The politicizing of facts and factual claims has led some to abandon all talk of a meaningful distinction between a fact and a strongly held political commitment. This book argues that what we need, instead, are better accounts of facts and their relationship to explanation—ones that take seriously the dependence of facts on communities of practice and on consensus procedures of measurement, but do not abandon the epistemic distinctiveness of facts.Bringing clarity and order to the...

The Conduct of Inquiry in International Relations first edition was winner of the ISA-Northeast’s Yale H. Ferguson Award, and the ISA Theory Section’s Best Book of the Year award.The Conduct of Inquiry in International Relations provides an introduction to the philosophy of science issues and their implications for the study of global politics. The author draws attention to the problems caused by the misleading notion of a single unified scientifi...

For the past century, politicians have claimed that "Western Civilization" epitomizes democratic values and international stability. But who is a member of "Western Civilization"? Germany, for example, was a sworn enemy of the United States and much of Western Europe in the first part of the twentieth century, but emerged as a staunch Western ally after World War II.By examining German reconstruction under the Marshall Plan, author Patrick Jackson shows how the rhetorical invention...

Why not take seriously the claim that Harry Potter's world intertwines with our own? In this timely yet otherworldly volume, more than a dozen scholars of international relations join hands to demonstrate how this well-loved artifact of popular culture reflects and shapes our own lifeworld. A wide range of historical and sociological sources shows how Harry's world contains aspects of our own. Practices such as quidditch dovetail quite clearly with "muggle" sports, and the very Br...