ABSTRACT
International relations (IR) are an anxious academic endeavor. Methodology is, in fact, a bigger barrier to dissolving IR's perennial insecurity than theory is because under the spell of a misleadingly monolithic notion of "science". The intellectual insecurity is obviously related to organizational insecurity of IR faculty and IR programs and to what people might call the geopolitical insecurity of an international realm traditionally envisioned as an arena of dangerous competition and conflict. This chapter begins by identifying three avenues along which debates about IR's boundaries and purpose have traditionally unfolded. The three avenues are namely theoretical avenue, methodological avenue and vocational orientation. Just as the broad end of the theory avenue is populated by a plethora of scientific ontologies, the broad end of the methodology avenue is populated by a plethora of philosophical ontologies. The objection to such a pluralizing of explanatory intentions is generally made through an appeal to methodological issues, specifically to the supposed nature of "social science".
