Towards a social-relational dialectic for world politics
| Date | 01 December 2011 |
| Author | Shannon Brincat |
| DOI | 10.1177/1354066110373838 |
| Published date | 01 December 2011 |
Article
European Journal of
International Relations
17(4) 679–703
© The Author(s) 2010
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DOI: 10.1177/1354066110373838
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Corresponding author:
Shannon Brincat, School of Political Science and International Studies, The University of Queensland,
Brisbane Qld 4072, Australia.
Email: shannonbrincat@yahoo.com.au
Towards a social-relational
dialectic for world politics
Shannon Brincat
The University of Queensland, Australia
Abstract
Dialectics remains an underutilized methodology in contemporary IR theory, which
represents a significant limitation to the study of world politics, particularly in under-
standing processes of transformation and change — an oversight that this article intends
to redress. This article has two primary goals. First, it aims to reconstruct and build
upon the small but robust debate concerning the validity of dialectics in IR that has been
championed previously by Alker and Biersteker, and Heine and Teschke, respectively.
Second, it contrasts dialectical and deterministic approaches to IR, as exemplified in
Coxian Critical Theory and neo-realism, as a means to showcase the merits of the
former as an approach to the study of social change in world politics. The ultimate aim of
the article is to offer the groundwork of a social-relational dialectical approach to world
politics that is focused on the intersubjective engagements between human beings, which
can be developed in future research. Through such an analytic, the dialectical processes
in social life are shown to be open-ended and the article rejects any understanding of
‘inevitable’ progress/regress or teleological end point. On the one hand, this account of
dialectics promises greater analytical potential for understanding processes of change
in world politics but, on the other, indicates the potential for the irrational toleration of
contradiction and antagonism as an accepted feature of social life. Ultimately, the article
argues that the skilled dialectician should emphasize human agency and intersubjectivity
within a social-relational dialectical approach to world politics.
Keywords
change, determinism–open-endedness, dialectics, social relations, structure–agency
Introduction
Dialectics offers nothing less than a means to reframe the social ontology of world poli-
tics, from one of alleged stasis and immutability, to one of process, change and the social
680 European Journal of International Relations 17(4)
relations that generate them. This may seem a grandiose claim, yet, by reframing the
social ontology of IR, I do not mean to replace Hobbesian nominalism or neo-realism’s
systemic reproduction thesis with another closed ontos, but to advocate an entirely differ-
ent approach that focuses on change in world politics through the generative mechanisms
within social relations. It is not an ontology of states or political subjects, but of social
relations themselves, the engagements between persons, as simple or as complex as they
may be, in which states and political subjects are seen as parts of the social whole. This
should not be mistaken as an unnecessarily complex expression of ‘interactionism’ as
causality in social life, an assertion that risks confusing dialectics with a garbled metaphor
of dynamic interdependence (Mefford, quoted in Alker, 1982: 31). Rather, a social-
relational dialectic helps reveal the immanent tendencies within global or transnational
political community1 that have remained under-theorized in dominant approaches to
world politics, preoccupied as they are with state relations rather than human relations.
So while we may well disagree with the metaphysical suppositions of Hegel’s objective-
idealist dialectic and view with suspicion the teleological assumptions of some crude forms
of dialectical materialism (‘Diamat’),2 nevertheless dialectics can, if properly interpreted,
offer fruitful areas for research in world politics. This article aims to provide only a basic
groundwork of such a dialectical approach to the study of world politics, a full account of
which would otherwise necessitate voluminous treatment. Some may call this a dialectical
methodology, which I am not opposed to, so long as by the term ‘methodology’ one does
not mean a rigid set of principles or ready-made formulas that are to be forcefully applied
to any question — dialectics is nothing if not a ‘live’ method that enables us to look critically
at human reality and the potential futures therein (Marković, 1965: 80).
So where does contemporary IR theory stand as regards the dialectic (Marx, 1967: 315)?
There has been a widespread suspicion held against dialectics, ideological baggage derived
from Cold War misconceptions, which has resulted in its neglect by traditional approaches
to IR. Such mystifications, however, should no longer unnecessarily obfuscate what could
potentially offer great insight into world politics, as dialectics is an approach that seems
especially well suited to the fundamentally interactive character of IR’s subject matter.3 My
aim is to reinvigorate dialectics in the so-called intersubjective turn in IR theory — a period
that, ostensibly, should make the discipline more receptive to a method that focuses on
social relations — by outlining a dialectical method that builds on the work of Heine and
Teschke (1996, 1997; Teschke and Heine, 2002) and Alker and Biersteker (1984). It does
not purport to provide a concrete application or case study of the method, something that
may be taken up in later research. Yet it does view the rehabilitation of dialectics as an
important task that may yield impressive results in the study of IR, particularly regarding
our ability to understand the processes of social change within world politics. As world
politics involves a complex array of networks, social systems and a myriad of social phe-
nomena (at local, regional and interstate levels), a social-relational dialectical approach
deserves serious consideration as a potential framework to help understand change within
these dynamic multi-level social conditions. What renders social-relational dialectics such
a capable method for understanding processes is how it focuses on particular phenomena
within the totality of social relations rather than their isolation or abstraction (Jay, 1996: 54,
79), it provides the contextual analysis of these social relations, rendering the interconnect-
edness between such phenomena and the immanent tendencies for social transformation
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