Lipschutz_Because People Matter Studying GPE_2001

8/14/2019 Lipschutz_Because People Matter Studying GPE_2001

http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/lipschutzbecause-people-matter-studying-gpe2001 1/19

VISIONS OF INTERNATIONAL STUDIES

Because People Matter:Studying Global Political Economy

Ronnie D. Lipschutz

University of California–Santa Cruz

The 1990s were hard on our traditional theories of International Rela-tions and International Political Economy, and the Millennium has

brought the End of Meta-Narrative as We Know It. In this article, Idiscuss and dissect three of the past decade’s meta-narratives, and showhow they were no more than failed efforts to shore up the decomposingcorpus of mainstream theories. In their stead, I offer a preliminary description of a contextual and contingent approach to thinking about and analyzing global political economy. I place people at the center of my framework, and use the tools of historical materialism, feminist theory, and agency-structure analysis to generate an understanding of the relationship between what I call the “social individual” and globalpolitics and political economy.

Keywords: Global Political Economy, Social Individual, Meta-Narrative

Introduction

The 1990s were brutal for our models of International Relations and WorldPolitics. After 1989 and all that, some thought the Millennium was not farbehind ~Fukuyama, 1992!. Others seemed sure that Armageddon would comefirst ~Huntington, 1996!. While Armageddon might yet emerge out of the gangfights between Palestinians and Israelis, now that the millennium has passed,global affairs seem less clear than ever ~as suggested by visions of rogue missiles!.

Things are not falling apart the way we were told they would After Hegemony—indeed, the Hegemon is more dominant than ever—but there are no coalitionsorganizing to Balance the Power. The center is holding, after a fashion, but thecenter is also decomposing in unanticipated ways. It’s a confusing world out there: Coming Anarchies, Clashing Civilizations, McThis vs. McThat, the End of Everything. All using the same data, all prognosticating different futures. TheCrisis is clear: It is the End of Meta-Narrative as We Know It.

Author’s note: This article was originally presented to a linked pair of Theme Roundtables, “A Fin de Siecle

Discussion of Disciplinary Deficits and Conceptual Conflicts,” Conference of the International Studies Association,

Washington, DC, February 16–20, 1999. It was then revised numerous times in response to the insightful direction

and discipline of Mary Ann Tétreault. Helpful comments also came from Robin Teske, Kurt Burch, Bob Denemark,and two anonymous reviewers for ISP . Portions of this article will appear in “Theorizing Global Political Economy Because People Matter,” in Mary Ann Tétreault and Robin Teske ~eds.!, Feminist Approaches to Social Movements,

Community, and Power: Partial Truths and the Politics of Community ~Columbia, SC: University of South Carolina Press,

forthcoming 2002!.

International Studies Perspectives ~2001! 2, 321–339.

© 2001 International Studies Association.Published by Blackwell Publishers, 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA, and 108 Cowley Road, Oxford OX4 1JF, UK.



The universal “theories” on which we and our teachers relied are worn out and no longer seem terribly germane to world politics. Ten years after, thespecter of “Cold War thinking” haunts Washington and Europe, but there seemto be no viable alternatives. An epistemological vacuum has developed, sucking

in all ideas, however strange, treating them as equal in the great Marketplace of Ideas. What is worse than conceptual confusion, perhaps, is that not only can wenot predict what lies around the corner, we don’t even know what to say about both Present and Future. I abhor this state of affairs, for I do not know what totell my students about the world “out there.” They want to know. They want someone , anyone to explain what is going on, and will happen in five, 10, 25 years.

All I can do is shrug my shoulders, say “globalization,” and continue lecturing.Perhaps the real problem is that we are searching in all the wrong places for

Enlightenment, looking where the light is brightest rather than where the impor-tant causes, phenomena, and activities are to be found. In this article, I proposethat where the light is brightest is where we find both the hoary old theories of International Relations and International Political Economy, as well as thoserather unhelpful “updated” variants that have been proposed to explain contem-porary events, processes, and structures. As I shall explain in this article, in theirattempts to explain everything, these “new meta-narratives” fall short on bothmethodological and epistemological grounds: they focus on the wrong places,the wrong actors, and the wrong behaviors. In the attempt to maintain philo-sophical ~and disciplinary ! continuity between the old theories and the newmeta-narratives, devotees of both purport to describe “realities” that are, for themost part, highly idealized elaborations of realist poses that imagine the world tobe in reality as it is described in these pseudo-theoretical scenarios. In place of such imaginary conceptualizations, I propose a synthesis of materialism and idealism, rooted in history, radical political economy, and critical feminist theory.

My synthesis focuses on people —not states or markets or civilizations—and theirlocations in a changing global political economy, and power , as exercised by people and as the fundamental “force” that organizes and orders politics, eco-nomics, agency, and structure.

This article is intended as a provocative think piece. It is really two essays, thefirst meant to arouse and enrage, the second to galvanize readers and to moti-

vate contemplation of alternatives to conventional thinking on IR and IPE. It isa sketch of a much larger project, in which I seek to resuscitate and apply someof the insights and applications of political theory to global relations and toexamine the fate and future of politics under globalization ~see, e.g., Lipschutz,2000, forthcoming 2002!. That project is concerned primarily with people, rather

than structures, actors, or forces, not because the latter are not important inunderstanding global politics and political economy but, rather, because they areanalytically secondary to the former which are, at any rate, the consequences of people acting individually and collectively, in a material, historical, and power-ridden world. Indeed, as I argue below, the abstractions we use to discuss IR andIPE are better seen as epistemological moves that conceal the ways in whichpower is routinely exercised, which naturalize critical aspects of human socialrelations, and which obfuscate the possibilities of meaningful political change~Lipschutz, forthcoming 2002!.

In this article, I assay and critique several meta-narratives that, during the1990s, were offered in an attempt to shore up the withering corpus of Inter-

national Relations and International Political Economy. I have named thesemeta-narratives “Creating the New World ~Dis!Order,” “Welcome to the ~Dis!In-formation Revolution,” and “Panhandling in the Global Marketplace.” I arguethat they have failed and that their fatal ~but not tragic! flaws are traceable toobsession with control and discipline and the absence of people in them. Theseand other such stories—including neorealism and neoliberalism—are all “top-

322 Studying Global Political Economy



down” narratives, beginning with the state system, seeking to disseminate adominant “order,” and including people as an afterthought ~if they are in-cluded at all!. At the extreme, the neorealist argues that domestic politics donot matter, a stand that implies that people do not matter, either. I, for one,

think this is bunk. A theory of global politics that disregards the people that make up the global polity is, at best, an idealized fantasy and, at worst, animpoverished nightmare.

I then turn to the question that logically follows from my critique: What do I have to offer? If we were to study global political economy because people matter,

what might the study of global political economy look like? What kind of meth-odological, epistemological—and, indeed, ontological—approaches could pro-

vide the kind of insight, sensitivity, and particularity necessary to understand theglobal politics of a world of six billion people, as opposed to the internationalrelations of a world of 190 nation-states? And where would we begin? What Ioffer in the second part of this article builds from the ground up, starting with

what I call the social individual ~not the fabled sovereign consumer of liberaltheory ! and her relationships with others like and unlike her, and only ending

with global politics and what that encompasses. Of necessity, my framework ismore of a sketch of alternatives and possibilities than a well-developed map or“scientific” theory, but that is how it should be. Determinism is for billiard balls,not people.

I further locate my analytical possibilities in both historical materialism andcritical feminist theory, as is appropriate for such an approach to global politicaleconomy. On materialism, I follow John Agnew, who argues that “@people# arelocated according to the demands of a spatially extensive division of labour, theglobal system of material production and distribution, and variable patterns of political authority and control” ~1993:262!. Without intending to fall into the sin

of essentialism, I choose critical feminist theory as a second starting point pre-cisely because feminist theory’s initial rebellion was against the essentializing of

women’s role in household reproduction and for the politics of women’s involve-ment in the public sphere. If production and reproduction begin with the socialindividual, rebellion against the hegemony of IR theory and the politics it pro-duces should begin, as well, where the political is not only local, but also per-sonal. And my third starting point begins from observations by Joan Scott, apolitical theorist who writes that

subjects have agency. They are not unified, autonomous individuals exercisingfree will but rather subjects whose agency is created through situations andstatuses conferred on them. Being a subject means being “subject to definiteconditions of existence, conditions of endowment of agents and conditions of exercise.” These conditions enable choices, although they are not unlimited.~1992:34; quote in Adams and Minson, 1978:52!

Although Scott’s arguments are not explicitly rooted in historical materialism orfeminist theory or practice, she argues from a perspective that is fundamental toboth: identifying the presence of power in everyday life, and becoming sensitiveto the consequences of such power. Finally, to these claims I add the notion of the “social individual” ~a concept explored in some depth in Taylor, 1989:chs. 2,

25!. Not people as the methodological individualists of liberal theory and prac-tice, but people as social beings, with mutual relations and responsibilities to

each other, acting historically, materially, and in groups. As I shall elaborate inthe second part of this article, taken together, these claims form the founda-tional premises of a framework that, I believe, can be used to construct anapproach to Global Political Economy ~GPE! in which people do matter.

Ronnie D. Lipschutz 323



Part I: When Meta-Narratives Fail

Those Were the Days, My Friend

Until 1989, the notion that international politics could change was regarded as

utopian. History was in stasis and the world was in Order. Nineteen eighty-ninechanged all of that, raising hopes that other changes for the better were possible.There was, too, a certainty that the Millennium was not far off and that alsoseemed to offer promises of a new Beginning. Today, with Y2K only a dimmemory, no one any longer seems very optimistic about the future. For many, it is a period of unparalleled riches and promises, albeit not always such satisfyingones and, for some, recently dashed. For others, however, the neoliberal utopiaof Francis Fukuyama ~1992! and Thomas Friedman ~1999! is not only fantasy, it is the very incarnation of injustice. The New World Order envisaged for by some~and feared by others! has evolved in some quite different and unexpected ways,a confusion reflected in what our leaders tell us and in what we tell our students.

The universalized meta-narratives on which our teachers relied no longer seemterribly germane, despite valiant efforts to maintain them. At the same time ~andin my view!, the new Critical Theories that seemed so insightful and exciting inthe early 1990s provide few if any practical handles for effective political action.

Some might argue that this is a good time to try out different ideas. There areno immediate crises or major threats, and so there is little to be lost by “lettinga thousand f lowers bloom.” But the Marketplace of Ideas is a nice way of co-optingboth thought and action ~Marcuse, 1964!. It suggests that people ~and policy-makers! shop for “better theories and practices” according to some logic of intellectual efficiency, and that political fiascoes or failures to act are the result of failure to survive both the Social Darwinism of the market and the “death by

a thousand nibbles” of academic fashions. To succumb to such logic is bothshort-sighted and disempowering. It is short-sighted in that historical experienceand social relations are rendered irrelevant to the future. It is disempowering inthat notions of political and social agency are displaced by the sovereign con-sumer, whose aggregated and appetite-driven choices in the marketplace are,somehow, believed to add up to change for the better.

The three meta-narratives I discuss and dis below were all offered during the1990s as replacements for Cold War realism. All were “realist” in inspiration,purporting to describe reality and to prescribe what must be done to maintaininternational political order. In the old days—that is, prior to 1989—these might have been categorized as radical, realist, and liberal narratives, but all three

would have been constructed with the Cold War in mind. During the 1990s,however, they came to have a somewhat different form and function, for thenotion of bipolar “stability” was replaced, first by multipolar uncertainty andthen by theoretical chaos. Under such unpredictable and disorderly circum-stances, what is Power to do?

May I Have the New World (Dis)Order? To Go, Please.

The first failed meta-narrative is “Creating the New World ~Dis!Order.” It isabout the American effort to create what Deborah Stone ~1997! calls a “naturalcommunity” out of the realist rubble of a post–Cold War world bereft of orient-

ing poles. In 1987, the Brundtland Commission~ WCED, 1987

!put the mattersuccinctly: “The Earth is One, but the World is Not.” Fine slogan, devoid of

politics. For the Commission, bemoaning environmental threats to human civi-lization, the disorder arose from the fragmentation of that civilization into what

were then some 170-odd pieces that refused to cooperate as one to Save theEarth. In other words, the nature of the world both contradicted and threatened




the world of nature ~Lipschutz, 1998!. Only the new order of Our Common Future ,argued the Commission, would serve to overcome this contradiction and end thethreat to both Earth and World.

To those who chose to examine the Commission’s slogan and its premises

more closely, however, their “truth” was not so evident. To be sure, there is theindisputable physical fact that we live on a single planet, the small blue ball wecall, in English, “the Earth.” And it is not difficult to argue that many of humani-ty’s activities are not good for the planet. But one especially critical questionarises here: What disorder and whose Order? The Brundtland Commission’snotion of nation-states in disorder was a particularly narrow view of the worldand its prospects. In particular, it was the very diversity of political form andpractices that was the source of both the Commission’s sorrow and the inspira-tion for its recommendations. Whether this “disorder” was ~and is! a problem,however, has never been so obvious ~after all, monocultures can be a formula fordisaster!. Moreover, whether the state-centric epistemology of the Planet Manag-ers should be privileged depends on where you sit and whose ear you wish tocapture. The problem facing the Brundtland Commission’s members was that Power refused to listen to their Truths ~ which continues to be the case, as illus-trated by the U.S. defection from the UN-sponsored climate change negotiations!.

Looking for convincing meta-narratives has never been a problem for those who do have power, but even meta-narratives must bear some correspondence toreality if they are to have legs. President George H. W. Bush’s “New WorldOrder,” a product of the Gulf War of 1990–91, did not. It was premised on boththe possession of military power and the recognition of the authority conveyedby that power. Lacking the latter, it crumbled almost immediately. The UnitedStates remains powerful in both soft and hard terms, of course, and students stillflood Washington, D.C., every summer seeking jobs and internships, hoping to

learn how to speak truth to power. But force is no longer a sure means to eithercontrol or order, especially when its authority seems to contradict the reality perceived by others ~Lipschutz, 2000!. The fearful and defensive response of policymakers and others to street protests in Seattle, Washington, Geneva, andother cities suggests that power can overreach itself; that, when power is wielded

without legitimate authority, its very concentration and monopoly can generatethe resistance and disorder ~a different sort of Balance! so feared by the powerful.

Instead of acknowledging the hubris of excessive power and trying to come toterms with opposition to it, Power seeks to suppress resistance and disorder. Ratherthan recognizing the diversity of human social and political organization, Powerseeks to reify one—liberal, market-based democracy—as the highest and only ac-

ceptable and legitimate form. In place of redressing the inequities of market civ-ilization, Power offers the polity promises of pie in the sky by and by, even as therich get richer and the middle class and the poor slip and slide away. The UnitedStates has become, in the words of Alan Gilbert ~1999!, an “oligarchy with parlia-mentary forms,” in which and through which the illusion of a world of 195 auton-omous ~and potentially dangerous! nation-states sustains the demand for Power evenas really-existing power increasingly resides in the hands and networks of capital-ists and corporations. The meta-narrative of a fragmented and disorderly world, in

which threats lurk around every corner, obscures the very real Economic Orderthat has emerged almost unnoticed. While we have been instructed to watchdisorder and fear for our future, we have become ever more tightly entangled in

that new Order—that Matrix—from which there seems to be no escape, No Exit.

What If They Gave a (Dis)Information Revolution and Nobody Came?

The second failed meta-narrative is about the “Information Revolution” and thefog it has cast. As Robert Reich pointed out in 1992, the manipulation of symbols




had become an increasingly dominant mode of production around the world. And, whereas cars, missiles, and washing machines required sizable upfront invest-ments simply to get the goods out of the factory door, symbols could be pro-duced by anyone with access to a computer and reproduced at decreasing marginal

cost . In other words, information would soon be virtually free! And only that infor-mation with intrinsic value ~i.e., “the Truth”! would be valuable. False informa-tion would be revealed and rendered worthless through the discipline of themarket.

It was a nice argument but, in hindsight, a rather hollow one. Reich hardly reckoned, it would seem, with the enclosure of the intellectual commons and therush to privatize and control information. This is not the first time in humanhistory that such enclosure has taken place. Symbols are, after all, simply a formof language, a means of communication, accessible to all and, in theory, exclu-sive to none. As theorists of power have suggested ~Foucault, 1980a, 1980b!,however, language is more akin to proprietary-source software code than anopen-entry commons. Concepts and practices that do not fit within the socially and politically acceptable are liable to marginalization or rejection ~a practicethat has nothing to do with “free speech”; see Marcuse, 1964!. “Discourse,” asKaren Litfin ~1994:13! has pointed out, involves the exercise of power, and “thesupreme power is the power to delineate the boundaries of thought.”

The consequences of this truth should have surprised no one. Language hasalways been a tool of Power. Oral traditions were linked to stories of reward andpunishment; writing communicated stories as well as laws and regulations to aneducated elite; printing made access to the same wider than ever before. But the“truths” thus communicated were always closely controlled. Little has changed.Now, to be sure, the mechanisms for the dissemination of language have beenglobalized and made visual, but the dominant language, English, and its accept-

able discourses can be used to extend the reach of Power farther than everbefore. Of course, we often hear that language is only a tool, and that theInternet is only a means for using that tool. People are still required to wieldthe tool and to use it persuasively. Once upon a time ~or so say the cartoons!, theclub was a means of making language persuasive; today, persuasive language isused as a club. But there are clubs and there are Clubs. So, has anything really changed?

An examination of the ways in which the term information is used reveals thecritical lacuna in the meta-narrative of the Information Revolution. We are toldthat “information is power,” that knowing or finding out about things can beused, somehow, to increase individual power and influence. But what kind of

power? You can surf the Web, find the best deal on a car, and use that informa-tion to bargain down the price at your local auto dealer. Voilà! You have trumpedthe car salesmen! Only, what is new about haggling in the marketplace? Thedealer will still make a profit, even if you pay a few grand less. So where is thePower?

OK, let’s try again. How about building an atomic bomb in your garage? Surely that’s an example of information as Power. We are told we can build one; we canfind instructions for building one; it’s a simple matter to go out back and build one, right? And if you or I can build one, anyone can, including those who don’t have your best interests at heart, as we are often reminded ~Lipschutz, 1999a!.But, really, building an atomic bomb isn’t that easy, and why bother, anyway?

Handguns and assault weapons are much cheaper and easier to acquire. Carbombs are much scarier because cars are so common. And why try to buildsomething that will probably kill you in the effort? Undoubtedly, you will havelearned something valuable in the attempt to proliferate, but it’s not about making weapons of mass destruction, and it’s not something you didn’t already know.




Wait! One more chance! Please! How about politics? Surely the Internet andother electronic communications technologies have contributed to changes inthe way politics are practiced. After all, now it is possible to organize around the

world with others of a similar political bent, to plan joint actions, to learn new

techniques for lobbying and education, and so on. Representatives and leaderscan be inundated with e-mail at the drop of a hat. Breaking news is availablealmost instantaneously. And on and on. Yet, it seems likely that faster does not mean more activity or, for that matter, more impact. It’s clear that those who arealready skilled in political mobilization and communication can take advantageof these new channels, while everyone else either won’t or can’t.

Rather than empowering the masses ~or, for that matter, Reich’s Symbolic Analysts!, the Information Revolution is mostly about bread, circuses, and alien-ation. It is a means of dazzling people with an ever-growing volume of words andimages that, for the most part, serve to reinforce and extend existing hegemo-nies while atomizing and isolating individuals. The Internet and the World Wide

Web have become channels for buying and selling of things that most peopledon’t really need, while the stock market went into a frenzy over every new IPOthat had “dot something” in its name ~until recently, at any rate!, and massivetelecom mergers produced “synergies,” which is just another way of saying oli- gopoly . No one’s mind or behavior is really changed; existing proclivities findsupport, and individual tastes are titillated. The Chiapas uprising was publicizedthrough various electronic channels, created a groundswell of interest and sup-port among sympathizers, and even drew a few of the curious and activist to visit but, so many years later, what has really changed in Chiapas, in Mexico, in the

World? Where is the Power in the “Information Revolution” really located?Not in the hardware or the software. Technologies are never the cause of or

the path to political and social change. They are tools or means or mediating

variables, but nothing else. And if Information is Power, it is Power for the fewrather than the many. We see this in the way knowledge is being enclosedthrough the mechanism of “intellectual property rights.” We see this in the way that genetic and other data are extracted from human beings, processed, com-modified, and sold back to those from whom it was taken in the first place. Wesee this in the way that some have access to our innermost secrets, while we donot. The invocation of new technologies and their “revolutionary” potentialsexplains nothing, especially the way in which the changing world serves not todisperse Power but, rather, to further concentrate it.

Panhandling in the Global Marketplace

The third failed meta-narrative is about Prosperity and Progress in the GlobalMarketplace. Once, there were Three Worlds; now, there is only One. Global-ization has linked everyone together and together, it is said, we shall all prosper.The economy is booming, everyone is working, stock markets offer even thepatient small investor the opportunity to turn rags into riches. Once we are

jacked into the information matrix, not only will we be empowered, we will alsobe much better and better off: Prosperity and technology will provide us withhealthier, wealthier, and wiser lives and from that, in an extension of the “liberaldemocracies don’t fight” thesis, will follow the Utilitarian Utopia of Happiness

and World Peace. But the news is not all good or, rather, not so good foreveryone. One World might not be divided by geography, but it is certainly divided by class.

Several years ago, some “facts” about prosperity and progress were reportedfrom the epicenter of the New World Information Order, by an organizationcalled Joint Venture: Silicon Valley . Joint Venture is a “consortium of leaders in




business, government and education who work on key issues facing Silicon Val-ley” in Northern California. According to Joint Venture,

The average Silicon Valley wage was $49,060 last year @1998#, ranging from $90,380 in

the software industry to $73,080 in the computers 0communication industry, to $22,970 in the local and visitor services industry (where the largest number of jobs is to be found).

In 1997, median income in Silicon Valley was $74,030. For households in the bottom quintile, it dropped in real terms from $37,686 to $34,752 between 1991 and 1997, while

for households in the top quintile it rose from $109,883 to $130,755 during the same period .

Hourly earnings at the top of the wage scale rose from $23.49 to $29.77 [$62,000 0 year] between 1991 and 1997, while those at the bottom dipped during this period and only reached $8.47 [$17,600] again last year, the same as in 1990. ~Simon, 1999!

In 1999, according to these concerned leaders, the area’s economy was begin-ning to slow down while income inequality was rising. But, not to worry! Accord-ing to one member of Joint Venture, “It’s like we’ve been running a temperaturefor the last five years and now we’ve returned to normal.” Responded another,“The rate of growth the last few years has not been sustainable” ~Simon, 1999!.Inequality is good! In fact, the New Rich could not get where they are without the New Poor. In a region where the median cost of a house is $500,000 or more,even a $30 an hour salary ~$62,5000 year! does not go very far.

What are we to conclude from such “facts”? For the new First World—transnational corporations, finance capital, world citizens, economic and politi-cal elites; let us call them the CosmoCapitalClass TM—there really is One World,

with shared methodologies, epistemologies, and ontologies. “It is good to berich,” as Deng Xiaoping once said, and it is better to be richer ~although having

millions is no longer enough to be rich; now one needs billions !. Until thedot-com collapse of 2000–2001, working for a Silicon Valley startup was one way for a 22-year-old to enter the transnational elite; as of this writing, investment banking and stock brokerage remain other entry points ~academics need not apply, of course, unless they are economists!. Although the ideological basis forOne World is Smithian realism, it is really run along oligarchic lines. Companiescompete fiercely in the war of all against all, but the losers get a golden para-chute and return to fight again. There is a whiff of Upstairs, Downstairs here: Themasters get plenty of support from their peers when trouble arises; the servants

just get laid off ~or, as the British are wont to say, they become “redundant”!.The new Second World is composed largely of the producing classes, but not

those who produce material things. Rather, they are the symbolic analysts, whomight better be described as “Lumpen Scriveners.” The primary raw materialand the main product of these classes is language—words, symbols, icons, images,reports, videos, etc.—all generated in the service of CosmoCapitalClass TM. Eventhose who rail against this new world order ~including your humble author! arepretty much in its service. We rant endlessly about the importance of “highereducation,” but this only helps to increase the flow of college graduates, many of

whose inflated hopes are bound to be punctured. Those in the producing classeshope, as always, that they will find a way into the CosmoCapitalClass TM, and a few

will, thereby proving the rare exception to the rule and plenty of grist for mediamills. Most, however, will spend their lives inscribing and tasting of the good

consumer life without ever fully making it, while a fair number will discover that they have become redundant and that their services are no longer required. After all, how many public relations people does the world need ~even though, tothe casual observer, the market for “spokespeople” seems insatiable!?

The new Third World is everyone else, including those who work in services,mass production, gray markets, and black markets; taking a line from Ridley




Scott’s Bladerunner , let us call them the “Little People.” The Little People havefew, if any, economic rights and almost no security of livelihood. They may possess physical or craft skills, but they have never even been offered the oppor-tunity to accumulate the intellectual capital necessary to become a symbolic

analyst ~indeed, the Lumpen Scriveners are allied with the CosmoCapitalClass TM

to keep the Little People down!. Of course, there are profits to be made from theLittle People—after all, there are so many of them—but these are rather like thecrumbs collected by the bond traders in Tom Wolfe’s Bonfire of the Vanities .Collect enough crumbs and you can make a nice cake, but it takes effort anddetermination. Franchises are one way to collect crumbs ~the parent company collects an easy royalty; the franchise owner absorbs the overhead and transac-tion costs!, but the most ambitious CosmoCapitalClass TM members don’t seeenough return on such investments to bother with the Little People.

Some observers think that the Third World will rise up in revolt against theFirst and Second ~see, e.g., the writings of Robert Kaplan!. Eventually, there willbe so many of them ~at home and abroad! that they will “eat the rich,” as theNew Left used to say. But that is exactly what will not happen. If there is anuprising, it will come from the Second World, which will lash out at both First and Third, and make Seattle and all of those other demonstrations look likepicnics. The Revolution of Rising Expectations is a comforting myth, but it isquite wrong. It is the Fear of Declining Prospects that triggers conflict, violence,and wars of fragmentation ~Lipschutz, 2000:ch. 6!, and those fears are justly heldby the Lumpen Scriveners. Global Prosperity is a comforting illusion, but it ismore akin to teleological Pie in the Sky.

When Meta-Narratives Fail

At the end of the day ~and the beginning of the century !, these and othercomparable meta-narratives are largely myths, and myths are a form of socialcontrol. That is, they tie together certain observable “facts” with largely hypo-thetical, or even imaginary, causal relations, and a few hopes, to produce storiesthat purport to explain what is going on. It is not that these meta-narratives arenot “true” in the sense that we understand the term; rather, the “truths” they convey are neither universal nor general ~Latour, 1987; Foucault, 1980b!. Forsome—especially those who have helped to compose the narrative through par-ticipation and storytelling—they are true ~Lipschutz, 1999a!. For others, however,these meta-narratives structure and direct behavior in the same way that a set of instructions facilitates the assembly of a desk or a toy or the operation of a new

piece of computer software. One who carefully follows the plan will surely suc-ceed. Failure, then, is a result of not following the instructions, and one who isnot careful can only be the responsible party when failure looms. As most parents and computer-literate individuals are well aware, assembly instructionsare hardly foolproof ~and often barely intelligible!. But we usually blame our-selves for failure, and try again. So it is when meta-narratives fail.

Where does this leave us? Is there nothing left to teach in internationalrelations or international political economy? It would seem not. Regularly, Ireceive review copies of newly published IR and IPE texts. They always have titleslike Trends and Transformations on the Stage of World Politics or New Innovations and Old Verities in International Relations . I wish these books would stop arriving unbid-

den~publishers take note!

!. To me, they are the disciplinary equivalent of junkmail. I would like to get rid of them, but I feel guilty when I throw out books and

I don’t have the time or inclination to return them ~and wouldn’t it be unethicalto sell them?!. None contain anything of interest, and that makes me wonder who buys these books, who teaches with them, and what those teachers tell their stu-dents? But enough whining! Do I have anything better to suggest? I hope so.




Part II: A Framework for Global Political Economy Because People Matter

What About People?

International Relations ~IR ! and International Political Economy ~IPE! texts alwaysbegin from the top down, with the “state system” and the “international econo-my.” This is a heuristic device, of course, but heuristics are crude models, andmodels are often taken to be versions of the “real world.” As a result, studentsare left to believe they have no power to act within the global economy or to play a concrete role in it either, inasmuch as the action seems to be all concentratedat the top. I don’t believe the top-down heuristic is accidental; rather, it is part of the production and propagation of Power. So long as we continue to makestates the center of our understanding and analysis, this heuristic will continue toexercise its hypnotic power. Please understand: this is not an argument that states are irrelevant or a plea to pay greater attention to “non-state actors” or“transborder flows and transactions” or the like ~Lipschutz, 1999b!. Rather, it isan argument for paying attention to the ways in which human social relations areconstituted, in all their infinite diversity, to generate what we call “politics.”

Consider, for example, the state, state system, and international economy.They are, strictly speaking, only complex social institutions, the patterned, struc-tured results of people acting on their beliefs and interests over extended peri-ods of time in patterned and structured ways. Within these arrangements, a fewpeople ~“actors”! exercise a great deal of seemingly autonomous power andinfluence even as most people appear to possess very little. Through theseinstitutional structures and the practices associated with them, some individualsand groups become powerful, wealthy, safe, and comfortable while quite a largenumber remain weak, poor, insecure, and in want. Why such a great disparity is

so widely accepted is both obvious and a question to be explored. We can, anddo, blame nature and structure for these outcomes, but to do so is to exilepolitics from our world and say “there is no other way.” The inequitable distri-bution of wealth is not a matter of Fate but, rather, the result of some peoplebehaving in ways that benefit themselves and impose costs on others. These are

political acts .To ignore this last point is also to banish agency from history and render

people powerless. Moreover, the existence of such a disparity does not justify ignoring the vast numbers of other people involved while concentrating almost exclusively on the beliefs and activities of states and leaders and the ways in

which their actions play out in terms of structural effects, as much of the IR and

IPE literature does. This latter focus is an example of the way in which a partic-ular kind of power—the power to specify certain theoretical parameters andsuppositions while excluding others—serves to reproduce other kinds of power—the unchallenged power of states and leaders.

It is, of course, much easier to accept and reproduce such structures than tochange them, because people tend to accept and act on the notion that associ-ated beliefs and practices are the only ones possible ~e.g., “after 1989, there areno alternatives but capitalism”!. The failure to succeed under such conditions isnormalized as the fault of the individual, rather than a result of a stacked deck,and this buffers elites from resistance. Furthermore, beliefs and behaviors that seek to challenge these structures are marginalized through ridicule and ostra-

cism~e.g., “idealists! utopians!”

!and thereby made to appear impossible

~but,recall 1989!. None of this means that justice, respect, and equity are not possible

in this world, but it does mean that, for the most part, these are not the primary functions or consequences of social structures as they exist today.

From one perspective, my discussion here appears tautological: small struc-tures add up to big ones, and big ones establish the conditions under which the




small ones help to reproduce the entire social context and maintain the big ones~ Agnew, 1993!. From a different perspective, however, the relative power of bothsmall and big structures is not the same everywhere. Some states are powerfuland many are not; some individuals are powerful and many are not; The New York

Times gets a lot more respect than The Nation . The critical question is, therefore: What are the conditions that permit some actors so many degrees of freedomand others so few? It is tempting here to invoke concepts such as “structural

violence” ~patriarchy ! and “global forces” ~capitalism! as explanations, but thistells us nothing about the origins or even the locus of such processes.

Johann Galtung ~1994! points out that structures are reproduced throughpeople’s everyday activities, either by choice or necessity, but big structures arebuilt up of nested structures, the innermost of which are the “transpersonal”~such as patriarchy within the household!, inscribed on the individual by thesocial context around her. Again, it is also tempting to lay responsibility forthese contexts on the family, whose members are often blamed for failing toconvey appropriate “values”—which are, of course, society specific—to theirchildren. Again, however, this vastly oversimplifies and obscures the socializa-tion process.

Because people matter, global political economy must begin not as somethingethereal, abstract, and far away, but rooted in the conditions of everyday lives,here and now. And, once we understand these conditions, we must also seek tounderstand and to make better the conditions of others, of those whose everyday lives could be and must be made better. Marx’s well-known dictum about peopleand history applies here, with an additional proviso: since we make our ownhistories, albeit constrained by the histories of those who came before us, it isessential that we understand those histories so as not to be wholly their captiveand to be able to construct our own freedom.

“All of this is fine and well,” the reader ~ you!! might respond, “but what istheoretical about it? Where is the theory that will replace the ones that havefailed?” That, however, is my very point: There can be no meta-narrative in aglobal political economy in which people matter. At best, there can be intermediate-level theorizing that seeks to explain, first, the ways in which specific, and oftendifferent, social contexts seem to produce very similar social outcomes and,second, the ways in which different cultural contexts offer the tools to resist and,perhaps, change those outcomes.

What I propose is that, in order to develop a people-based framework forglobal political economy, three steps are necessary. First, we must become awareof the beliefs and behaviors underlying the reproduction of structures and the

ways in which individuals are socialized into accepting them as “natural.” Thisinvolves, as well, understanding how each social individual comes to find her-self in a particular place and time, doing particular things, and how suchplacement and behavior is relationally linked to other social individuals and,ultimately, to global political economy. Second, we must ask how we, as socialindividuals, might confront such socialization and placement in theoretical termsand how we face both constraints and opportunities; this is followed by engag-ing in similar analysis for other social individuals. I suggest that we wouldbegin this second step ethnographically, constructing a “political economic au-tobiography” that maps out our own life trajectory in terms of agency andstructure. The third step is social action, that is, acting as social individuals. In

this article, I take up only the first step offering a brief example; the last twoare left to the reader and future articles. As I noted in the Introduction, theframework for a global political economy ~GPE! that I propose here is rootedin the social individual, historical materialism, critical feminist theory, and therole of agency in the construction of “political space.” Each of these is ex-plained below.




The Social Individual

By the term “social individual,” and the relations it implies, we recognize peopleas social beings born with and socialized into the experience of emotions that should be allowed to grow over a lifetime, creating and relying on mutual

relations with and responsibilities to each other, developing through their ownhistories, acting historically, materially, and in groups. What does this mean?

The Western legal system is organized around the notion of the liberal individual ~historically, a male citizen! to whom rights, duties, and liabilities aregranted and assigned. These abstract rights, duties, and liabilities are mademanifest through various forms of documentation whose material existence tes-tifies to the constitution of each particular individual. In order to acquire rep-resentation as a “real” person, the liberal individual must engage in certainpractices that generate those documents that testify to her material existence. Inorder to travel outside United States territorial borders ~an abstract right !, aresident must obtain a passport ~material documentation! testifying to that right.

To demonstrate one’s entitlement to such documentation, the prospective trav-eler must produce a birth certificate ~or comparable document ! “proving” theoccurrence of an historical and material event ~one’s birth within the UnitedStates, for example!. But the birth certificate exists by virtue of the duty of one’sparents—there are spaces on the birth certificate for both mother and father—toregister said birth as the legal issue of two liberal individuals, an act that gener-ates the certificate. A failure to do this could result in the paradox that one doesnot exist ~hence, the seemingly pervasive fear of “identity theft”!. Moreover, this very act of registration by two liberal individuals, an act required by law, produces in the eyes of the law the liberal individual whose material existence is proved by virtue of her having been born.

Whereas the liberal individual is produced by law, the social individual isproduced by people. Power is still involved, but it is the power of microspacesrather than macrospaces ~Foucault, 1980a!. As such, power is amenable to beingused productively, rather than merely for production. There is no guarantee, of course, that power will be used productively; it could merely serve to reproducepatriarchy. ~Below, I invoke feminist theory as a means of avoiding this outcome.!The social individual’s material existence is almost never in doubt; the very event of birth is an occasion of experience, pain, and joy, to be shared, and often

witnessed, by those close to both parents and child. Hearing parental testimony,even decades after the event, who can question that it happened? Every socialindividual develops by virtue of the presence and actions of other social individ-uals ~and those who are largely isolated during the first formative months oftennever recover!. Ultimately, we are who we are not by our beliefs and actionsalone, but by virtue of our being embedded in webs of social relations that constitute our very identities. The fully autonomous and atomized individual,however well-documented, is not a human being except in the legal sense; webecome and remain human by virtue of our very sociality. This has major impli-cations for the construction of a people-centered theory of global political economy.

Historical Materialism

The second element in my framework-building is to be found in historical mate-

rialism. I use the term “historical materialism” in a neo-Marxist sense here, but not to suggest domination by the material, as in a crude instrumental approach.Rather, I mean to eschew the idealism of both neorealism and neoliberalism, toacknowledge the constitutive interplay between “ideas” and material conditions,and to be sensitive to the relationship between production ~understood as sub-sistence and livelihood! and reproduction ~understood as social and cultural




survival and continuity !. As Marx put it, “We erect our structures in imaginationbefore we erect it in reality” ~1967:178, quoted in Harvey, 1989:345!, after whichour imaginations are constrained by what we have erected.

Through this form of historical materialism, I mean also to comprehend the

genealogies of the physical and social arrangements that people confront whenthey wish to act. Those patterns are the result not only of existing relations of power and wealth, largely determined through property, as I argue elsewhere~Lipschutz, 2002!, but also the histories ~or genealogies! through which thoserelations have developed. The implications of this point go beyond the generally understood limits to the “making of our own histories.” Rather, the point torecognize here is that even the ways in which we conceptualize the making of ourown histories, and the constraints on those possibilities, are already a conse-quence of histories of production and reproduction conditioned by the natural-ization of the constructed individual.

Critical Feminist Theory

In using the term “critical feminist theory,” I do not refer to theories andstandpoints that criticize. Rather, I mean theories that examine, with skepticism,not only the subject positions in which individuals find themselves—positionsthat are a consequence of gendered divisions of labor—but also the develop-mental premises on which explanations of those positions are based. Thesepremises are not only gendered but also rooted in specific naturalized proposi-tions about power, authority, and human nature. I also mean to be aware of the

ways in which everyday ideas and practices are permeated not only by masculinist systems of power that reproduce themselves and produce the subjects they con-trol, but also by a naturalized and gendered ontology of human subjectivity

~Zalewski and Parpart, 1998!. Such an approach goes beyond more familiarnotions of gendering ~at least, to me! by making specific claims about theconstitution of the subjects which they claim to describe objectively.

What does it mean, then, to organize an understanding of GPE around “crit-ical feminist theory”? As I suggested above, I am especially concerned here withthe way in which power “produces” individual subjects, on the one hand, and inthe way in which power can be used productively for emancipation, on the other.

Judith Butler has written extensively about this problematic, arguing that

@t #he question of “the subject” is crucial for politics, and for feminist politics inparticular, because juridical subjects are invariably produced through certain

exclusionary practices that do not “show” once the juridical structure of politicshas been established. In other words, the political construction of the subject proceeds with certain legitimating and exclusionary aims, and these politicaloperations are effectively concealed and naturalized by a political analysis that takes juridical structures as their foundation. Juridical power inevitably “pro-duces” what it claims merely to represent; hence, politics must be concerned

with this dual function of power: the juridical and the productive. ~1990:2!

In most theories of IR and IPE, juridical power—that is, the structural power wielded by and inherent in dominating institutions—becomes the guiding light of explanation. As one moves farther away from the lamppost, so to speak, the

light dims and so, it appears to the untutored eye, does Power. This is why, I would suggest, discussions of international politics always contrast “states” with“other” actors and then ask whether the latter have any juridical power ~Lipschutz,2000:ch. 8!. Like the fabled story about the drunk and the lamppost, thesequestioners look only where the light is brightest and regard the penumbra asboth uninteresting and unimportant.




Constructing and Acting in Political Space

The concept of “political space” is a fairly old one ~but, see Teske, 2000!, althoughit has usually been restricted to territories within which politics takes place. It is,by now, a cliché to claim that human institutions are “social constructions,” withimplications that range from threats to rationality all the way to arguments about the nature of reality. I, however, want to take a different tack and address howpeople construct the political spaces within which they act. While this might appear a banal point, it actually facilitates an understanding of why, even asstructures constrain, agents can act.

In the interstate realm, political space has been treated largely in terms of geopolitics. The state is the archetypal political space of and for our time, andinstitutionalized politics have been, for the most part, restricted to those prac-tices considered legitimate within each political space. When “politics” is definedas only those practices permitted by organizing structures ~rules, beliefs, laws,acts, agencies, etc.!, other forms of politics become marginalized or are even

suppressed ~Marcuse, 1964!. Thus, for example, social movements that challengeinstitutionalized practices, and for which there is no legitimized participatory framework, are often dismissed as unrepresentative, irrelevant, illegal, and so on.But social movements do exist, established by social individuals working collec-tively ~of which more, below!. Over time, some are legitimized ~e.g., labor unions!or co-opted into institutionalized politics ~e.g., the German Greens!, while othersare not. And some of the issues and organizations that emerge from socialmovements are institutionalized through bureaucratized nongovernmental orga-nizations, many of which have become ancillary to the continued hegemony of liberalism.

It is the engendering of these unauthorized political spaces and movements

that makes clear the inadequacies of institutionalized politics. Social movementsare not the product of rational calculation as it is commonly understood, andthis is their great strength. If they were “rational,” they could be anticipated,obstructed, and co-opted by the defenders of the liberal faith. Because they arebased on emotional commitment to certain ends, however, their logic is opaqueto the practitioners of institutionalized politics. As the result of the collectiveaction of social individuals, united not by contract but by emotional commit-ment, movements have objectives but no cost-benefit calculus, offer satisfactionbut no remuneration.

In light of the constraints imposed by institutions on the creation of politicalspaces, how do social individuals create and move into political spaces, and

generate support and legitimacy for their projects? How are social individualsconstrained, limited, or marginalized by political projects and spaces already inexistence ~sometimes for decades if not longer!? In other words, what is it that enables some but not others to open political space and achieve their politicalprojects? Elsewhere ~Lipschutz, 1996:ch 7; 1997!, I have suggested that the acqui-sition of agency rests on a recognition of both context and contingency. As John

Walton ~1992:287! has argued,

The constitution of local society . . . is far more than an imposition or small-scalereflection of the national state. On the contrary, it is the evolving product of multiple influences—the people, the economy, natural resource, intermediate

levels of state authority, local accommodation to some broader designs, deter-mined resistance to others and, perhaps above all, collective action founded oncultural meaning. Action takes place within social structures that forcibly shapeexperience, yet people live in local societies where particular customs, exigen-cies, and choices mediate structural constraints. On the ground people construct their lives in consciously meaningful ways that cannot be read from state-




centered directives any more than they can be deduced from modes of economicproduction.

Under these circumstances, agency is a matter of being aware of alternatives and

helping to foster conditions under which meaningful choices can be made. Morethan awareness, however, agency also involves collective action.

In established contexts, governed by patterned rules, relations, and behaviors,therefore, social individuals seeking agency must bring to bear two kinds of resources on their project; call them “social” and “material.” Social resourcesinclude intellectual arguments, human capital, and structural knowledge. Mate-rial resources include force, wealth, goods and commodities, and offers of ben-efit. “Getting things done” involves wielding of both types of resources as well asknowing both “rules” ~structural knowledge! and “people” ~human capital!. Hav-ing devised an objective or a project, the social individual must map out astrategy. This is not necessarily a well-designed plan; many “strategies” are more

ad hoc in nature than fully developed schemes. Such strategies involve using thetwo forms of resources to mobilize supporters, through intellectual argumenta-tion and dissemination of material promises. Most analyses focus on the latter,because material effects are easier to observe and measure, but intellectualresources are at least as important. Ultimately, as Norman Long ~1992:23–24!points out,

Effective agency . . . requires organizing capacities; it is not simply the result of possessing certain persuasive powers or forms of charisma . . . . [A]gency (and

power) depend crucially upon the emergence of a network of actors who become partially,though hardly ever completely, enrolled in the “project” of some other person or persons . . . .

It becomes essential, therefore, for social actors to win the struggles that takeplace over the attribution of specific social meanings to particular events, actionsand ideas.

Given these four foundational elements, what would an analytical frameworkfor a people-centered approach to GPE look like? How could the pieces bebrought together? What are the pieces? The location of each social individual inthe GPE is the result of very different social histories. The social structures within

which people live are different from one place to another. The possibilities foragency are similar, but never identical. And, because of the dynamism of theglobal economy, some types of change are ubiquitous. Only by mapping out the

life choices and trajectories of particular social individuals in a range of different social contexts can we begin to comprehend both the complexity of the GPE andthose conditions experienced by people in different places.

As I suggested above, I am especially concerned here with the way in whichpower ordinarily “produces” isolated individuals, regarded as objects, on the onehand, and the way in which power might be used productively for emancipatingthem as social subjects, on the other. Productive power—what Tétreault andTeske argue is a “function of the distribution and strategic location of capacities”~2000:6!—is of an entirely different character from the ordinary understandingof power. It is, first of all, relational in that social bonds among individuals play a major role in their constitution. Productive power acknowledges that emotions

and bonds marginalized by juridical power and dismissed by liberalism are actu-ally constitutive of human life. Second, productive power operates in themicrospaces of everyday life, not through domination but rather through therespect that individuals give to each other and the empathy they have for eachother. Finally, using such productive power, the individual can also be an agent of resistance to structures of domination.




It is in this context that we can ask, Who acts? For most students of IR and IPEthat question is a relatively simple one. Their ready answer obscures not only thecomplexity of those units to which action is ascribed ~ whether state or individual!but also the very meaning of the term “action.” It is often noted that, strictly

speaking, corporate organizations such as the state do not “act” in the generally understood meaning of the term which, at its simplest, connotes cause and effect ~and at its most complex, is much more complicated!. Nonetheless, it is alsoevident that corporate behavior is not the sum of individual behaviors of those

who make up the corporate organization. Historically, we have elided this diffi-culty by “assuming the spherical cow,” that is, pretending and behaving as if theproposition of methodological individualism for corporate units is accurate enoughfor analytical purposes.

But what do we lose as a result of such idealization of individual action? And what would a principle of non-individual social action look like? Here is wherethe concept of “social agency” becomes central, not as applied to social move-ments but rather as a product of the histories and social relations of each person

who acts, alone and together. Lest this seem a contradiction in terms, just as noone is an isolated individual, no one acts in isolation of others. The socialcontexts in which each person lives are the product of complicated histories andrelations with other persons and, of course, with structures. Such relationshipsremain important throughout the individual’s life, even though they have beenmarginalized through both patriarchy and liberalism.

As I have suggested above, the location of each social individual in the GPE isthe result of very different social histories. The social relationships within whichpeople live are different from one place to another, and the possibilities foragency, though similar, are never identical. Because of the dynamism of theglobal economy, some types of change are ubiquitous but, at the same time,

these changes have different impacts in different places and on different people.Only by mapping out the life choices and trajectories of particular social indi-

viduals in a range of different social contexts can we begin to comprehend boththe complexity of the GPE and those conditions experienced by different peoplein different places. What a people-centered GPE analysis would look like inpractice is less than evident ~and is a project in progress!, but I will hazard herean imagined example that draws elements from some of my earlier work ~Lip-schutz, 1996!.

Rolling Down the River: An Imagined Case Study of People-Centered GPE

Our setting is a smallish city that has grown up along a mid-sized river that f lowsout of a nearby mountain range. The city has gone through an industrial phaseand is now also home to a mid-sized university. The river has, over the years,played a number of economic and aesthetic roles in the area: food source,recreational area, small-scale transport, waste dump. There are, of course, publicagencies whose responsibilities for the river extend to pollution control, landuse, and species diversity, but they are resource-constrained, staff-limited, andregarded with some hostility and disdain by local residents.

Taking a leaf from the environmental movement, one resident decides toestablish a watershed group to protect and clean up the river. Her motivationdoes not spring from her brow like Athena from Zeus but, rather, is the result of

many years of social interactions with others both inside and outside of her city.She is aware that there are numerous like-minded individuals living in the city,loosely associated by virtue of normative beliefs and values as well as periodicsocial interactions in small and large groups. These people also have a commit-ment to the area that goes beyond pure rational calculation and self-interestedbehavior; it is an emotional bond to both place and people that rests on expe-




rience and meaning. Our agent approaches several of those acquaintances whomshe believes will be receptive to the idea of a watershed group, and proposes that they spend the next four weekends cleaning a stretch of the river’s banks. Thesesocial individuals agree, even though they will receive no direct economic benefit

from the work, and sign on to the project. They, in turn, mention their project to others so that, by the time the third Saturday arrives, several hundred peopleare participating in the cleanup.

There is no official stamp of approval on this activity. No municipal agency has sponsored it, no local business is paying for refreshments, no existing NGOhas publicized it. In fact, some oppose the project because it involves what they believe is a violation of their property rights. Some agency staff criticize the groupbecause they have not followed the administrative regulations devised for suchcleanups. City council members view the group with some trepidation, fearingthat it might become another nucleus of municipal political activity opposed tothem. And business people are concerned that one result will be further regu-lation that will somehow impinge on their profits ~this is especially true for oneoperation that has been surreptitiously dumping its wastes into the river!. At theend of the four weeks, the participants decide to establish an organization ded-icated to protection and maintenance of the watershed. In time, this group findsitself engaged with many others, in many other locations, who have organizedsimilar programs. Ultimately, such watershed conservation programs become thebasis for a transnational network composed of both bureaucratized organizationsand informal social movement groups.

It is evident that I have left a great deal out of this story; a complete tellingand analysis would require a monograph, if not a book ~see, e.g., Walton, 1992!.But we can envision three steps to developing such a story in full, three steps that can also provide a blueprint to our social agency. First, a material genealogy of

the physical area is required. To account for the creation of this political space, we must examine the industrial and environmental history of the river and its watershed, the ways in which capital might has moved in and out over time, thenature of the material interests that contributed to the river’s degradation andtheir resistance to or support of restoration.

Second, we have to spell out a critical feminist analysis of the structures of power surrounding both social context and social individuals engaged in thisproject. What are the microspaces of localized political and economic power that produce social individuals as well as action and inaction in this place, and what are the impacts of power emanating from the macrospaces, including emergent global environmental discourses and practices that affect global politics and

economics?Third, we have to develop individual genealogies. We have to examine theindividual histories of at least some of the social individuals participating in thismovement-cum-organization: How long have they lived in the area and where?

What kind of production and reproduction are they engaged in? What are theirintellectual histories?

At the end of this analysis, we might begin to see how we act upon and areacted upon by the variety of structures and power relations that help to consti-tute and constrain, but do not close down, everyday life. More to the point,“normalizing” such people-centered analyses would have useful and productiveepistemological and methodological consequences. It would illustrate the enor-

mous diversity of people’s lives and life trajectories and how they have comeabout, and go a long way to delegitimating those knowledges and practices that Foucault ~1991! called “biopower,” that is, the manipulation of people throughinstrumental power. It would shed light on the productive side of power withinlife’s microspaces and foster a greater awareness of the possible relationshipsbetween agency and structure. It would help to empower students, activists, and




academics by demonstrating how to construct political spaces and to challengebiopower with effectiveness. Finally, and most of all, it would implicate andinvolve our students in the production of their own histories.

After Meta-Narrative

There is, quite evidently, no meta-narrative here. There cannot be. Meta-narratives are presented as universal truths, applicable to all places for all time,even as they are very contingent and limited. A people-centered GPE cannot,and should not, ever approach this status. Capitalism is a social structure whoseeffects are discernible all over the world, but capitalism articulates with people ina myriad of different ways. Accumulation and profit are the drivers behindcorporate behavior, but neither occurs without conscious and deliberate action~the invisible hand, notwithstanding!. And poverty and inequity are not theconsequence of inaction by the poor and weak but, rather, the behaviors of the

strong and wealthy. A meta-narrative induces us to ignore responsibility andbecome fatalists, and liberalism is especially well-organized in this respect ~ Wolin,1996!.

Constructing and acting on a theory of global political economy because people matter is quite the opposite of a meta-narrative. This does not mean there are nocategories, that no generalizations can be made about the life conditions of many people. It does mean that to speak only in terms of categories is to robpeople of their agency. This does not mean that individuals are the free-rangingatoms of liberalism or, as Margaret Thatcher put it, “There is no such thing associety!” It does mean that choices are constrained, often by “things” of whichthose who are constrained are unaware. But, I would argue, there is greaterpolitical freedom—individual and collective—in comprehending how social struc-tures constrain one’s choice than in blind fatalism. Moreover, in becoming awareof the juxtaposition of individual locations and social structures, we can alsobegin to see the possibilities of collective political action to resist and changethose structures. To rework a well-worn cliché: Only by throwing off the shacklesof meta-narrative will we begin to know and make history. And what greaterchallenge can we give to our students?

References

Adams, P., and J. Minson ~1978! “The Subject of Feminism.” m 0 f 2. Agnew, J. ~1993! “Representing Space—Space, Scale and Culture in Social Science.” In Place 0Culture 0

Representation , edited by J. Duncan and D. Ley, pp. 251–271. London: Routledge.Butler, J. ~1990! Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity . New York: Routledge.Foucault, M. ~1991! “Governmentality.” In The Foucault Effect: Studies in Governmentality , edited by G.

Burchell, C. Gordon, and P. Miller, pp. 87–104. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Foucault, M. ~1980a! “Two Lectures.” In M. Foucault, Power 0Knowledge , trans. Colin Gordon, pp. 78–

108. New York: Pantheon.Foucault, M. ~1980b! “Truth and Power.” In M. Foucault, Power 0Knowledge , trans. Colin Gordon,

pp. 109–133. New York: Pantheon.Friedman, T. ~1999! The Lexus and the Olive Tree . New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux.Fukuyama, F. ~1992! The End of History and the Last Man . New York: Free Press.Galtung, J. ~1994! Human Rights in Another Key . Cambridge: Polity Press.Gilbert, A. ~1999! Must Global Politics Constrain Democracy? Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

Harvey, D. ~1989! The Condition of Post-Modernity . Cambridge: Blackwell.Huntington, S. P. ~1996! The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order . New York: Simon

and Schuster.Latour, B. ~1987! Science in Action . Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Lipschutz, R. D., with J. Mayer ~1996! Global Civil Society and Global Environmental Governance .

Albany, NY: SUNY Press.




Lipschutz, R. D. ~1997! From Place to Planet: Local Knowledge and Global Environmental Gover-nance. Global Governance 3~1!:83–102.

Lipschutz, R. D. ~1998! “The Nature of Sovereignty and the Sovereignty of Nature: Problematizingthe Boundaries Between Self, Society, State and System.” In The Greening of Sovereignty in World Politics , edited by K. D. Litfin, pp. 109–138. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Lipschutz, R. D. ~1999a! Terror in the Suites—Narratives of Fear and the Political Economy of Danger. Global Society 13~4!:411–439.

Lipschutz, R. D. ~1999b! Members Only? Citizenship and Civic Virtue in a Time of Globalization.International Politics 36~2!:203–233.

Lipschutz, R. D. ~2000! After Authority: War, Peace and Global Politics in the 21st Century . Albany, NY:SUNY Press.

Lipschutz, R. D. ~2002! “Theorizing Global Political Economy Because People Matter.” In Feminist Approaches to Social Movements, Community, and Power: Partial Truths and the Politics of Community ,edited by M. A. Tétreault and R. Teske. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press. Forth-coming.

Litfin, K. ~1994! Ozone Discourses . New York: Columbia University Press.Long, N. ~1992! “From Paradigm Lost to Paradigm Regained? The Case for an Actor-Oriented

Sociology of Development.” In Battlefields of Knowledge—The Interlocking of Theory and Practice in Social Research and Development , edited by N. Long and A. Long, pp. 16–43. London: Routledge.Marcuse, H. ~1964! One-Dimensional Man . Boston: Beacon Press.Marx, K. ~1967! Capital ~New York, 3 vols.!.Reich, R. ~1992! The Work of Nations . New York: Vintage.Scott, J. ~1992! “Experience.” In Feminists Theorize the Political , edited by J. Butler and J. Scott,

pp. 22–40. London: Routledge.Simon, M. ~1999! “Sobering Slowdown Hits Overheated Silicon Valley—Quality of life down, income

inequality up.” San Francisco Chronicle , Jan. 8, at: http:00 www.sfgate.com0cgi-bin0article.cgi?file0

chronicle0archive019990010080MN6440.DTL ~accessed 12012000!.Stone, D. ~1997! Policy Paradox: The Art of Political Decision Making . New York: Norton.Taylor, C. ~1989! Sources of the Self—The Making of Modern Identity . Cambridge, MA: Harvard Univer-

sity Press.Teske, R. L. ~2000! “Political Space—The Importance of the Inbetween.” In Conscious Acts and the

Politics of Political Change , edited by M. A. Tétreault and R. L. Teske, pp. 72–90. Columbia:University of South Carolina Press.

Tétreault, M. A., and R. L. Teske ~2000! “Framing the Issues.” In Conscious Acts and the Politics of Political Change , edited by M. A. Tétreault and R. L. Teske, pp. 1–25. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press.

Walton, J. ~1992! Western Times and Water Wars—State, Culture, and Rebellion in California . Berkeley:University of California Press.

Wolin, S. ~1996! “Fugitive Democracy.” In Democracy and Difference , edited by S. Benhabib, pp. 31–45.Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

World Commission on Environment and Development (WCED) ~1987! Our Common Future . Oxford:Oxford University Press.

Zalewski, M., and J. Parpart, eds. ~1998! The “Man” Question in International Relations . Boulder, CO: Westview Press.


Lipschutz_Because People Matter Studying GPE_2001

Documents

Transcript of Lipschutz_Because People Matter Studying GPE_2001