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A Rhetorical Field Theory: Background, Communication, and Change
Abstract
Develops a rhetorical field theory that conceptualises the relationship between background ideas and foreground communication Distinguishes between two layers of background ideas ( nomos and topoi) that underpin communicative encounters in a field Conceptualises communicative opportunities and moves through which actors change the nomos of a field Illustrates the added value of a rhetorical field theory by inquiring into nomic change in the nuclear-weapons field
A burgeoning literature in International Relations draws on Bourdieu’s theory of social fields to address the question of how actors make and unmake order in world politics. Inquiring into deeply seated background ideas constituting order, this literature often neglects how communication reproduces and (de)contests background ideas. Our article seeks to remedy this shortcoming by outlining a rhetorical field theory. This theory puts background ideas and foreground communication on an equal footing and conceptualises their relationship in detail. We distinguish between two layers of background ideas ( nomos and topoi) and address the crucial question of how nomic change becomes possible. We introduce a typology of nomic change (destabilisation, adaption, disorientation, shift) and conceptualise the interplay of rhetorical opportunities and rhetorical moves that bring about particular types of nomic change. We probe this theoretical framework by analysing the recent nomic change in the nuclear-weapons field. This empirical analysis provides evidence for our theoretical framework.
... This doxa is contested, de-contested and reproduced through field members' foreground communications (Kornprobst and Senn, 2016, p. 301). Communication practices play a 'critical role in the (re)creation of order' within fields, with an actor's foreground communications reproducing the meanings that structure social fields in everyday practice (Kornprobst andSenn, 2016 andMcAdam, 2012). As Mumby and Kuhn (2019, p. 51) have highlighted, it is increasingly accepted that organisations exist 'as a result of the collective and coordinated communication processes of its members'. ...
... This doxa is contested, de-contested and reproduced through field members' foreground communications (Kornprobst and Senn, 2016, p. 301). Communication practices play a 'critical role in the (re)creation of order' within fields, with an actor's foreground communications reproducing the meanings that structure social fields in everyday practice (Kornprobst andSenn, 2016 andMcAdam, 2012). As Mumby and Kuhn (2019, p. 51) have highlighted, it is increasingly accepted that organisations exist 'as a result of the collective and coordinated communication processes of its members'. ...
Purpose
This paper explores how INGOs communicate their activities and achievements. In doing so, the study seeks to increase our understanding of INGOs' accountability practices.
Design/methodology/approach
This paper uses thematic analysis to analyse 90 ‘leaders’ letters' (the letters that many charities include at the beginning of their Annual Reports and Accounts), published by 39 INGOs between 2015 and 2018.
Findings
This paper argues that within the Annual Report letters under consideration, INGOs' accountability practices focus on quantitative, process-driven, output reporting. In doing so, it is the actions and agency of INGOs that are primarily emphasised. INGO constituents are largely excluded from representation. Donors are presented only as contributors of financial capital. Drawing on field theory, the paper argues that this representational practice means INGO constituents are almost irrelevant to INGOs' representational and accountability communication practices.
Originality/value
This paper is indebted to previous important work and, building on such scholarship, seeks to contribute to the ongoing conversation about INGO accountability. While reinforcing some prior knowledge, the findings here also differ in the understanding of how donors are portrayed. The paper extends previous analyses by using field theory to show that the INGO field as considered here is a space in which representations of accountability are based on organisational and transactional factors, and does not value the humanity of INGOs' constituents. This connects to operations of power, between donors, INGOs, and constituents, and reinforces inequitable power within the development system.
... This is a fate also shared by practice-based approaches. They may argue that the practices surrounding state awards have proliferated because they heighten the diplomatic 'capital' of some actors (Kuus, 2015), or because they have become a 'habit' to the practitioners socialized therein (Hopf, 2010), or because they form part of a 'nomos' (Kornprobst and Senn, 2016), or because they are conducive to a sense of 'ontological security' (Mitzen, 2006). Such assumptions, however, merely shift the question to why and how those practices (and not others) increase one's 'symbolic capital', enter a systemic 'habit', constitute a 'nomos', or induce a sense of 'ontological security'. ...
Almost every polity uses state awards as diplomatic tools. Their global spread, however, cannot be explained by dominant theories of International Relations (which focus on military or economic rationales) or of diplomatic practices (which lack criteria for what constitutes a functionally suitable practice). The success of such seemingly non-instrumental tools may be better explained with a combination of Modern Systems Theory with the evolutionary scheme of variation/selection/re-stabilization: the diplomatic system generates a variation of practices, enacts selection through the structural medium of peace, and stabilises the selected variant through legal formalization and global diffusion. Using this framework, this paper finds that state awards found worldwide ubiquity for two reasons: First, they satisfy the diplomatic system's societal function related to peace and power, that is, the foregrounding of peace-and-amity while invisibilizing power-and-enmity. Second, state awards exhibit a high degree of generalizability, meaning that they are so flexible that any state can use them towards any other states for any reasons at any time. This paper carries implications for understanding seemingly trivial, noninstrumental features of diplomacy, and, more generally, for the value of Modern Systems Theory and evolutionary perspectives in International Relations.
... This is a fate also shared by practice-based approaches. They may argue that the practices surrounding state awards have proliferated because they heighten the diplomatic 'capital' of some actors (Kuus, 2015), or because they have become a 'habit' to the practitioners socialized therein (Hopf, 2010), or because they form part of a 'nomos' (Kornprobst and Senn, 2016), or because they are conducive to a sense of 'ontological security' (Mitzen, 2006). Such assumptions, however, merely shift the question to why and how those practices (and not others) increase one's 'symbolic capital', enter a systemic 'habit', constitute a 'nomos', or induce a sense of 'ontological security'. ...
Almost every polity uses state awards as diplomatic tools. Their global spread, however, cannot be explained by dominant theories of International Relations (which focus on military or economic rationales) or of diplomatic practices (which lack criteria for what constitutes a functionally suitable practice). The success of such seemingly non-instrumental tools may be better explained with a combination of Modern Systems Theory with the evolutionary scheme of variation/selection/re-stabilization: the diplomatic system generates a variation of practices, enacts selection through the structural medium of peace, and stabilises the selected variant through legal formalization and global diffusion. Using this framework, this paper finds that state awards found worldwide ubiquity for two reasons: First, they satisfy the diplomatic system’s societal function related to peace and power, that is, the foregrounding of peace-and-amity while invisibilizing power-and-enmity. Second, state awards exhibit a high degree of generalizability, meaning that they are so flexible that any state can use them towards any other states for any reasons at any time. This paper carries implications for understanding seemingly trivial, noninstrumental features of diplomacy, and, more generally, for the value of Modern Systems Theory and evolutionary perspectives in International Relations.
... Between the rhetor and audience, the national media take the mediating position in the legitimisation process (Cronen, 1973;McCombs and Shaw, 1972), and rhetorical theory explains this mediation between the background ideas and foreground communication (Kornprobst and Senn, 2016). Just as media-driven communication links the process to the antecedents and consequence of institutional change (Campbell, 2004), rhetorical institutionalism combines the rhetor's innovation and the audience response through intermediaries. ...
The Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) has attracted support and critique for its legitimacy and potential success. Its opponents see challenges more than prospects because of American inattention and resistance, and its proponents see prospects more than challenges because of the attention from the rest of the world. While both sides use valid reasons for their explicit or implicit views, they focus on the legitimacy by its taken-for-granted status. The BRI project as innovation is at the legitimisation process stage. To address the legitimisation of the BRI project innovation, we use rhetorical theory to analyse the Chinese official report in 2019, the American versus European media response to the BRI project and the US direct response to the BRI in the Indo-Pacific Strategy in 2019. Our exploratory findings show insights into the subjects, industries and regions. Firstly, the American media attention far exceeds the European media attention. Secondly, the American media attention and direct response to the BRI highlight the political issues, and the European media attention highlights economic issues. The Chinese official report mentions European countries, and excludes the USA. Thirdly, it uses Pakistan more frequently than other countries or regions in its achievement report, but the US has not mentioned Pakistan at all in its Indo-Pacific Strategy. Fourthly, the US political logic diverges from the logic of the BRI project, while the European economic logic converges to the logic of the BRI project. Based on these findings, we contribute to the legitimisation process of innovation, rhetorical theory and policy implications in the world.
... As rituals do not necessarily follow conscious planning, but can be enacted habitually in everyday activities, this paper also finds analogies to the 'practice turn'. Adapting this paper to the practice turn's (Bourdieuinspired) terminology, then the system may be seen as the diplomatic field, and the semiotic axiom may be understood as internal to diplomats' doxic presuppositions or background knowledge (Senn and Elhardt 2014;Kornprobst and Senn 2016a;Leander 2011). A certain compatibility between this paper's approach and ANT or the practice turn may be facilitated by the observation that these frameworks offer "more method than theory" (Austin 2017, 52;cf. ...
Diplomacy ubiquitously involves mundane objects and other nonhumans, such as artworks, state awards, Tweets, or panda bears. They are neither ‘agents’ nor ‘structure’, but rather exogenous ‘noises’ in the environment of the international state system. Through communication and (affect-laden) rituals, the system selectively endogenizes these noises by transfiguring them into ‘diplomatic objects’, i.e. semiotic signifiers of sovereign states. This political semiosis allows diplomatic theory to go beyond an anthropocentric perspective. Drawing from Modern Systems Theory, Ritual Theory and Semiotics, this paper formulates hypotheses which guide towards further research venues exploring the use of diplomatic objects: Why do inter-polity conflicts arise regularly around symbolic objects? How do states utilize ‘distributed diplomacy’ or ‘diplomatic assemblages’ across foreign territories? How do political rituals harness emotions to mobilize publics?
We need new analytical tools to understand the turbulent times in which we live, and identify the directions in which international politics will evolve. This volume discusses how engaging with Emanuel Adler's social theory of cognitive evolution could potentially achieve these objectives. Eminent scholars of International Relations explore various aspects of Adler's theory, evaluating its potential contributions to the study of world orders and IR theory more generally. Each chapter focuses on a different aspect of the social theory of cognitive evolution, such as power, morality, materiality, narratives, and practices, and identifies new theoretical vistas that help break new ground in International Relations. In the concluding chapter, Adler responds, engaging in a rich dialogue with the contributors. This volume will appeal to scholars and advanced students of International Relations theory, especially evolutionary and constructivist approaches.
This study deals with the evolution of different interpretations of nuclear restraint in the midst of a changing technological, strategic and normative environment. I differentiate between three degrees of nuclear restraint, i. e. taboo, categorical restraint and contingent restraint, and embed these in their material and intersubjective context. Empirical evidence strongly suggests that the overwhelming number of non-nuclear weapons states reproduces and even further strengthens the strongest form of nuclear restraint, i. e. the taboo. When it comes to nuclear weapons states, however, there are worrying indications that categorical and even contingent forms of restraint are weakening.
This book examines Africa’s internal and external relations by focusing on three core concepts: orders, diplomacy and borderlands.
The contributors examine traditional and non-traditional diplomatic actors, and domestic, regional, continental, and global orders. They argue that African diplomats profoundly shape these orders by situating themselves within in-between-spaces of geographical and functional orders. It is in these borderlands that agency, despite all kinds of constraints, flourishes. Chapters in the book compare domestic orders to regional ones, and then continental African orders to global ones. They deal with a range of functional orders, including development, international trade, human rights, migration, nuclear arms control, peacekeeping, public administration, and territorial change. By focusing on these topics, the volume contributes to a better understanding of African international relations, sharpens analyses of ordering processes in world politics, and adds to our comprehension of how diplomacy shapes orders and vice versa. The studies collected here show a much more nuanced picture of African agency in African and international affairs and suggest that African diplomacy is far more extensive than is often assumed.
This book will be of much interest to students of diplomacy studies, African politics and International Relations.
Cambridge Core - International Relations and International Organisations - Co-Managing International Crises - by Markus Kornprobst
This article examines the resilience of governance. My descriptive argument identifies variations of resilience by analysing the evolution of contestation and decontestation of governance-constituting institutions in the foreground and background layers of governance. My explanatory argument distinguishes different modes of diplomatic communication, ranging from coercion (most closed) via declaration, haggle, and problem-solving to polylogue (most open). While the occurrence of none of these modes is inconsequential, producing resilience in the foreground and background layers does not become possible unless problem-solving and polylogue, respectively, come to dominate communicative encounters. My abductive analysis of nuclear weapons governance underlines the plausibility of this conceptual framework and elaborates on it further. In the past two decades, communicative practices sidelined open modes of communication. This made the resilience of nuclear weapons governance decline. This study makes three contributions: it provides more details on how to describe governance resilience; it shows that additional explanatory power is to be gained by looking at the breadth of communication employed by diplomats; and it contributes to a better grasp of what keeps nuclear governance together and what threatens to tear it apart.
How do actors come to contest previously uncontested background ideas? This is a difficult question to ask. On the one hand, deep backgrounds seem to be too foundational for actors to transform. Their political efficacy appears to end where ideas constitute their efficacy in the first place. On the other hand, ideas must not be reified. Even deeply taken-for-granted ideas do not always stay the same, and agents have a lot to do with these changes. In order to answer this question, we draw from social theory and rhetorical studies. We conceptualize the deep background as nomos, and the more easily accessible background as endoxa. We
then proceed to identify three sets of conditions that make nomic change possible. These relate to opportunity, message, and messenger. Nomic change becomes possible when the need forsomething new has become widely established and a supply of new nomic ideas is easily available (opportunity); new nomic ideas are ‘smuggled’ into more orthodox and widely resonating arguments (message) as well as rhetorical encounters in which these arguments are made; and advocates are widely recognized as interlocutors (messenger). A plausibility probe of nomic contestation about nuclear governance provides evidence for this
framework.
Introducing the special issue, this introduction sketches a broad frame for studying public justification. Addressing the relevance of studying this phenomenon, we contend that justificatory processes are very much at the core today’s politics. Defining the concept inclusively, we highlight the relevance of communicative agency and, at the same time, the salience of communicative contexts that enable this agency. Casting our net widely, we show how public justification is related to other, more thoroughly studied concepts, such as legitimacy, authority and power. Encouraging students of public justification to add to our understanding of justificatory processes, we highlight multiple fruitful methodological avenues for studying the concept.
Neoliberalism. Neoconservatism. Postmarxism. Postmodernism. Is there really something genuinely new about today's isms? Have we moved past our traditional ideological landscape? This book traces ideology's remarkable journey from Count Destutt de Tracy's Enlightenment 'science of ideas' to President George W. Bush's 'imperial globalism'. Rejecting futile attempts to 'update' modern political belief systems by adorning them with prefixes, the book offers instead an explanation for their novelty: their increasing ability to articulate deep-seated understandings of community in global rather than national terms. This growing awareness of globality fuels the visions of social elites who reside in the privileged spaces of our global cities. It erupts in the hopes and demands of migrants who traverse national boundaries in search of their piece of the global promise. Stoked by cross-cultural encounters, technological change, and scientific innovation, the rising global imaginary has destabilised the grand political ideologies codified during the national age. The national is slowly losing its grip on people's minds, but the global has not yet ascended to the commanding heights once occupied by its predecessor. Still, the first rays of the rising global imaginary have provided enough light to capture the contours of a profoundly altered ideological landscape. Pointing in this direction, the book ends with an interpretation of the apparent convergence of ideology and religion in the dawning global age - a broad phenomenon that extends beyond the obvious cases of Christian fundamentalism and Islamic jihadism.
For as long has humans have lived in communities, storytelling has bound people to each other and to their environments. In recent times, scholars have noted how social networks arise around issues of resource and ecological management. In this book, Raul Lejano, Mrill Ingram, and Helen Ingram argue that stories, or narratives, play a key role in these networks—that environmental communities “narrate themselves into existence.” The authors propose the notion of the narrative-network, and introduce innovative tools to analyze the plots, characters, and events that inform environmental action. Their analysis sheds light on how environmental networks can emerge in unlikely contexts and sustain themselves against great odds.
The authors present three case studies that demonstrate the power of narrative and narratology in the analysis of environmental networks: a conservation network in the Sonoran Desert, which achieved some success despite U.S.-Mexico border issues; a narrative that bridged differences between community and scientists in the Turtle Islands; and networks of researchers and farmers who collaborated to develop and sustain alternative agriculture practice in the face of government inaction. These cases demonstrate that by paying attention to language and storytelling, we can improve our understanding of environmental behavior and even change it in positive ways.
This chapter examines ideas of varying levels of generality that define how policymakers should act. Building upon and drawing together the best work in the field, it seeks to offer a synthetic analysis of how ideas matter in politics: what is known, what is not known, and what areas are in need of further research. It considers ideas at three levels of generality: policy solutions, problem definitions, and public philosophies or zeitgeist. It also consider interactions between the levels of ideas, with a particular interest in "upward-flowing" interactions, showing that not only does the conception of a problem constrain policy alternatives, but the fate of specific policy solutions also can have an impact on problem definitions or even broader public philosophies.
European integration continues to deepen despite major crises and attempts to take back sovereignty. A growing number of member states are reacting to a more constraining EU by negotiating opt-outs. This book provides the first in-depth account of how opt-outs work in practice. It examines the most controversial cases of differentiated integration: the British and Danish opt-outs from Economic and Monetary Union and European policies on borders, asylum, migration, internal security and justice. Drawing on over one hundred interviews with national representatives and EU officials, the author demonstrates how representatives manage the stigma of opting out, allowing them to influence even politically sensitive areas covered by their opt-outs. Developing a practice approach to European integration, the book shows how everyday negotiations transform national interests into European ideals. It is usually assumed that states opt out to preserve sovereignty, but Adler-Nissen argues that national opt-outs may actually reinforce the integration process.
This book rejects a commonplace of European history: that the treaties of Westphalia not only closed the Thirty Years’ War but also inaugurated a new international order driven by the interaction of territorial sovereign states. Benno Teschke, through this thorough and incisive critique, argues that this is not the case. Domestic ‘social property relations’ shaped international relations in continental Europe down to 1789 and even beyond. The dynastic monarchies that ruled during this time differed from their medieval predecessors in degree and form of personalization, but not in underlying dynamic. 1648, therefore, is a false caesura in the history of international relations. For real change we must wait until relatively recent times and the development of modern states and true capitalism. In effect, it’s not until governments are run impersonally, with no function other than the exercise of its monopoly on violence, that modern international relations are born.
War and Change in World Politics introduces the reader to an important new theory of international political change. Arguing that the fundamental nature of international relations has not changed over the millennia, Professor Gilpin uses history, sociology, and economic theory to identify the forces causing change in the world order. The discussion focuses on the differential growth of power in the international system and the result of this unevenness. A shift in the balance of power - economic or military - weakens the foundations of the existing system, because those gaining power see the increasing benefits and the decreasing cost of changing the system. The result, maintains Gilpin, is that actors seek to alter the system through territorial, political, or economic expansion until the marginal costs of continuing change are greater than the marginal benefits. When states develop the power to change the system according to their interests they will strive to do so- either by increasing economic efficiency and maximizing mutual gain, or by redistributing wealth and power in their own favour.
Outline of a Theory of Practice is recognized as a major theoretical text on the foundations of anthropology and sociology. Pierre Bourdieu, a distinguished French anthropologist, develops a theory of practice which is simultaneously a critique of the methods and postures of social science and a general account of how human action should be understood. With his central concept of the habitus, the principle which negotiates between objective structures and practices, Bourdieu is able to transcend the dichotomies which have shaped theoretical thinking about the social world. The author draws on his fieldwork in Kabylia (Algeria) to illustrate his theoretical propositions. With detailed study of matrimonial strategies and the role of rite and myth, he analyses the dialectical process of the 'incorporation of structures' and the objectification of habitus, whereby social formations tend to reproduce themselves. A rigorous consistent materialist approach lays the foundations for a theory of symbolic capital and, through analysis of the different modes of domination, a theory of symbolic power.
Many analysts claim that international politics has recently entered a new era, following the end of the Cold War and then the events of September 11th. In this book, Kalevi Holsti asks what we mean by 'change' in international politics. How do we identify it? How do we distinguish between significant and unimportant changes? Do we really live in a new era or do we see more continuity than transformation in the texture of international politics? Combining theoretical and empirical argument, Holsti investigates eight major international institutions including the state, sovereignty, territoriality, international law, diplomacy, trade and war. Having identified the types of change these institutions have undergone during the last three centuries, Holsti analyses the sources of those changes and speculates on their consequences. This is a major book, likely to have lasting influence in the study of international politics.
Rhetoric is the art of speech and persuasion, the study of argument and, in Classical times, an essential component in the education of the citizen. For rhetoricians, politics is a skill to be performed and not merely observed. Yet in modern democracies we often suspect political speech of malign intent and remain uncertain how properly to interpret and evaluate it. Public arguments are easily dismissed as ‘mere rhetoric’ rather than engaged critically, with citizens encouraged to be passive consumers of a media spectacle rather than active participants in a political dialogue. This volume provides a clear and instructive introduction to the skills of the rhetorical arts. It surveys critically the place of rhetoric in contemporary public life and assesses its virtues as a tool of political theory. Questions about power and identity in the practices of political communication remain central to the rhetorical tradition: how do we know that we are not being manipulated by those who seek to persuade us? Only a grasp of the techniques of rhetoric and an understanding of how they manifest themselves in contemporary politics, argues the author, can guide us in answering these perennial questions. Politics and Rhetoric draws together in a comprehensive and highly accessible way relevant ideas from discourse analysis, classical rhetoric updated to a modern setting, relevant issues in contemporary political theory, and numerous carefully chosen examples and issues from current politics. It will be essential reading for all students of politics and political communications.
This article discusses the concept of rhetorical situation. The presence of rhetorical discourse indicates the presence of a rhetorical situation. No major theorist has treated rhetorical situation thoroughly as a distinct subject in rhetorical theory. Those rhetoricians who discuss situation led to consider situation when he treats types of discourse. In order to clarify rhetoric as essentially related to situation, we should acknowledge a viewpoint that is commonplace but fundamental. Rhetoric is a mode of altering reality, not by the direct application of energy to objects, but by the creation of discourse which changes reality through the mediation of thought and action. To say that rhetorical discourse comes into being in order to effect change is altogether general. Traditional theories of rhetoric have dealt not with the sorts of primitive utterances described by Malinowski but with larger units of speech which come more readily under the guidance of artistic principle and method. Rhetorical situation may be defined as a complex of persons, events, objects, and relations presenting an actual or potential exigence which can be completely or partially removed if discourse, introduced into the situation, can so constrain human decision or action as to bring about the significant modification of the exigence.
Using the example of prehistoric paintings discovered in the late 19th century in Spain and France Cave Art, Perception and Knowledge inquires into epistemic questions related to images, depicting and perception that this rich material has given rise to. The book traces the outline of the doxa of cave art studies.
1965 veröffentlichte der prominente amerikanische Politikwissenschaftler Har-wood Childs sein Buch „Public Opinion“, dessen zweites Kapitel „The Nature and History of Public Opinion“fast 50 verschiedene Definitionen des Begriffs öffentliche Meinung (öM) aufzählt. Wie war es zu einer so verwirrenden Fülle von Bedeutungen des Begriffs öM gekommen? Seit der Antike wurden öM und die Synonyme dafür im Sinn von sozialer Kontrolle gebraucht. Diese soziale Kontrolle bezieht sich auf die Sphäre des alltäglichen Lebens genauso wie auf die politische. ÖM ist ein breiter Konsensus in der Bevölkerung, dem sowohl die Regierung wie auch die einzelnen Glieder einer Gesellschaft folgen müssen. Aristoteles erklärt: Der König, der die Zustimmung des Volkes verliert, ist kein König mehr. So drücken es in wechselnder Formulierung Machiavelli und Erasmus von Rotterdam aus und besonders bündig der englische Sozialphilosoph Hume 1739: „Regierung ist allein auf Meinung gegründet; und dies trifft zu für die despotischsten und militärischsten Regierungen ebenso wie für die freiesten und populärsten“. Aber mit dem 18. Jhdt., mit dem Beginn der Aufklärung setzte eine höchst eigentümliche Sinnverschiebung, ein Bedeutungswandel des Begriffs öM, ein. Der jetzt so hoch bewertete Verstand bildete nun auch den Inhalt der öM. Die öM wurde zur Meinung der urteilsfähigen, kritisch raisonnierenden, verantwortungsbewußt der Regierung gegenübertretenden Bürger.
If one were to conduct, say during the annual convention of the International Studies Association (ISA), an opinion poll in which the International Relations (IR) scholars gathered at this convention were asked to list the five theoretical concepts they consider most central in explaining (dis-)order in world politics, one would not have to be a prophet to forecast that the concept of ‘functional differentiation’ would hardly make it even close to the top of the list. While not pursuing the probably illusionary objective of paving the way for a spontaneous mass conversion of IR scholars to functional differentiation, the main objective of the present chapter is to show that the more or less benign neglect of notions of functional differentiation in IR – laudable exceptions, many of them assembled in this volume, notwithstanding – is unwarranted, both empirically and theoretically. More specifically, this chapter claims that a deconstructivist understanding of functional differentiation as developed by modern systems theory heralds crucial theoretical advances for the study of order in world politics. IR should not ignore this, even if it might challenge prevalent assumptions in IR and political science about the somewhat superior role of politics vis-à-vis other social systems. Apart from these more general arguments on the merits of theorizing in IR about functional differentiation, this chapter argues that the limits in the outreach of the theory of functional differentiation in IR cannot be attributed to a lack of systematic engagement with comprehensive social theories in the discipline alone, although this is certainly also the case. It also pertains to a crucial blind spot in the theory of functional differentiation itself, which limits this theory's ability to address issues of crucial relevance to IR. This blind spot relates, in particular, to the relative absence in functional differentiation theory of a coherent understanding of the interrelationship between differentiation, on the one hand, and conflict and securitization, on the other. Only if the theory is able to show how functional differentiation relates to a comprehensive theory of social conflicts and securitization will it make a lasting impact on the study of the world political system – that is, a social system in which intensive and violent forms of conflict and securitization are ubiquitous and expected. This offers at least some quanta of solace to IR, an academic discipline with a well-elaborated vocabulary for the analysis of the interrelationship between conflicts and global order.
In their introduction to this volume, Mathias Albert, Barry Buzan and Michael Zürn suggest that long-term structural change in the international system can be analysed in terms of the interaction between, and relative importance of, three different forms of social differentiation: segmentary, stratificatory and functional (see also Buzan and Albert, 2010). IR scholarship traditionally focuses on what sociologists would see as the result of segmentary differentiation, namely systems or societies of states, while paying attention also to stratificatory differentiation because of the role of great powers, superpowers and empires. According to prominent system theorists, this spatially differentiated political system should be seen as embedded in a ‘world society’ that is itself primarily differentiated along functional lines (Luhmann, 1971a). According to Niklas Luhmann, only the political system and the legal system are differentiated spatially in the form of states; all other systems ‘operate independently of spatial boundaries. Precisely the unambiguous character of spatial boundaries makes it clear that they are respected neither by truths nor by diseases, neither by education nor by television, neither by money (if the need for credit is considered) nor by love’. Luhmann added that ‘the importance of spatial boundaries lies in the interdependencies between the political and the legal system on the one hand and the other functional systems on the other’.
Can international legitimacy operate even in a deformed balance of power, and when there is only one dominant state? Conventionally, hegemony has been perceived as a threat to international society. But how then is international order to be maintained, if this still requires a managerial role on the part of the great powers? IR theory has not taken that problem sufficiently seriously. This study makes a sharp distinction between primacy, denoting merely a form of material power, and hegemony, understood as a legitimate practice, and as giving rise to a form of social power. Adopting an English School approach, the author suggests hegemony be considered as one potential institution of international society, and hence as one possible mechanism of international order. The book reviews some relevant historical cases (the Concert of Europe, Pax Britannica, and Pax Americana) and argues that, instead of one model of hegemony, these represent several different variants: importantly, each displays its own distinctive legitimacy dynamics. Once these are appreciated, they can help us identify the possible institutional forms of hegemony in contemporary international society. This is done through three cases, examining in turn US policy on the UN Security Council, in East Asia, and on climate change. The overall argument challenges the limited post-Cold War debate about primacy, and the equally simplistic projections about the future distribution of power to which it gives rise. In doing so, it offers a major rethinking of the concept of hegemony in international relations.
How do states sustain international order during crises? Drawing on the political philosophy of Lyotard and through an empirical examination of the Anglo-American international order during the 1956 Suez Crisis, Bially Mattern demonstrates that states can (and do) use representational force--a forceful but non-physical form of power exercised through language--to stabilize international identity and in turn international order.
This volume provides a clear and instructive introduction to the skills of the rhetorical arts. It surveys critically the place of rhetoric in contemporary public life and assesses its virtues as a tool of political theory. Questions about power and identity in the practices of political communication remain central to the rhetorical tradition: how do we know that we are not being manipulated by those who seek to persuade us? Only a grasp of the techniques of rhetoric and an understanding of how they manifest themselves in contemporary politics, argues the author, can guide us in answering these perennial questions.
In Emanuel Adler's distinctive constructivist approach to international relations theory, international practices evolve in tandem with collective knowledge of the material and social worlds. This book - comprising a fresh selection of his journal publications, a substantial new introduction, three previously unpublished articles - points IR constructivism in a novel direction, characterized as 'communitarian'. Adler's synthesis does not herald the end of the nation-state; nor does it suggest that agency is unimportant in international life. Rather, it argues that what mediates between individual and state agency and social structures are communities of practice, which are the wellspring and repositories of collective meanings and social practices. The concept of communities of practice casts new light on epistemic communities and security communities, helping to explain why certain ideas congeal into human practices and others do not, and which social mechanisms can facilitate the emergence of normatively better communities.
This book provides an introduction to the analysis of global political order - how patterns of governance and institutionalization in world politics have already changed; what the most important challenges are; and what the way forward might look like. The first section develops three analytical frameworks: a world of sovereign states capable of only limited cooperation; a world of ever-denser international institutions embodying the idea of an international community; and a world in which global governance moves beyond the state and into the realms of markets, civil society, and networks. Part II examines five of the most important issues facing contemporary international society: nationalism and the politics of identity; human rights and democracy; war, violence, and collective security; the ecological challenge; and the management of economic globalization in a highly unequal world. Part III considers the idea of an emerging multi-regional system; and the picture of global order built around US empire. The conclusion looks at the normative implications. If international society has indeed been changing in the ways discussed in this book, what ought we to do? And, still more crucially, who is the 'we' that is to be at the centre of this drive to create a morally better world? This book is concerned with the fate of international society in an era of globalization and the ability of the inherited society of sovereign states to provide a practically viable and normatively acceptable framework for global political order. It lays particular emphasis on the different forms of global inequality and the problems of legitimacy that these create, and on the challenges posed by cultural diversity and value conflict.
This volume aims to provide a new framework for the analysis of securitization processes, increasing our understanding of how security issues emerge, evolve and dissolve. Securitisation theory has become one of the key components of security studies and IR courses in recent years, and this book represents the first attempt to provide an integrated and rigorous overview of securitization practices within a coherent framework. To do so, it organizes securitization around three core assumptions which make the theory applicable to empirical studies: the centrality of audience, the co-dependency of agency and context and the structuring force of the dispositif. These assumptions are then investigated through discourse analysis, process-tracing, ethnographic research, and content analysis and discussed in relation to extensive case studies. This innovative new book will be of much interest to students of securitisation and critical security studies, as well as IR theory and sociology. © 2011 Thierry Balzacq for selection and editorial matter. All rights reserved.
Since the late 1980s, the rogue state concept has emerged as a central motive of U.S. security policy and has been under intense debate by policy-makers and academics. The book breaks new ground in this discussion by approaching the rogue state concept from a moderate constructivist perspective. In addition to analyzing how U.S. decision-makers have come to see a group of states as aggressive, risk-prone or even irrational outsiders to the contemporary international system, the book also inquires the threat perceptions of states that have been stigmatized with the rogue state label.
American Documentary Film focuses on the extensive range and history of nonfiction filmmaking in the USA, investigating how documentary films have reflected varied and often competing visions of US culture, history, and national identity. Documentary has long been a negotiated and changing concept: a site of social, intellectual, and aesthetic investment keenly fought over and debated. In this sense documentary films also create a kind of public space: they act as sites for community-building, public expression, and social innovation; they contribute to the public sphere. This book distills key aspects of the documentary idea while tracing the form’s development over time, focusing on the ways documentaries have given shape to the experience and comprehension of a national imaginary. Combining comprehensive overviews with in-depth case studies, Geiger examines the impact of pre- and early cinema, travelogues, the avant-garde, 1930s social documentary, Second World War propaganda, direct cinema, postmodernism and the crisis of ‘truth’, and the new media age.
This book rethinks security theory from a feminist perspective – uniquely, it engages feminism, security, and strategic studies to provide a distinct feminist approach to security studies.
The volume explicitly works toward an opening up of security studies that would allow for feminist (and other) narratives to be recognized and taken seriously as security narratives. To make this possible, it presents a feminist reading of security studies that aims to invigorate the debate and radicalize critical security studies. Since feminism is a political project, and security studies are, at their base, about particular visions of the political and their attendant institutions, this is of necessity a political intervention. The book works through and beyond security studies to explore possible spaces where an opening of security, necessary to make way for feminist insights, can take place. While it develops and illustrates a feminist narrative approach to security, it is also intended as an intervention that challenges the politics of security and the meanings for security legitimized in existing practices.
This book provides develops a comprehensive framework for the emerging field of feminist security studies and will be of great interest to students and scholars of feminist IR, critical security studies, gender studies and IR and security studies in general.
How do once bitter enemies move beyond entrenched rivalry at the diplomatic level? In one of the first attempts to apply practice theory to the study of International Relations, Vincent Pouliot builds on Pierre Bourdieu's sociology to devise a theory of practice of security communities and applies it to post-Cold War security relations between NATO and Russia. Based on dozens of interviews and a thorough analysis of recent history, Pouliot demonstrates that diplomacy has become a normal, though not a self-evident, practice between the two former enemies. He argues that this limited pacification is due to the intense symbolic power struggles that have plagued the relationship ever since NATO began its process of enlargement at the geographical and functional levels. So long as Russia and NATO do not cast each other in the roles that they actually play together, security community development is bound to remain limited.
In this paper, I examine the role of emotional contagion in our affective engagement with narrative fiction film, focusing in particular on how spectator responses based on emotional contagion differ from those based on more sophisticated emotional processes. I begin by explaining emotional
contagion and the processes involved in it. Next, I consider how film elicits emotional contagion. I then argue that emotional contagion responses are unique and should be clearly distinguished from responses based on other emotional processes, such as empathy. Finally, I explain why contagion
responses are a significant feature of spectators' engagement with narrative fiction film.