Weber recognized that, as social scientists, we always remain “cultural
beings, endowed with the capacity and the will to take a deliberate
attitude towards the world and to lend itsignificance.”^7
We have tried to be as clear and as systematic as possible in our
theoretical and empirical arguments. This work, however, like any other
work in the social sciences, is not value-free. It is anchored in our own
perspective, as political scientists informed by constructivism and as
citizens of a small French-speaking society of North America. In under-
lining the ubiquity of the left–right division, the book seeks to offer a
better and more relevant interpretation of globalization, which connects
the domestic and international politics of economic development and
social justice. Its findings are not intended to be authoritative, purely
neutral, or definitive. In the social sciences, argues Charles Lindblom in
Usable Knowledge, the best we can hope for, and this is already much, is
to enlighten, to improve our common understanding of the world.^8
The book is unlikely to be received in the same way on the right and
on the left. If the comments we have heard in formal and informal
presentations of this material are representative, readers on the left
will appreciate it more than people on the right. This is hardly sur-
prising, because it is the right that usually claims that the left–right
distinction ispasse ́. Keen to stress the consensual rather than the
conflictual dimensions of social life, and attached to a more “natural
science” view of social inquiry, conservatives are likely to be ill-at-ease
with a book that gives so much importance to the divisions that social
actors and social scientists across the world have constructed around
their divergent conceptions of equality. The left, on the contrary,
usually sees the world as unequal, unable to achieve social justice, and
mired in conflicts. Progressive readers will thus feel more at home with
a book that stresses cleavages and debates. In the social sciences,
explains Canadian political scientist Robert Cox, “theory is always
forsomeone andforsome purpose.”^9 As authors, we do not escape
our categories. In the end, this book is undoubtedly of and for the left.
(^7) Max Weber,The Methodology of the Social Sciences, Glencoe, Free Press, 1949,
8 pp. 58 and 81 (italics as original).
Charles Lindblom,Usable Knowledge: Social Science and Social Problem
Solving, New Haven, Yale University Press, 1979, pp. 72–74.
(^9) Robert W. Cox, “Social Forces, States, and World Orders: Beyond International
Relations Theory,” in Robert W. Cox (with Timothy J. Sinclair),Approaches to
World Order, Cambridge University Press, 1996, p. 87.
Conclusion 235