Agents, Structures and International Relations: Politics as Ontology

Forsideomslag
Cambridge University Press, 12. okt. 2006
The agent-structure problem is a much discussed issue in the field of international relations. In his comprehensive 2006 analysis of this problem, Colin Wight deconstructs the accounts of structure and agency embedded within differing IR theories and, on the basis of this analysis, explores the implications of ontology - the metaphysical study of existence and reality. Wight argues that there are many gaps in IR theory that can only be understood by focusing on the ontological differences that construct the theoretical landscape. By integrating the treatment of the agent-structure problem in IR theory with that in social theory, Wight makes a positive contribution to the problem as an issue of concern to the wider human sciences. At the most fundamental level politics is concerned with competing visions of how the world is and how it should be, thus politics is ontology.
 

Indhold

a science without positivism?
14
Positivism
15
to the development of a fundamentally different account of science
23
The habitus intersubjectivity rules places roles duties rights
50
from
62
3 The agentstructure problem in IR
90
reductionist or not?
91
agents or structures
99
Structure as relations of difference that constitute
131
Structure as rules and resources
137
When we scratch the surface of what we are told
155
some final comments
174
5 Agency
177
Agential stories
180
Epistemology
231
the
243

The agentstructure levelsofanalysis and
102
4 Structure
121
two traditions and five models
123
Structure as lawlike regularities that govern
129
Methodology
257
Social causation as an ontologically grounded
272
Methodology and the agentstructure relationship
279
8 Conclusion
290

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Om forfatteren (2006)

Colin Wight is Senior Lecturer in the Department of Politics at the University of Sheffield.

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