Your Ontology, My Ontic Speculations … on the Importance of Showing One's (Ontological) Working
| DOI | 10.1111/j.1467-9248.2009.00819.x |
| Author | Colin Hay |
| Date | 01 December 2009 |
| Published date | 01 December 2009 |
| Subject Matter | Article |
Your Ontology, My Ontic Speculations ... On
the Importance of Showing One’s
(Ontological) Workingpost_819 892..898
Colin Hay
University of Sheffield
In a discipline such as ours, in which all contributions are necessarily preliminary
– and should perhaps best be seen as openings to potential conversations rather
than definitive statements in their own right – it is always pleasing to have one’s
work engaged with explicitly and directly. Yet the satisfaction that comes with a
new opportunity for a fresh conversation about ontology in political analysis is
tempered on this occasion by the length of the charge sheet in front of me.In the
space of approximately 3,400 words, Nigel Pleasants accuses me of many things.
My article on ‘King Canute and the “Problem” of Structure and Agency’ (Hay,
2009), he suggests,is part of a broader ‘crusade’,of which I am a ‘chief protagonist’
(Pleasants, 2009, p. 885), to convert political analysts to the value of arrant, arid
and ultimately unhelpful ontological reflection, foisting this on unwitting and
unwilling students of political science to boot. Even taken on its own terms, my
contribution is flawed in almost all significant respects. It rests, it seems, on the
false premise that ontological reflection is an aid to a reflective political analysis,
it fails to differentiate between genuine ontologies (deserving of their designation
as ‘ologies’) and mere ontic speculations, superstitions and hunches,it achieves no
fresh analytical purchase on the story of King Canute and the waves and it adds
next to nothing to our understanding of the structure–agency relationship. In
fact, were we to bracket out the (numerous) references to structure, agency and
ontology that litter the text, we would find ‘that nothing of significance is ... lost
to the historical and political analysis of the story of King Canute’ (p. 891).
Indeed, ‘neither Canute himself, nor the current-day reader ... need know
anything about theories of structure and agency or “ontological reflection” in
order to conceive or understand those events’ (p. 891).
This is quite a list of accusations. In the brief response the editors have graciously
allowed me,I challenge all but one of these contentions, while seeking to explain
why it is that Pleasants’ final charge – that the analysis could readily be recast
without explicit reference to the categories and concepts on which it lavishes so
much attention – is one to which I happily plead my guilt. That he sees this as
a failing of the piece is, I suggest,indicative of a broader misunderstanding on his
doi: 10.1111/j.1467-9248.2009.00819.x
POLITICAL STUDIES: 2009 VOL 57, 892–898
© 2009The Author.Jour nal compilation © 2009 Political StudiesAssociation
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