“Conceptual entrapment”: understanding the researcher-concept relationship in critical International Relations and beyond

Concepts are the building blocks of language and essential to the academic vocation, yet how conceptual work shapes scholars, research processes, and the production of knowledge remains unclear. Critical International Relations has long examined the interplay between researchers and their research objects and has emphasized how researcher positionality raises important theoretical, methodological, and ethical questions. Yet, it has largely overlooked how concepts mediate these dynamics. Similarly, the emerging field of Critical Concept Studies has focused on the politics of concepts but paid limited attention to the implications for researchers themselves. This article addresses these shortcomings by introducing the notion of “conceptual entrapment,” which captures the complex and often constraining relationship between researchers and the concepts they engage. By introducing autoethnography as a method to critically study concepts and foreground scholars’ reflexivity, the article engages my experience with the soft power concept as an example. In so doing, the article reveals how the concept’s contested performances required me to navigate my commitment to critical distance with the realities of academic work. The analysis demonstrates how researchers can inadvertently become “concept entrepreneurs” and enmeshed in the conceptual politics they seek to critique. These findings challenge (idealized) notions of scholarly autonomy, raising important questions about the ethical and practical implications of engaging with concepts in academic and public discourse. They underscore the importance of reflexivity in studying the researcher-concept relationship and contribute to broader debates about the ethics and possibilities of critical scholarship and the politics of knowledge production in International Relations.