it to avoid thcory/praxis inconsistencies. More generally, such an approach must provide a viable alternative to its onedimensional focus on discoursc/meaning and overcome (1) its inability to sustain an account of agency, (2) its anthropocentrism, and (3) its unidirectional understanding of causality. The second part of this chapter will argue that these goals can be achieved by drawing on critical realist philosophy. In particular, it will claim that this approach allows us to rethink and reclaim ontology in a way that provides interdisciplinarity - along with the broader ‘studies’ agenda -with a robust philosophical basis and rationale. Rather than abandoning or inverting/overturning positivism and constructivism, furthermore, it will argue that critical realism is preservative in nature.
