Theorizing Agency in Hobbes's Wake: The Rational Actor, the Self, or the Speaking Subject? (original) (raw)
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International Organization, vol. 67, 2. pp.287-316
The rationalist-constructivist divide that runs through the discipline of International Relations (IR) revolves around two figures of agency, the rational actor and the constructivist “self.” In this article I examine the models of agency that implicitly or explicitly underpin the study of international politics. I show how both notions of the rational actor and the constructivist self have remained wedded to individualist understandings of agency that were first incarnated in the discipline's self-understandings by Hobbes's natural individual. Despite its turn to social theory, this persistent individualism has hampered constructivism's ability to appraise the ways in which the actors and structures of international politics mutually constitute one another “all the way down.” My purpose is to lay the foundations for a nonindividualist, adequately relational, social theory of international politics. To this end I propose a third model of agency, Lacan's split speaking subject. Through a Lacanian reading of the Leviathan, I show how the speaking subject has in fact laid buried away in the discipline's Hobbesian legacy all along
Beyond Individualism: Agency and Responsibility in International Relations
The book is a study of the concepts of agency and responsibility, responding to the lack of explicit consideration of these notions in contemporary international political theory (IPT). In it, I develop an original theoretical viewpoint by critically analysing assumptions about agency and responsibility within mainstream IPT, and supplementing my analysis with insights from select literature within the fields of philosophy, sociology and social psychology. The objective of the book is to provide a more nuanced account of agency and responsibility in the international sphere, and to think through the implications of such an account for ongoing theorising and practice. The core argument I advance is that the individualist conceptions of agency and responsibility inherent in liberal and cosmopolitan liberal thought are highly problematic, serve political purposes which are often unacknowledged, and have led to the establishment of an international institutional regime which is limited in the kind of justice it can bring to international affairs. I outline alternative views of agency and responsibility – agency as sociality and a social practice model of responsibility – which both better describe the way we talk about and experience our social lives, and offer significant possibilities to broaden the scope of international justice and, through this, enable human flourishing.
Agency and the New Materialist Turn in International Relations
The impact of the technosocial is such, that this New Materialist Turn inevitably engages in contemporary political contentions and resistance movements by producing a new idiom with which to understand the globally distributed and locally diverse calls for democracy, reform or radical alternatives to globalized neoliberal capitalism. Key issues with regard to the technosocial include the decentralization of the political accompanied by increased demands from the margins and periphery of the world system as well as those excluded from its benefits; the proliferation of state and corporate networks permeating the private and the public spheres indiscriminately and posing serious ethical questions about individual privacy and ubiquitous surveillance; and the conflict and deliberations occurring in a global digital public sphere, where ethico-political values and ideologies are debated in relation to global events in millions of posts, links and likes fragmented discourses in the in the hybrid-mediated public sphere. To address this challenge, we develop a theoretical vocabulary and framework around the concept of agency in order to broaden its ontological underpinnings. Our encounter between new materialist theory and assemblage theory, however, draws novel distinctions among forms of agency and types of agents rather than along conventional binaries such as matter and information, human and non-human, organic and inorganic, or even hierarchical and rhizomatic. Throughout this nuanced approach to agency, we discuss with examples how this framework can be employed to understand political agency in contemporary resistance movements, enabled, on the one hand, by an array of conventionally recognized affective, ideological and discursive forces, and on the other, by access to novel and dynamic networked digital technologies that enable the glocalization of local conflicts, as well as associations and identifications unencumbered by geopolitical settings.
Hobbes and International Relations
2010
This essay examines the evidence for the argument that Hobbes sees international relations as a global state of nature, and why he didn’t recommend the creation of a global government, before finally examining various organisations which could claim to be an international leviathan. It will be seen that Hobbes would view today’s international sphere as a state of nature, that establishing a global government is contrary to a state’s survival instinct, and that the United Nations is as close to a global leviathan as human society has achieved.
Thomas Hobbes and International Relations: An assessment
METU Studies in Development, 2008
This article attempts to provide a correction to the exclusive realist interpretations of Thomas Hobbes. It makes the point that Hobbes is not as close to a realist understanding of international relations as it has been prevalently held. Given Hobbes’s conception of man and the state of nature, the formation of Leviathan and the law of nature, it is here argued that Hobbes gives us a perception of international relations which is not always conflictual and comprises the adjustments of conflicting interests, leading to the possibility of alliances and cooperation in international relations.
Popularizing International Politics: Human Agency and the Politics of World Order
2009
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Critical Approaches and the Legacy of the Agent-Structure Debate in International Relations
This article examines the significance of the concept of agency for the project of critical theory as defined by Robert Cox. Even if numerous scholars recognize the importance of agency, very few have managed to set up an agenda that uses this notion in productive ways. I argue that this failure largely stems from the desire to present power as a structural phenomenon. If we see power as embedded in the very structure of society, it becomes difficult to see how social forces can escape the inherent tendencies imposed by structures. For this reason, the issue of social change has continued to elude critical theory making it difficult to open up space for an approach based on agency. Against structural conceptions of power, I present an agent-based conception of power which can serve to contextualize international relations in different terms. By presenting power in terms of practice, I argue, one can better overcome the reifying gaze of positivism.