Bourdieu and the bomb: Power, language and the doxic battle over the value of nuclear weapons

Senn, Martin; Elhardt, Christoph

doi:10.1177/1354066113476117

Cited by 21 publications

(9 citation statements)

References 63 publications

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“…This article also fills a gap by contributing tools to the broader project of creating alternative conceptual structures to compete with realism and deterrence theory (Deudney 2008;Feiveso et al 2014;Ritchie 2013;Senn and Elhardt 2014). Whereas there is a vibrant and ongoing academic debate in the United States about nuclear deterrence and nonproliferation, the hegemony of neorealism and deterrence theory in American School IR plays an important role in marginalizing discussion of disarmament at the level of theory.…”

Section: American School Ir and The Disciplinary Politics Of Nuclear mentioning

confidence: 93%

Power, violence, and nuclear weapons

Harrington

2016

Critical Studies on Security

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This article contributes to an ongoing debate about the role of the thermonuclear revolution in realist thought and the viability of nuclear disarmament. Drawing on the work of Hannah Arendt, it develops an immanent critique of balance-of-power theories of international politics. Immanent critique is a diagnostic process. It takes a thought system on its own terms and by revealing its contradictions from within, opens up new possibilities for transformation. This critique reveals how the ontological assumptions Kenneth Waltz makes about the nature of power allowed him, in the guise of an apolitical theory, to transform the violence of nuclear weapons from a threat to humanity into a source of security, and therefore a normative good. According to the logic of this argument, thinking past the limits of this thought system will necessarily need to include questioning and otherwise disrupting the tight association between violence and power.

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Section: American School Ir and The Disciplinary Politics Of Nuclear mentioning

confidence: 93%

Power, violence, and nuclear weapons

Harrington

2016

Critical Studies on Security

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“…Others have drawn on Bourdieu to describe these various actors as participants in a "field" or "fields" of IR (e.g. Adler-Nissen, 2011;Berling, 2012;Bigo, 2011;Mérand, 2010;Senn and Elhardt, 2013). Relationalist scholars have focused on foregrounding the varied "assemblages" of actants that come together to perform IR (e.g.…”

Section: Outside-in Influences On Ir Circuits Of Knowledge Productionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Common knowledge? Business intellectuals, BRIC and the production of knowledge across global finance and international relations

Aris

Snetkov

2020

J Int Relat Dev

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This article engages with the debate about how we come to know IR the way that we do. It seeks to contribute to this research agenda in two, related, ways: Firstly, by highlighting the influence that a previously neglected circuit of practice has on the co-constituted knowledge relationship between Global Finance and IR: the business intellectuals of the Cultural Circuit of Capital (CCC). Secondly, it argues that the Science and Technology Studies' concept of boundary objects is invaluable in accounting for both how IR's "constitutive" theorising is influenced by other circuits of practice and the co-constituted nature of "the international" as an object of investigation. To exemplify both arguments, and how they relate to one another, the article traces the co-constituted operation of the concept of the "BRIC". Following the global financial crisis in 2007/8, the CCC popularized the concept of "BRIC", which then came to operate as a boundary object between IR and Global Finance and in the process impacted on how IR knows "rising powers" and "global governance". Thus, the functionality of BRIC as a boundary object served to provide the business intellectuals of the CCC with constitutive influence on how IR knows its object of study.

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“…Pierre Bourdieu is another social theorist whose arguments, especially his theory of social fields (Bourdieu, 1977(Bourdieu, , 2001, have made inroads into IR theory in general and research on order in particular (Adler-Nissen, 2013;Bigo and Madsen, 2011). Introduced to the discipline of IR through the work of Richard Ashley (1987Ashley ( , 1989), Bourdieu's field theory has been applied to a broad range of issues such as European integration and security (Adler-Nissen, 2014;Villumsen Berling, 2012), professionals of (in)security (Bigo, 2005(Bigo, , 2008, security communities (Pouliot, 2010), as well as orders in the realms of whaling (Epstein, 2008) and nuclear weapons (Senn and Elhardt, 2014). The appeal of Bourdieu's field theory derives from its emphasis on the role of deeply seated, unreflected meanings that structure social fields and the (re)production of these meanings in everyday practices.…”

Section: Order In World Politics and (Background) Ideasmentioning

confidence: 99%

A rhetorical field theory: Background, communication, and change

Kornprobst

Senn

2016

The British Journal of Politics and International Relations

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• • Develops a rhetorical field theory that conceptualises the relationship between background ideas and foreground communication • • Distinguishes between two layers of background ideas (nomos and topoi) that underpin communicative encounters in a field • • Conceptualises communicative opportunities and moves through which actors change the nomos of a field • • Illustrates the added value of a rhetorical field theory by inquiring into nomic change in the nuclear-weapons field A burgeoning literature in International Relations draws on Bourdieu's theory of social fields to address the question of how actors make and unmake order in world politics. Inquiring into deeply seated background ideas constituting order, this literature often neglects how communication reproduces and (de)contests background ideas. Our article seeks to remedy this shortcoming by outlining a rhetorical field theory. This theory puts background ideas and foreground communication on an equal footing and conceptualises their relationship in detail. We distinguish between two layers of background ideas (nomos and topoi) and address the crucial question of how nomic change becomes possible. We introduce a typology of nomic change (destabilisation, adaption, disorientation, shift) and conceptualise the interplay of rhetorical opportunities and rhetorical moves that bring about particular types of nomic change. We probe this theoretical framework by analysing the recent nomic change in the nuclear-weapons field. This empirical analysis provides evidence for our theoretical framework.

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Bourdieu and the bomb: Power, language and the doxic battle over the value of nuclear weapons

Cited by 21 publications

References 63 publications

Power, violence, and nuclear weapons

Power, violence, and nuclear weapons

Common knowledge? Business intellectuals, BRIC and the production of knowledge across global finance and international relations

A rhetorical field theory: Background, communication, and change

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