Theorising Danger or Dangerous Theories? Positivist Data and the Making of the China Threat

Abstract

Most critical scholars have criticized the validity of positivist claims and positivist ambitions to propose general and value-free explanations. However, less attention has been paid to the question of how positivist data collection, methods and epistemology structures our interpretative and normative vision of international relations. In order to address this question I will focus on how nomological positivism frames the threat perceptions of international conflict. In particular I ask how conflict is predicted by positivist scholars and the kind of solutions they suggest in order to avoid conflict. I argue that by reducing actors to coherent, strategic, measurable objects, positivism often leads to exaggerated fear. Such alarmism embedded in positivist scholarship is nourished by the denial of individuality, complexity, contingency and social relations characterized by empathy, identification and trust. This article presents to my knowledge the first study that examines the elective affinities between positivism and international violence.