Objects in Relations: Competing Visions of International Order at the Nexus of Human Rights and Development

Abstract

How is international order constructed and maintained, disrupted, and struggled about? In this article, I throw new light on these perennial questions of IR scholarship by turning attention to how expert knowledge and the objects it brings forth invite different ways of ordering. Theoretically, I develop a relational ontology of objects through a rereading of Foucauldian archeology and work in political ontology. My empirical story examines two objects of expertise that relate the more encompassing and elusive governance objects “human rights” and “development” in sharply contrasting ways. Born out of postcolonial legal discourse at the United Nations and the political project of “Third World” solidarity, the notion of a human right to development posits development as a human right and makes sense of its realization within an anti-colonial imaginary that politicizes international institutions and interstate relations. In contrast, the “human rights-based approach” that has lately been embraced as a normative methodology by United Nations development agencies evokes a hierarchical vision that privileges norms and knowledge that are seen as international, global, or universal, while seeking to improve and remold actors and practices in developing countries in their image. Despite their seemingly technical nature and international organizations’ well-documented tendency to downplay their value judgments, objects of expertise are thus entangled in and co-constitute different, potentially conflicting visions of international order.