Episode 27: Everything is Relational

Whiskey & International Relations Theory

It's a nostalgia episode for our two hosts, Patrick and Dan.
They tackle Mustafa Emirbayer's 1997 article in the American Journal of Sociology, "Manifesto for a Relational Sociology." According to Emirbayer, "Sociologists today are faced with a fundamental dilemma: whether to conceive of the social world as consisting primarily in substances or processes, in static 'things' or in dynamic, unfolding relations."
Was that also true of International Relations? PTJ and Dan certainly thought so back in 1999.
Is it still true today? The two may or may not answer this question, but they do work through Emirbayer's article in no little detail.
Additional works alluded to in this podcast include Bhaskar, A Realist Theory of Science (1975); Emirbayer and Goodwin, "Network Analysis, Culture, and the Problem of Agency" (1994); Emirbayer and Mische, "What is Agency" (1998); Mann, The Sources of Social Power, Volume II (1993); Pratt, "From Norms to Normative Configurations: A Pragmatist and Relational Approach to Theorizing Normativity in IR" (2020); Sommers, "The Narrative Constitution of Identity: A Relational and Network Approach" (1994); Tilly, Durable Inequality (1998); and Wiener, Contestation and Constitution of Norms in Global International Relations (2018). The Duck of Minerva symposium on norms is available here.
ETA: this is now the 4th version (02.08.2023) of the episode; apologies again, we're getting used to new equipment and mixing software.