The alt fails and they link to all their Ks of positivism too.

Similarly, this deconstructionist framework provides constructivist FSS authors with a basis for their claims about the contrast between feminist and scientific methods. These claims concern a wide range of issues.7 The most important of these for this chapter, however, is the fact that constructivists frequently maintain that feminist methods enjoin researchers to engage with the contextual (or ‘relative’) nature of lived experience, meaning, and truth (e.g. Cohn 2013; Moser and Clark 2001; Sharoni 2001; Wibben 2011, 2016); or, in other words, they have claimed that their idiographic focus provides a corrective against the (neo-)positivist focus on developing objective, (quasi-) nomothetic generalisations/identifying causal laws. Wibben, for instance, suggests that decontextualisation ‘is central to [scientific] approaches striving for objectivity by presenting only what is seen or perceived – without comment or interpretation’ (2011, p. 19). In fact, she approvingly quotes Nancy J. Hirschmann’s claim that ‘[c]ontext is what makes meaning possible’ and ‘meaning makes reality’ (ibid., p. 27). Such claims are frequently accompanied by radical efforts to counter decontextualised, a-social/under-socialised, liberal understandings of human beings. As Natasha Marhia argues, liberal humanism portrays human beings as ‘stable, bounded subject[s]’ and ‘autonomous, rational chooser[s]’ (2013, p. 26). In contrast, constructivist authors claim that this portrayal (1) has been ‘extrapolated from the highly individualistic competitive behavior of Western men in the marketplace’ (Tickner 2005, p. 2177), (2) obscures ‘the matrices of power through which individuals become socially differentiated’ (Marhia 2013, p. 19), and (3) fails to account for how these differentiations ‘can function in exclusionary ways’ (ibid., p. 22). Hence, liberal humanism is understood as a framework that is unable to account for the fact that an individual’s security is ‘to a large extent a function of their social situatedness, their location in a web of interpersonal and social relationships […] and intersecting fields of discourse’ (ibid.).

In summary, constructivists FSS authors conceive of modernist (philosophy of) science as a text or discourse that is complicit in the reproduction of gendered prejudices, biases, and injustices. As a result, they have become increasingly sceptical of the idea that ‘we can locate anything morally and politically worth redeeming or reforming in the scientific world view, its underlying epistemology, or the practices it legitimates’ (Harding in Wibben 2011, p. 18). Importantly, this stance departs from humanist critiques of science, as it rejects their claim that ‘the natural and human sciences are fundamentally different’ (ibid., p. 32). Wibben’s narrative approach, for instance, suggests that one of the main errors of humanism is the fact that it tries to ‘redefine rather than dissolve Enlightenment dualisms’ (ibid.). Instead, constructivists propose what we might term an anti-dualistic universalisation of hermeneutics that ‘takes the text (or discourse) as its unit of analysis’ (Norris in Gentry 2016, p. 25). In contrast with the scientific emphasis on facts and their verification and/or falsification this approach endeavours to examine the political effects of ‘adopting one mode of representation over another’ (Milliken in ibid.). This aim is, of course, characteristic of significant parts of the broader constructivist literature as well. Indeed, constructivist FSS – in its disavowals of mainstream/scientific methods, dualistic thought, essentialism, foundationalism, modernist/liberal humanism, etc. – has self-evidently mirrored the philosophico-methodological orientation that is now generally associated with the cultural turn.

Theory/practice inconsistencies: constructivist FSS as a compromise formation

This section will argue that the ‘thick’ textualism which constructivist FSS authors favour results in what critical realists – echoing Freud – refer to as a compromise formation. This concept refers to situations in which ‘a falsity in theory [is] held in tension with a truth in practice’ (Bhaskar in Hartwig 2009, p. xxx) and – as a result – it encompasses a concern with theory/praxis inconsistencies.

The first – and most fundamental – of these inconsistencies results from the abovementioned claim that there is nothing in the scientific worldview that is worth redeeming or reforming. Specifically, it concerns the contradictions that result when constructivist authors’ theoretical understanding of science is contrasted with their practical activities. Like virtually everyone in the (post-) modern world, after all, the lives of these authors are utterly dependent on and completely intertwined with scientific knowledge that has accumulated over the centuries. When they engage in field research, for instance, constructivists are likely to be dependent on the propulsion systems of aircraft, the internalcombustion engines of motor vehicles, and the radio frequencies that link mobile/cell phones. Further to this, it is also worth drawing attention to the fact that the feminist cause to which constructivist FSS authors subscribe has, of course, consistently sought to ensure that women have access to safe, effective, and affordable healthcare, especially sexual and reproductive services. To the extent that these authors subscribe to such initiatives, however, their concurrent commitment to the idea that (medical) science is inherently and unavoidably masculinist, androcentric, or anti-feminist is suffused with theory/praxis inconsistencies; in fact, because their work both rejects and presupposes a scientific worldview at the same time it provides FSS with an incoherent amalgam or ‘ensemble’ (Bhaskar et al. 2018, p. 59) of competing philosophical and methodological positions.

The same applies to other aspects of the constructivist consensus as well. In particular, it applies to its abovementioned universalisation of hermeneutics. This stance is reminiscent of Ludwig Wittgenstein’s claim that truth is an immanent feature of particular ‘language games’ or ‘forms of life’ (2009 [1953]) and effectively scuppers metaphysical considerations. The work of constructivist FSS authors has, likely for this reason, stopped short of affirming the reality of non- or extra-discursive ‘stuff’. While these authors may well consider this to be among its merits, it deserves emphasis that, as a result, the threat of theory/ praxis inconsistencies again looms large.

This is the case because many of these authors have – in practice – continued to base their claims on scientific research. As most constructivists FSS authors have subscribed to the idea that security should be conceived of in broad terms, for instance, they have commonly understood climate change as contributing to insecurity (e.g. Tickner and Sjoberg 2010, p. 203). To the extent that they have accepted scientific evidence about climate change, however, this contradicts their reduction of science to a masculinist, androcentric, or anti-feminist text. Indeed, their concurrent commitment to a negative theoretical view and a positive practical view of science results in further theory/praxis inconsistencies. These are epitomised by a claim in the work of Nicole Detraz, who – in a critique of state-centric approaches to environmental security – suggests that, ‘[r]ather than assume that the presence of threats is [an] objective fact, a feminist environmental security discourse’ should understand these ‘as rooted in perception’ (2017, p. 207). Our understanding of climate change has arguably improved, however, exactly because scientists have transcended perception; that is to say, we now have greater knowledge of this phenomenon because scientists have developed better accounts of the broader natural world as it is, independent of our opinions, wishes, discursive constructions, etc. In fact, climate change provides us with both a pertinent illustration and a dark omen of the fact that reality has a habit of biting back. Detraz’s claims, instead, presuppose and contradict a scientific worldview at the same time. We may infer, therefore, that the analytical framework which she urges us to adopt represses our awareness of this in favour of a compromise formation that – because it encourages us to analyse perceptions of climate change rather than its reality – is acutely anthropocentric in nature. What is repressed, however, inevitably resurfaces (‘bites back’) as a theory/praxis inconsistency.8

To the extent that constructivist FSS authors subscribe to the idea that climate change is both real and a real problem, however, an additional issue arises as well. Indeed, more generally, this issue permeates any type of theory that seeks to change the world. Any such theory will require, of course, a robust account of agency. As constructivists seek to radically counter modernist/liberal understandings of human beings, however, they are likely to encounter significant difficulties in sustaining such an account. Specifically, they are likely to encounter exactly the same difficulties that post-structuralists in the broader feminist and gender studies literatures have already experienced. As Sue Clegg notes, ‘[t]he relationship between post-structuralism and feminism has always been complex’ and ‘[t]ensions over the problem of agency and the grounds of political activism have surfaced at many points’ (2006, p. 312). This is the case, she suggests, because poststructuralism contains ‘an ontological claim for the primacy of the discursive’ (ibid., p. 314). As contemporary feminists have commonly drawn on the works of Michel Foucault and Jacques Derrida, for instance, agency ‘is always having to be shoehorned […] into theories whose impetus and genealogy are profoundly antihumanist’ (ibid., p. 315).9 The ‘death of the subject’ (Heartfield 2002) that poststructuralism conjures therefore ‘sits uneasily with feminism as an emancipatory project’ (Clegg 2006, p. 313). In fact, the theoretical resources that are required to ground a robust account of agency – and hence (in)justice – are simply lacking from this approach. Throughout the broader feminist movement, however, the need for such an account has been clearly recognised. As Clegg stresses, ‘[t]he emancipatory impulse of feminism, and all radical projects, depends on recognising the possibility that […] we can do something to change the conditions which continue to generate profound injustices and inequalities’ (ibid., p. 323).

While constructivist FSS authors therefore lament the de-agentialising effects of science, the theoretical orientation on which their work commonly draws does not provide us with the resources that are required to overcome this problem. In fact, more forcibly, post-structuralist theory actively impedes the development of such resources. An alternative framework is therefore urgently required, and the second half of this chapter will contend that such a framework is provided by critical realist philosophy. This is of importance, however, for reasons that exceed the normative aims of feminism; in particular, these include the fact that a robust account of agency is required for its analytical purposes as well. This point has repeatedly been made by constructivist FSS authors (e.g. Gentry and Sjoberg 2007, 2015; Moser and Clark 2001) but it has, so far, remained without an explicit philosophical basis. As a result, the FSS literature has exhibited all the ‘symptoms’ of a compromise formation, especially its tendency to result in persistent theory/praxis inconsistencies. In turn, the prevalence of such inconsistencies illustrates that the philosophical and methodological beliefs that proponents of constructivism hold are inadequate for the purpose of grounding FSS as a theoretico-practical project.

Interdisciplinary integration: constructivist FSS and the fragmentation of knowledge

Why is constructivism ill-suited to grounding interdisciplinary research? To provide an answer to this question it will be necessary to begin this section by providing an outline of the main differences between interdisciplinarity and (1) intra-disciplinarity, (2) disciplinary reductionism, (3) multi-disciplinarity, 10 and (4) anti-disciplinarity. 11 These categories have, after all, been used in competing/incompatible ways throughout a wide range of disparate intellectual and institutional contexts. As space is limited, this section will not attempt to reconcile or adjudicate between these uses; rather, it will simply define or understand the above categories to mean the following:

Intra-disciplinarity: research which takes place within a single discipline, studies the subjects/answers the questions/addresses the kinds of problems that are characteristic of this discipline, and uses the tools/methods/modes of analysis that are familiar to or prevalent within it.

Disciplinary reductionism: a philosophical (primarily ontological) position that claims that the subject matter of one discipline is ultimately reducible to the subject matter of another discipline (e.g. psychological entities/processes are nothing but biological entities/processes, biological entities/processes are nothing but chemical entities/processes, etc.).

Multi-disciplinarity: a philosophical and methodological position that claims that interaction and communication between researchers with contrasting disciplinary backgrounds should be promoted to study a subject/answer a question/address a problem. While numerous areas of study are thus provided with ‘a seat at the table’ by multi-disciplinarity, it remains largely additive, differentiated, and non-integrative in nature because of its focus on multiplicity/heterogeneity.

Anti-disciplinarity: a philosophical and methodological position that claims that researchers should transcend all disciplinary distinctions to study a subject/ answer a question/address a problem. Research is understood as a unified endeavour and disciplinary boundaries are argued to be mere conventions or artificial/unwarranted/arbitrary/damaging impositions. In contrast with multidisciplinarity, anti-disciplinarity is therefore undifferentiated and holistic.

How does interdisciplinarity differ from or relate to these categories? It is useful to begin the process of answering this question by highlighting that a number of them can be organised along a continuum, ranging from completely fragmented on the one hand, to fully holistic on the other. In particular, a systematic commitment to intra-disciplinarity would result in complete fragmentation, whereas multi-disciplinarity allows for interaction and communication between different types of researchers, and anti-disciplinarity eliminates disciplinary distinctions and boundaries altogether. From the critical realist perspective that is advanced throughout this chapter, interdisciplinarity should be understood as a philosophico-methodological position that occupies a space along this continuum that is located in-between multi-disciplinarity and antidisciplinarity; more specifically, it occupies a space that does not deny the need for and uses of disciplinary differentiation/specialisation and – simultaneously – allows for the (re)integration of differentiated/specialised knowledge claims. It is because interdisciplinarity is necessarily integrative, then, that it amounts to more than multi-disciplinary interaction and communication among researchers, and it is because it necessarily accepts (or even welcomes) the need for and uses of disciplinary differentiation/specialisation that it amounts to less than anti-disciplinarity.

In contrast, interdisciplinarity differs from/relates to disciplinary reductionism in a contingent fashion. While it does not deny the need for and uses of disciplinary differentiation/specialisation, after all, it does not follow from this that it also provides a priori support for (or fetishises) the existence of every and any kind of discipline. Rather, whether or not the existence of a discipline is warranted is a question that – from a critical realist perspective – can only be answered in an a posteriori fashion because it is dependent on the provision of a robust rationale. When such a rationale cannot be provided, therefore, interdisciplinarity is compatible with the specific reduction in question. Contrariwise, it is incompatible with a generalised commitment to such reductions as this produces a deflationary spiral that results in anti-disciplinarity.

If some light has been shed both on the concept of interdisciplinarity itself and the ways in which it differs from and relates to contrasting/competing notions, however, we are now in a position to return to the question that was posed at the start of this section; that is to say, we can now ask why it is that constructivist FSS is ill-suited to grounding interdisciplinary research? As discussed above, my answer to this question will focus on (1) the onedimensional, textualist focus on discourse/meaning that this approach has adopted, (2) its inability to sustain an account of agency, (3) its anthropocentrism, and (4) its unidirectional understanding of causality.

With regard to the first of these issues, the ‘thick’ constructivist stance that many prominent FSS authors have adopted has resulted in seemingly allencompassing forms of textualist monism that are fundamentally incompatible with interdisciplinary research; if the study of being is ultimately reducible to the study of texts/discourses, after all, both disciplinary distinctions themselves and the idea that interdisciplinary (re)integration is required are lacking in any kind of ontological warrant. In fact, from a consistent monist perspective, FSS should be a fully anti-disciplinary endeavour. As Holland has noted (in a different context), if it is true that reality/being is undifferentiated ‘it is unclear why science should be differentiated and why scientific integration is desirable’ (2013, p. 47, emphasis mine). In terms of its inability to ground interdisciplinary research, however, this textualist monism is not altogether dissimilar to the physicalist monism that is favoured by some positivist authors. The proponents of physicalism have argued, after all, that a fully developed form of science would be able to reduce all phenomena – whether these are conventionally described as ‘biological’, ‘psychological’, ‘social’, or whatever – to one set of basic causal laws (grounding a unified ‘theory of everything’) and entities (generally understood as ‘fundamental’ or ‘elementary’ particles). Such claims are incompatible with interdisciplinarity because, if it is true that all forms of being are ultimately reducible to a set of basic laws and entities, disciplinary distinctions appear – once again – to lack any ontological justification. Indeed, to the extent that positivism is physicalist, the internal logic of this onedimensional approach suggests – absurdly – that biologists, psychologists, sociologists, etc. should simply retrain as physicists. An analogous criticism applies, however, to the constructivist focus on discourse/meaning; rather than retraining as physicists, this approach suggests – equally absurdly – that researchers of various kinds should retrain as (critical) discourse analysts.

In light of such criticisms, it deserves emphasis that some constructivist authors have countered that their work (1) does not involve a textualist monism at all, and (2) does not deny the reality of non-/extra-discursive forms of being either. These claims – along with their limitations – can be helpfully illustrated by sketching the outlines of an on-going debate within both FSS itself and the broader feminist and gender-studies literatures.

On one side of this debate are proponents of the view that biology matters in ways that are irreducible to its sociocultural construction. This perspective depends on the second wave feminist distinction between sex and gender, as well as on its attendant notion of sex/gender systems. On the other side are proponents of third wave feminism who have either expressed significant scepticism about or wholly rejected the idea that sex has a reality which is irreducible in this manner.12 The FSS literature – including its influential constructivist wing – is characterised by significant equivocation about this issue.13 Nonetheless, third wave feminist thought has clearly made its presence felt. Christine Sylvester (2002), for instance, systematically refers to ‘people called women’ rather than simply ‘women’, while Melanie Richter-Montpetit maintains that feminists should transcend ‘analytics such as male/female, victim/perpetrator, war/peace, national/international, and power/resistance’ (2016, p. 96). Importantly, analyses such as these do not deny the reality and material existence of bodies as such; however, they have resulted in a pronounced tendency to conceive of sex not as a cause but as an effect. As Lena Gunnarsson notes in a critique of Judith Butler’s work, ‘it is in the regulatory norms of sex that all causality and structure is located, whereas the bodily and material are understood mainly as effects’ (2014, p. 27; see also Hull 2006, pp. 57–63).14 While this not-wholeheartedly-textualist version of constructivism therefore does not – strictly-speaking – adopt a monist ontological position, its one-dimensional emphasis on socialisation/enculturation does result in a unidirectional understanding of causality. Such an understanding is, however, incompatible with interdisciplinary research as well; to the extent that interdisciplinarity involves both disciplinary differentiation/specialisation and the (re)integration of differentiated/specialised knowledge claims into multidirectional explanations, after all, even this toned-down version of constructivism remains at odds with it.

This is of significant importance as FSS is in clear need of integrated, interdisciplinary accounts of the events/phenomena that it studies. Its accounts of SGBV, for instance, are both incoherent and unintelligible without the ability to draw on knowledge claims from a range of disciplines, especially biology, psychology, and the sociocultural sciences. What, for instance, is rape without (1) human corporeality (as understood by biologists), (2) agency/intentionality/ trauma/etc. (as understood by psychologists), and (3) the breaking of societal rules/norms by coercively transforming sociocultural relationships (as understood by sociocultural scientists)? All three of these disciplines – or rather, the causal powers/mechanisms that they study – must arguably be integrated if we are to provide well-rounded accounts of this phenomenon. Such accounts are ruled out, however, if FSS authors adopt a constructivist approach, as (1) references to corporeality become inadmissible when, instead of referring to women and men, we are asked to refer to ‘people called women [and men]’ (Sylvester 2002), and (2) references to agency must be shoehorned into accounts that are otherwise anti-humanist in orientation.

The adoption of a constructivist approach therefore has very significant – and adverse – consequences. These become especially apparent when we consider its inability to sustain an account of agency. There are few phenomena that are of concern to FSS, after all, that would remain intelligible without it having resort to the distinction between behaviour and intentional behaviour. The targeting of women as part of ‘ethnic cleansing’ (e.g. Nikolic-Ristanovic 1998), for instance, is unintelligible without this, and – troublingly – claims about both the injustice that is done to the survivors or victims and the moral responsibility of the perpetrators collapse. Moreover, the consequences of eliminating human corporeality from our analyses are clearly discernible in the work of FSS authors like Christine Sylvester and Laura J. Shepherd. The former asserts, for instance, that ‘men and women are [just] the stories that have been told about “men” and “women”’ (1994, 4), while the latter quotes Sharon Marcus’ claim that ‘rape is a question of language, interpretation and subjectivity’ (2007, p. 248). Importantly, such accounts should play a significant role in interdisciplinary research on this topic. However, an approach that focuses solely on language and interpretation is also radically impoverished; not only does this focus provide us with a very narrow understanding of the sociocultural realm (as composed exclusively of language and its subjective interpretation) and seem to suggest that survivors could just choose to reinterpret or re-describe what happened to them, after all, it also elides human corporeality.

Overall, then, it might be concluded that constructivism tends towards a unidirectional understanding of causality. It therefore provides the FSS subfield with an ‘over-socialised’ analytical framework. In so doing, however, its philosophico-methodological logic is – once again – not all that different from the logic of (neo-)positivism. Specifically, the (quasi-)nomothetic understanding of causality that (neo-)positivists adopt, like the constructivist emphasis on socialisation/enculturation, tends towards unidirectionality. If we conceive of causality in terms of the universal laws that govern empirical events, after all, the act of granting something causal power suggests that it will straightforwardly determine outcomes. If genetic factors are conceived of as causal in bringing about SGBV, for instance, (neo-)positivism results in (or at least facilitates) an essentialist or biological determinist account of these factors as being its sole determinants.