CRITICAL INTERPRETATION AND INTERWAR PEACE MOVEMENTS 291291CHAPTER 16
CRITICAL INTERPRETATION AND
INTERWAR PEACE MOVEMENTS
Challenging Dominant Narratives
CECELIA LYNCH
In discussing my way into interpretive theory and methods, I often feel like the proverbial parent
who lectures the child about how I walked five miles to school and back in the snow just to grasp
a bit of knowledge. I, perhaps like others, am rather proud of the effort and determination in-
volved, but at the same time I know that there must be an easier way for both myself and my
students to make the trek. My own path was anything but linear, and I can’t say whether or not the
allegedly straight methods make one a better scholar in the end.
During my graduate years I had a love-hate relationship with the field of international rela-
tions (IR). Living on the Upper West Side of New York City (after Missouri, Iowa, and Paris), I
became involved almost immediately in “social justice” activities: helping to start a soup kitchen,
helping run a shelter for homeless men, working with law and social work students to get social
security and other welfare benefits for our guests, protesting money spent on nuclear weapons
and Central American death squads. The disconnect between being involved in this activism and
studying nuclear strategy and levels of analysis theory was interesting, to say the least. Yet I was
also exposed to bits and pieces of critical theory in IR, especially applications of the work of
Antonio Gramsci to U.S. hegemony.
On my return from doing research in Brussels, where I also became involved in European
peace movements, I knew I needed time away from graduate school and took jobs in social ser-
vice and peace groups for several years. When I eventually decided to return and finish my Ph.D.,
it was with a new dissertation topic on interwar peace movements and with a determination to
negotiate, somehow, the disconnect between my previous activist involvement and academic study.
I sought out an adviser (Friedrich Kratochwil) who was supportive and able to steer me toward
new interpretive literatures and spoke with other faculty, such as Jean Cohen, to learn about
theories of “new social movements.” Then, when I was in London for archival research in 1989,
I attended the International Studies Association annual meeting for the first time and found rap-
idly growing groups of feminist, postmodern, and critical scholars whose work was theoretically
sophisticated and called into question the way in which I was trying to demonstrate peace move-
ment “influence.” With the end of the cold war the field imploded, and I felt there could be space
for all of us.
Since that point, I have probably gone through too many phases in my understanding of how to
relate interpretive theory and methods to concerns in world politics to document clearly. Suffice
it to say that the journey is ongoing, fed by numerous friends and colleagues in many fields in and