CRITICAL INTERPRETATION AND INTERWAR PEACE MOVEMENTS 293and why events happened, attempted to draw out points at which illogical and/or incoherent argu-
ments about peace movements had been made by others and investigate them anew, and used
evidence for constructing both a new narrative of peace movement influence and a critique of
dominant narratives of realpolitik. In this chapter I reexamine, first, my nonlinear path of con-
ducting this research, and, second, the practical lessons I learned in doing so about methods of
critical interpretation that, I hope, will be useful to others.
Like many scholars undertaking critical interpretation and narrative (re)construction during
the 1990s, I operated methodologically in a vacuum. My book attempted to flesh out a critical
interpretation of the “hard case” of peace movements: the interwar period. Peace movements
were accused of naivete and of causing appeasement in Britain and isolationism in the United
States. I wanted to see if an alternative construction of peace movements’ actions and meaning
was possible.
To research this topic, I knew I had to (and wanted to) examine a variety of archives, but I
had not been trained in archival research. I was contesting mono-causal argumentation, but I
still needed to demonstrate influence empirically. I was running headlong into major issues in
the philosophy of science, including whether researchers can ever obtain sufficient evidence
for our knowledge claims and, if so, what constitutes sufficient evidence, as well as problems
of interpretation (addressed below), but it was some time before I related the substantive con-
cerns I had about peace movements and the interwar period to philosophical issues of evidence
and interpretation.
One thing I did know was that in undertaking such a project, I was adopting a critical stance
toward dominant narratives, or meta-narratives. I knew from being both an activist in peace move-
ments and such “social justice” causes as hunger and homelessness and a graduate student in New
York City during the 1980s that there existed a double standard for what types of research and
related activities could be considered “objective,” and this led me to question the possibility of
scholarly neutrality early on and gravitate toward theories that challenged facile claims of objec-
tivity in the social sciences. For example, a number of prominent IR faculty of the time had
consulted for the U.S. national security establishment (the CIA, State Department, etc.), which, as
long as they continued to publish, appeared to add luster and gravitas to their curriculum vitas.
However, my experience appeared to be different, since I would be questioned later about whether
my activism in peace movements had compromised my objectivity. Thus, early on in my work, I
began to question not only whether and how a more peaceful world could be constructed, but also
how it was that the field of IR privileged some paths and denigrated others. Several scholars have
now mined this subject more thoroughly than I can in this chapter (see esp. Oren 2003 and Tickner
2001), but it is worth mentioning here in the context of what led me to question the authoritative
claims of the field of IR in the 1980s. I (and many others) reacted skeptically to the cold war
security theories and nuclear weapons doctrines upon which much of 1980s IR was based. They
simply seemed illogical. It was not a huge step to see gaps in the logic of the literature on the
interwar period as puzzling and worthy of further inquiry.
I recite my own narrative to make the point that the “critical” part of critical interpretation
generally entails a process of questioning, critiquing, and challenging established theories, con-
cepts, and claims of popular and scholarly “truth.” It means, in other words, not taking the teach-
ings of scholarly, official, or popular hegemonies at face value. All researchers interpret, but to
interpret critically indicates that we question the assumptions underlying material that is already
interpreted, especially when such assumptions ground claims by powerful entities that people
should engage in some particular actions and beliefs and not in others. In my case, both IR theo-
rists and officials of powerful governments made mutually reinforcing claims about the role of