1 Theorising Agency in International Relations In Hobbes's Wake ...
1 Theorising Agency in International Relations In Hobbes's Wake ...
1 Theorising Agency in International Relations In Hobbes's Wake ...
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2001). As the seat of human agency, the <strong>in</strong>dividual has attracted <strong>in</strong>creas<strong>in</strong>g attention from IR scholars;<br />
either as, on the one hand, the bearer of rationality (Greenhill 2008, Mercer 2005), or, on the other, as<br />
the site of non-rational yet politically salient phenomena such as emotions (Ross 2006) and their<br />
associated array of identities (Smith 2004; F<strong>in</strong>nemore and Sikk<strong>in</strong>k 2001, Lapid and Kratochwil 1996) and<br />
cultures (Lebow 2008, Jahn 2000; Katzenste<strong>in</strong> 1996).<br />
<strong>In</strong> this article the Hobbesian legacy provides the start<strong>in</strong>g place from which to exam<strong>in</strong>e the<br />
models of the <strong>in</strong>dividual that implicitly or explicitly <strong>in</strong>forms accounts of <strong>in</strong>ternational politics. The<br />
rationalist-reflectivist divide <strong>in</strong> contemporary IR scholarship (Keohane 1988) rests upon divergent<br />
conceptions of the <strong>in</strong>dividual, <strong>in</strong>sofar as the start<strong>in</strong>g po<strong>in</strong>t for reflectivist or, as it has come to be known,<br />
constructivist theoris<strong>in</strong>g was the realisation of the need to unpack the rationalist assumption that actors<br />
are ‘self-<strong>in</strong>terested’, as Alexander Wendt (1999, 215) put it, <strong>in</strong> order to exam<strong>in</strong>e who that self might be.<br />
This is what ushered <strong>in</strong> the concept of the self <strong>in</strong> the appraisal of agency, and the concept of identity for<br />
IR scholarship more broadly. The start<strong>in</strong>g po<strong>in</strong>ts for my enquiry are thus the rational actor and the self,<br />
the two archetypal <strong>in</strong>dividuals that ground rationalist and constructivist enquiries respectively.<br />
My purpose is to f<strong>in</strong>d a model of the <strong>in</strong>dividual that can provide the foundations for a non<strong>in</strong>dividualist<br />
basis for apprehend<strong>in</strong>g agency <strong>in</strong> <strong>in</strong>ternational politics; one that is rid of what Wendt (1999,<br />
178) himself termed a ‘rump <strong>in</strong>dividualism’ that cuts across both the rational actor and the self. A third<br />
model is afforded, I suggest, by the concept of the speak<strong>in</strong>g subject socially embedded <strong>in</strong> language that<br />
lies at the core of discourse theory. 3 Vis-à-vis constructivism, the issue is one of ontological consistency<br />
3 Discourse theory comprises three ma<strong>in</strong>, closely connected, components. First, it foregrounds language<br />
as the elementary social bond and consequently, second, a key site of political analysis. It is thus<br />
associated a wide range of methods regrouped under the head<strong>in</strong>g of ‘discourse analyses’ that focus<br />
upon the role of language <strong>in</strong> <strong>in</strong>ternational politics, which have been extensively elaborated elsewhere<br />
(Epste<strong>in</strong> 2008, Hansen 2006, Bially Mattern 2005, Milliken 1999). What is still lack<strong>in</strong>g <strong>in</strong> IR, however, is a<br />
theoretical demonstration of, not just how, but why language centrally matters to the understand<strong>in</strong>g<br />
2