In 1960, Martin Wight published a learned essay provocatively entitled ‘Why is there no international theory’? 1960 was also the year I began my studies of international relations and took adolescent delight in Hans Morgenthau's realist theory of international politics. Wight was spared the need to indicate what assumptions international theory might be predicated upon, what it would or could be about, what form (or forms) it might take, what value it might have. One might suspect, as I did when I read Wight's essay a few years later, that he was rejecting the onslaught of realist theory from across the Atlantic and, even more, claims on behalf of a science of international politics, but that he was doing so indirectly, with characteristic English circumspection and perhaps a whiff of snobbery.

What Wight did say about international theory bears recalling: political theory, international law, and diplomatic history leave no space for ‘speculation about the society of states, or the family or nations, or the international community’ and, by implication, obviate any need for it. I would say instead:

• • As informed speculation, international theory long flourished at the margins of political theory, international law and diplomatic history.

• • Elevated to paradigms, liberalism and realism persist on the margins of law and history.

• • A loose confederation of critical, feminist, constructivist, poststructuralist and postcolonial scholars has migrated from the margins of liberalism and realism to the margins of social and political theory, which already occupy the margins of philosophy.

• • The prestige of science and the demands of the scientific method position quite a few students of international relations in the margins of economics and the so-called natural sciences.

• • A great many people discuss policy issues, global developments, regional concerns, and preferred futures with little concern for fields of study and their theories.

In short, there is no theory to orient the study of international relations; ‘the international’ is a sentimental allusion to an undisciplined subject matter. There is, however, an abundance of theorizing at the margins. Theories are linked propositions about the world and its workings; theorizing is linguistically mediated activity falling somewhere, anywhere, between informed speculation and formal stipulation.