ABSTRACT
The philosophical critique of positivism has had a profound impact across the social sciences, including Development Studies and IR. The certainty and claims to neutrality of positivist social science have been disrupted, and exposed as serving the interests of the powerful and securing the reproduction of the status-quo. In the light of this many have abandoned hope of improving and accumulating scientific knowledge of the world through objective inquiry, either for deconstruction, negotiation and dialogue, celebrating a diverse multiplicity of shifting perspectives and local knowledges, or for explicitly normative approaches which foreground the goal of emancipation. Forms of post-positivist critical scholarship vary considerably. One characteristic which is shared by critical approaches in Development Studies and IR, however, is the tendency to throw out too much when they abandon positivism. It has been too easy to equate the problems of positivism with the aspirations and practice of science per se, and to reject, along with positivism, notions of ‘truth’, ‘science’, ‘objectivity’ and a knowable ‘reality out there’. The routine use of quotation marks around these terms gestures the consensus of disapproval shared by all those who thereby affirm their critical credentials.
