Forbidden fruit : counterfactuals and international relations / Richard Ned Lebow.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Lebow, Richard Ned.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

International relations--Research.

International relations.

World politics--Research.

World politics.

Cold War.

Imaginary histories.

Counterfactuals (Logic).

Physical Description:

1 online resource (345 p.)

Edition:

Course Book

Place of Publication:

Princeton : Princeton University Press, c2010.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

Could World War I have been averted if Franz Ferdinand and his wife hadn't been murdered by Serbian nationalists in 1914? What if Ronald Reagan had been killed by Hinckley's bullet? Would the Cold War have ended as it did? In Forbidden Fruit, Richard Ned Lebow develops protocols for conducting robust counterfactual thought experiments and uses them to probe the causes and contingency of transformative international developments like World War I and the end of the Cold War. He uses experiments, surveys, and a short story to explore why policymakers, historians, and international relations scholars are so resistant to the contingency and indeterminism inherent in open-ended, nonlinear systems. Most controversially, Lebow argues that the difference between counterfactual and so-called factual arguments is misleading, as both can be evidence-rich and logically persuasive. A must-read for social scientists, Forbidden Fruit also examines the binary between fact and fiction and the use of counterfactuals in fictional works like Philip Roth's The Plot Against America to understand complex causation and its implications for who we are and what we think makes the social world work.

Contents:

Frontmatter

Contents

Acknowledgments

PART ONE

CHAPTER ONE. Making Sense of the World

CHAPTER TWO. Counterfactual Thought Experiments

PART TWO

Chapter Three. Franz Ferdinand Found Alive: World War I Unnecessary

Chapter Four. Leadership and the End of the Cold War: Did It Have to End This Way?

PART THREE

CHAPTER FIVE. Scholars and Causation 1

CHAPTER SIX. Scholars and Causation 2

CHAPTER EIGHT. Heil to the Chief: Sinclair Lewis, Philip Roth, and Fascism

Conclusions

Notes

Index

Notes:

Description based upon print version of record.

Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (publisher's Web site, viewed 08. Jul 2019)

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

9786612936272

9786612458149

9781282458147

1282458140

9781282936270

1282936271

9781400835126

1400835127

OCLC:

647874719