Reflections on the Big Picture Approach

In this chapter, Buzan sets out his reactions to the idea of ‘big picture’ research in general, and to the rest of the chapters in the book in particular. He opens with some autobiographical reflections, addressing how it was that he came to think and write in this way, which raises unanswerable questions about nature/nurture. The next section reviews what he learned about the big picture from reading this book. The gist of this is that the big picture is bigger than he thought it was – and always will be. The following section considers what he learned from seeing his work as others see it – how it fits into the intellectual space and history of both IR and the neighbouring disciplines around it. In the conclusions he reflects on theoretical abstraction and macro-history as approaches to big picture research, and on the relationship between big picture research and grand narratives.