the-evolution-of-international-security-studies

132 the cold war challenge to national securityand nuclear war to ecological balance, and class, ethnic, racial and societalconflict. Crucially though, this expansion of the substantial topic was notfollowed by a broadening of the epistemological agenda. A little closer tothe middle of the epistemological spectrum, the Arms Control literaturewas traditional, although there was much of it that was built on countingmilitary hardware. This literature was concerned with numbers andmaterial, quantifiable factors, but did not necessarily adopt more sophisticatedresearch designs seeking to demonstrate causal relationships. Thetask was to work through the intricate balances between East and Westacross a large set of elaborate classifications.The other epistemological Peace Research tradition stretched back topolitical theorists such as Kant’s Perpetual Peace and in the twentiethcentury, writers such as Angell (1910, 1938) and Mitrany (1933, 1966)(de Wilde, 1991). A broader historical agenda and epistemology wasadopted by the journal Peace and Change, first published in 1976 (Chatfield,1979: 172–173), and the journal Alternatives, edited by Rajni Kathariand Richard Falk from the World Order Model Project, launched in 1975and described by Chatfield (Chatfield, 1979: 174; see also Vasquez, 1976:708) as ‘normative and policy-oriented’. Yet also Critical-positive PeaceResearchers were in favour of ‘disciplined methodology’ (Journal of PeaceResearch, 1964: 4) even if it was not a formal, quantitative one, andScandinavian and German Peace Research were devoted to developingkey concepts and terminology. Epistemologically, this came closest to aqualitative, sociological tradition with an empiricist, soft-positivist leaning(Patomäki, 2001: 728) in that concepts had to be distinct and beapplicable to – or found in – the real world (Lawler, 1995; Väyrynen,2004: 32). Theories referred to measurable material objects and actions,andwerestructuralratherthanhermeneutic.WhenGaltungcalledforan incorporation of case-studies, for instance, these were to be situatedinside structural analysis of economic and cultural imperialism. Theywere not designed to uncover local constitutions of peace, developmentand security issues. Nor were linguistic or discursive phenomena goingto be given much concern, as Galtung (1984: 128) put it: ‘Thoughts andwords come and go, actions depend on what is objectively possible, givenby the constraints of natural laws only.’This epistemological diversity led to a concern in the 1970s with ‘thetwo cultures problem’, that Peace Research might bifurcate into two epistemologicalcamps unable to speak to each other, training students whoeither would be ‘unable to read, let alone critically assess, a number ofsocially important pieces of quantitative research’ or alternatively ‘be