The real world begins here, though the contents page of this book contains no reference to an actual place or event in international history. But the reader should not be thereby misled into thinking that this is one of those books about something called ‘theory’ which is removed from what is usually understood to be the ‘real’ world. This book, we would argue, is fundamentally concerned with places like Bosnia and Rwanda, and with events such as world wars and also with the prospects for world politics in the twenty-first century. Even if – in these pages – these issues are mentioned only briefly, they are what we think the discipline is about. What we think about these events and possibilities, and what we think we can do about them, depends in a fundamental sense on how we think about them. In short, our thinking about the ‘real’ world, and hence our practices, is directly related to our theories. So, as people interested in and concerned about the real world, we must be interested in and concerned about theory: What are the legacies of past theories? Whose facts have been most important in shaping our ideas? Whose voices are overlooked? What can we know and how can we know it? Where is theory going? Who are we? The real world is constituted by the dominant answers to these and other theoretical questions.

Part I, Debates, begins with a chapter by Steve Smith which attempts to set the context for the rest of the volume. This chapter was shaped by the discussions of central concerns at the conference and, in particular, the problems surrounding the concept of positivism.