Two Faces of the “Relational Turn”

Abstract

In the previous decade, the literature on "relational approach" has burgeoned in the social sciences. Recently, a "relational turn" in political science was called for in a symposium in this journal (McClurg and Young, 2011 ). The participants perceived a promising path for such a "turn" by introducing social network analysis (SNA) into political science. This call is informed by a conviction that the central concept of political sciencethat is, power-is relational . Considering this viewpoint, this article argues that there are two diff erent understandings of the connection between the qualifi er "relational" and the concept of power, referred to as the "Anglo-American" and the "Continental" perspectives. I contend that symposium participants conceived of the connection from only the Anglo-American perspective and that the Continental understanding would add extra value for political science.

A relational turn for sustainability science? Relational thinking, leverage points and transformations

“…For example, systems thinking often contrasts itself with modernist approaches on the basis of its 'relational' focus on the interactions or reciprocal feedbacks between entities (Bodin et al 2011;Schulz and Martin-Ortega 2018), while in return many relational approaches have drawn inspiration from complex systems principles of indeterminacy, uncertainty and contingency (Hayles 1999;Scoones 1999;Braun 2015). Writing in psychology, Altman and Rogoff (1987) suggest that while both paradigms aim to provide holistic and dynamic analyses, systems approaches operate within 'organicist' worldviews that portray distinct entities interacting to produce emergent wholes; whereas relational approaches operate within 'transactional' worldviews and move away from distinct entities altogether to portray reciprocally constituted aspects unfolding in broader assemblages (see also Aldrich 2008;Selg 2016). It is these latter ideas, developed through engagement with process-relational (Whitehead 1978), pragmatist (Dewey 1958), and post-structural philosophy (Deleuze and Guattari 1988), that have enabled relational approaches to build on insights from complex systems approaches while also more directly countering substantialist assumptions, and that seem particularly useful for sustainability science.…”

A Simmelian approach to space in world politics

“…This spatial theory therefore offers the existing relational approaches in IR (Goddard 2009; Hafner-Burton, Kahler, and Montgomery 2009) an innovative way to overcome ‘the dichotomy between the semiotic and the material’ that many of them find difficult to bridge (Nexon and Pouliot 2013, 344) without neglecting the spatio-temporal dimension – the premise that social relations continuously evolve and transform across time and space – that stands at the basis of all relational approaches in IR. Indeed, Simmel’s German modernist intellectual origins differ considerably from the pragmatist-instrumentalist roots of Jackson and Nexon’s (1999, 292–301) processual relationalism (p/r), as well as from other poststructural relational modes of analysis (Nexon and Pouliot 2013, 342; Selg 2016). Furthermore, historically Simmel’s spatial sociology predates network theory and various other relational modes of thought in IR – and in a broader sense enabled these developments by imagining, at the turn of the 20th century, the possibility of thinking about space in a relative, open-ended manner.…”

Learning in the bath-tub: the micro and macro dimensions of the causal relationship between learning and policy change

“…Methodologically, social network analysis (Scott, 2000) including relational approaches (McClurg & Young, 2011;Selg, 2016); diffusion (Gilardi, 2010); interpretive policy analysis (Freeman, 2007); and ethnography, (Stevens, 2011) have delivered interesting findings. Experiments also feature prominently in this field.…”