Making Things International 2: Cataylsts and Reactions TOC (original) (raw)
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Materialism in International Politics
Materialism, defined by the core claim that ‘everything that exists is material, or is the product of material entities’, is now flourishing across the discipline. IR is now populated by a range of materialist influenced perspectives, including older materialisms, such as republican-security materialism or Marxist historical materialism, and newer variants of materialist thought, such as Actor-Network Theory, New Materialism, and Posthumanism. Now the core task for students of international politics is not to simply emphasize the importance of materiality; this much is accepted as an obligation for any serious account of world affairs. It is, rather, to examine the different concepts of materiality that exist in IR and understand how the claim that ‘everything that exists is material’ plays out in substantive analytical and normative claims. This requires a detailed investigation of the meaning of materiality in International Relations.
Making International Things: Designing World Politics Differently
Global Studies Quarterly, 2023
Can we make international things—maps, algorithms, museums, visualizations, computer games, virtual reality tools? Objects that criss-cross global space, exert political influence, and produce novel forms of knowledge? This article, and the special issue it introduces, suggests that scholars of international relations can and should engage in the task of making concrete material, aesthetic, and technological objects that exceed the epistemic, logocentric, or textual. It joins a growing conversation focused on the potential of expanding the praxis of the social sciences into multimodal formats of design, craft, and making. In this article, we explore the intellectual, social, and political stakes of beginning to make international things, unpack the disciplinary reticence to engage in this task, and the potential dangers it entails. Most importantly, we suggest five central benefits moving in this direction holds: (i) generating a future-oriented social science; (ii) cultivating an “atmospheric” social science faithful to new materialist, feminist, and practice theories; (ii) embracing a radical collaborationist ethos more-suited to the demands of the day; (iv) investing us in sociopolitically committed scientific praxis; and (v) inaugurating a radically new disciplinary architecture of scholarly praxis.
A materialist theory of international politics
This article makes a contribution to the third wave of discussions on capitalist imperialism which arose at the beginning of this century. Its aim is to show that Marxism possesses the theoretical tools to become a comprehensive theory of International Relations (IR). While remaining rooted in structural and material forces, the theoretical speculation (change) presented here demonstrates that Marxism can move beyond economic determinism and incorporate elements of IR's political spatiality, such as geopolitical concerns and identity. The article first provides an update on the evolution of the world order since the 2008 global financial crisis, describing the return of geopolitics and national identity. Then I move on to develop a Marxist theory of IR along three analytical levels. The first level identifies the uneven global geography of capitalism as the main pressure constraining state managers to adopt expansionist solutions in order to survive the challenges posed by unrestrained flows of capital. The second level of analysis reasserts the importance of the private economic pressures felt by states, but goes beyond the economic determinism of the classical Marxist theory of imperialism in highlighting the role of political elites in translating these pressures according to their own geopolitical views. The third level of analysis departs from the canonical Marxist understanding of social space. Drawing on Lefebvre's and others' insights on human beings relations with nature, it attempts to build a bridge between the spatiality of Marxism and that of mainstream theories of IR such as realism, classical geopolitics and constructivism.
Leiden Journal of International Law , 2021
This article sets out the major tenets of new materialism, and maps out its implications for international law. It considers what new materialism might offer for those of us working within international law in the way of new insights, resources, practices or politics. It first sets the contours of new materialism within the broader material turn. It then elaborates * Associate Professor, Faculty of Law, University of Technology Sydney. I acknowledge the Gadigal people of the Eora Nation, upon whose lands and waters this work was researched and written. I pay my respects to their Elders past, present and emerging. I acknowledge them as the Owners of Country and the Holders of Knowledge for this place, whose sovereignty was never ceded. I am grateful to the participants at the ILSRG Research Symposium at La Trobe University in December 2019 for their constructive discussions and ideas. Thanks are also due to Christine Schwöbel-Patel for careful reading and critical discussion throughout the writing process. Two anonymous reviewers engaged deeply with the piece, and their constructive reviews were greatly appreciated. Any errors remain my own.
The meaning of materiality: reconsidering the materialism of Gramscian IR
Gramsican approaches in International Relations (IR) have sought to outline the relationship between ideas and material forces in the construction of world order. Scholars working within this broad school have sought to emphasise that ideas are material forces, and must be considered as concrete historical structures (Cox, 1987) central to the establishment of particular historical and hegemonic blocs. This literature has primarily focused on the discursive construction of hegemony by international elites and the impact this has on political practices. While these insights are important in understanding the construction of world order, it is necessary to extend them to include the creation of actual physical structures – that is, it is vital to link the ideational aspects of hegemony with actual material processes. I will argue that a consideration of the role of technology provides an ideal vehicle for this process, building on the preliminary work of Bieler and Morton in this regard (2008). Technological structures are the product of particular cultural values and embed these cultural values within their very structure. Physical material factors thereby express ideational values constructed by specific social forces. Social practices are thus not only a function of the dominance of certain ideological formations, but also the product of the material environment itself and the manner in which the human metabolism with nature must function through these physical constructions. Daniel McCarthy is currently completing a PhD at the Department of International Politics, Aberystwyth University, funded by the ESRC. His research, linking together science and technology studies, historical materialism, and sociological theories of power, explores the nature of information technology as a form of institutional power in international politics, through an examination of the Internet in American foreign policy. Daniel can be contacted at: {ddm05@aber.ac.uk}. The question of the ontological primacy of ideas or materiality has occupied a central role in theoretical debates in International Relations (IR) for the past 30 years. Whether in disputes over the status of ideas within research paradigms, 1 the nature of the structure-agency problem, 2 or any number of other controversies, * This article was first presented at the British International Studies Association (BISA) Conference, 17 December 2008. I would like to thank Ian Bruff, Lisa Denney, Matthew Fluck, Lene Hansen, Columba Peoples and James Perry for their helpful comments.