Agency is Positionally Distributed: Practice Theory and (Post)Colonial Structures

Abstract

Why are some practices available to some actors in world politics, but not to others? In this theory note, we develop a theory of agency as positionally distributed: In global politics, the action potentials of groups and individuals vary depending on their location in the macrostructures inherited from common histories of colonial domination and exploitation. We contribute to the understanding of subordinate agency by exploiting the many synergies between International Practice Theory and Postcolonial Theory. Where the former sometimes struggles to capture deep macrostructures, the latter emphasizes the constitutive effects of coloniality. Conversely, where the postcolonial gaze faces the aporia of giving voice to the subordinate, a practice approach helps make sense of the indexicality of agency, including defiance and subversion. Based on these complementarities, we develop a structural concept according to which agency, including subordinate forms, is a relational effect of an unequal playing field characterized by centuries of (post)colonial dynamics. Overall, the theory note helps explain why the very same practices, such as border crossing, seem to be distributed unequally across groups depending not on their competence but on their position in social and international structures such as the North–South divide or the global color line.