Introducing Relational Political Analysis

Artiguismo, restauración y usos estratégicos del pasado. La construcción discursiva de la identidad colectiva asociada al partido Cabildo Abierto

“…Dentro de la tradición semiótica, aparte de las investigaciones pioneras de Verón (1987de Verón ( , 1994de Verón ( , 1998, es solo recientemente que el campo político ha atraído la atención de quienes investigan en la disciplina (Landowski, 2004(Landowski, , 2019Cosenza, 2018;Fabbri y Marcarino, 2002;Selg y Ventsel, 2020). En particular, dada su declarada naturaleza discursiva (Laclau, 2005a), el fenómeno del populismo ha sido un disparador para que semiotistas estudiasen con mayor detenimiento el discurso político como un fenómeno semiótico (Addis, 2020;Cervelli, 2018;Landowski, 2018Landowski, , 2019Sedda y Demuru, 2018;Moreno Barreneche, 2019a.…”

The role of ideations in de-problematizing migration crises (and other wicked problems)

“…There is "no single 'root cause' of complexity, uncertainty and disagreement, and therefore no root cause of 'wickedness"' (Head, 2008, p. 106); further complex systems are always mutating from one phase to the next and feature a high density of interactions (Wagenaar, 2007, p. 23, 25). This links the study and governance of wicked problems with processual relationalism (e.g., Nexon, 1999, 2019;Qin, 2016;Selg, 2016a,b;Selg and Ventsel, 2020), a relational approach perspective that stresses "complexity and uncertainty come from viewing social problems or social processes as un-owned processes whose constituent elements cannot be considered separately from the changing relations they are embedded in and vice a versa" (see also Jackson and Nexon, 1999; I am placing the term in quotation marks to acknowledge that the term crisis is di cult here unless it is centered on the people losing their lives while attempting to cross European borders. Selg et al, 2022, p. 22-23).…”

“…A relational approach is, however, not only useful in studying wicked problems but also in governing them. Selg et al have most recently put forth a comprehensive introduction to a relational governance approach (forthcoming, see also Selg and Ventsel, 2020;Klasche, 2021a). In their book, they do not only point out the benefits of a relational approach in governing wicked problems but, very importantly for this article, note that the de-problematization of wicked problems often occurs when the wickedness is ignored, and politicians convert messy, unstructured problems into "wellstructured" micro problems (ch.…”

A sociological imagination for a clumsy world: François Dépelteau’s relational sociology

“…Both Emirbayer's Manifesto and his paper where provocative: not only did they try to articulate what relational thinking is, but also to dismiss as forms of substantialism various perspectives that more or less explicitly seem to be about studying social relations. As the title of François's paper indicates, not only does he propose a groundwork for relational thinking, but also a critique of what is sometimes referred to as co-determinism, variable-centered analysis or interactionalism in theoretical-methodological reflections over the "relational turn" in the social sciences (see also Dépelteau 2013a;2015;2018a;2018b;Emirbayer 1997;Selg 2016a;2016b;2018;Selg and Ventsel 2020). In this paper the above-mentioned Mills is used as an example of co-determinism along with many other eminent social theorists including Pierre Bourdieu, Roy Bhaskar, Digithum,No.…”

“…The inconsistency in this usage leads back toDewey and Bentley (1949) who use both forms. In various writings(Selg 2016a;2016b;2018;Selg and Ventsel 2020) I have insisted on using the hyphenated form only in order to highlight the telling prefixes of the neologisms (self-, inter-and trans-action), especially given that transaction is widely used in economic literature where it actually refers to what can be conceptualized as self-action in Dewey and Bentley's sense.…”