This course aims to provide the methodological background for understanding the different ways we do research in IR. It does not cover the whole gamut of steps in a research design, which would include discussions on methods, their selection and combination. In the little time available, it concentrates on the initial setup that leads to questions of defining research puzzles or problematisations from which such selection and combination of methods derive. It is based on an understanding of research as problem-driven, not method-driven.

Hence, the fundamental issue of this short course is to start thinking about what it entails to define a significant research question or contribution. Many research strategies still rely on the relatively weak justification of a “research gap” or “gap in the literature”. Instead, this course will start from the premise that the mere existence of a gap does not yet imply a justification that we need to fill it. The course puts this initial justification at its center. For such justification is the very starting point for establishing relevant and significant research. Research is about improving our knowledge (which is not necessarily a gap) by showing that the aspired new knowledge is of importance for moving forward from what we know so far. Problematisation is about identifying that which is puzzling, paradoxical, unexpected and unresolved in our existing knowledge, which needs to be addressed.
But why does it need to be addressed, for what is this problematic? Previous knowledge is stored in our theories. As a result, problematisations inevitably refer back to the theories with which we have come to explain and understand the (social) world. They provide the analytical lenses and inform how we look at the world – and where we spot something problematic and not yet sufficiently understood. Ideally, therefore, problematization identify and addresses problems with the underlying theoretical assumptions and tenets of a given theory or group of theories. 

Increasing awareness of how theories are connected to our observations and problematisations explains the setup of the course. At a most fundamental level, this refers to meta-theories, that is, about theories how we build up theories. Social sciences have two main traditions for conceiving knowledge and theories, naturalism and interpretivism. Moreover, it has become customary to distinguish between theories that tend to explain the whole from its parts (individualism) or the parts from the whole (holism). Once aware of the ways our theories dispose for our way to look at the world, the course ends with two sessions that deal with problematisations and more generally Research Design

 

Lecturer: Prof. Stefano Guzzini, Uppsala University (Sweden)