World power -- to be taken (f)or granted?: The concept of political power and its significance for an analysis of power in international relations.

Hughes, Annika Katherine (2009) World power -- to be taken (f)or granted?: The concept of political power and its significance for an analysis of power in international relations. PhD thesis, London School of Economics and Political Science.

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Abstract

This thesis focuses on the importance of the concepts of political power, structure and agency in the study of International Relations. It argues that mainstream IR theory has yet to incorporate the main findings of critical theories, such as post-modernism and feminism, into its analytical toolbox. It will offer the author's own theory of world power, which combines a Foucaultian with a structurationist approach to argue for the existence of four-faced power relationships across twelve interdependent sites of material and cognitive power: i) the site of time; ii) the site of space; iii) the site of knowledge and aesthetics; iv) the site of morality and emotion; v) the site of identities; vi) the site of the body; vii) the site of welfare; viii) the site of culture/cultural life; ix) the site of civic associations; x) the site of the economy; xi) the site of the organisation of violence and coercive relations; and xii) the site of regulatory and legal institutions. These power relations operate at multiple levels of agency across world society, from the individual through to world polities, as well as across the twelve sites of power interdependently. The case of HIV/AIDS is then used to illustrate the necessity of broadening mainstream conceptions of power in International Relations.

Item Type:	Thesis (PhD)
Uncontrolled Keywords:	Political Science, International Relations
Sets:	Collections > ProQuest Etheses Departments > International Relations
URI:	http://etheses.lse.ac.uk/id/eprint/2751

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