ABSTRACT
If International Relations (IR) is to become a field of study involving active engagement and dialogue across theoretical paradigms, then we must go beyond the tautological advice to pay more attention or listen more carefully to each other. This chapter provides suggestions for some ways to engage in more substantive dialogue within the field. The call for more engagement and dialogue across theories should not be read as a call for unity. It is first necessary to clarify and expand points of contact and common reference between "isms". Methodology and methods, particularly in post-positivist contexts, can serve as useful points of contact, for three reasons. If post-positive IR scholarship considered methodology in its own right and not as subordinate to ontology or epistemology, and if it employed the methods associated with empirical knowledge production more fully, a space for active dialogue would be created. This shift could in turn lead to IR becoming a more dialogical discipline.
