Cracking capitalist realism: the new student movement and its post-capitalist politics

There is much talk of =the crisis‘ in higher education, often expressed in fatalistic narratives about the (im)possibility of critical resistance or alternatives to the deepening domination of neoliberal rationality and capitalist power throughout social life. But how precisely are we to make sense of this situation? In what ways is it experienced? And what knowledges and practices may help us to respond? These questions form the basis for a series of explorations of the history and character of this crisis, the particular historical conjuncture that we occupy today, and the different types of theoretical analysis and political response it seems to be engendering. Our talk will explore the tensions between readings of the situation as a paralyzing experience of domination, loss and impossibility, on the one hand, and radical transformation and the opening of future possibilities, on the other. We will finally consider what implications new forms of political theory being created in the new student movements have for reconceptualising praxis in higher education today, and perhaps for a wider imagination of post-capitalist politics.

Justice and morality:human suffering, natural law and international politics

Bridging the contending theories of natural law and international relations, this book proposes a 'relational ontology' as the basis for rethinking our approach to international politics. The book contains a number of challenging and controversial ideas on the study of international political thought which should provoke constructive debate within international relations theory, political theory, and philosophical ethics. © Amanda Russell Beattie 2010. All rights reserved.

Articulating discursive and materialist conceptions of practice in the logics approach to critical policy analysis

In this article it is argued that while Glynos and Howarth’s logics of critical explanation (LCE) offers an important and promising contribution to critical policy analysis, it, along with other approaches that focus on the meaning of social action, faces a growing challenge in the form of a so-called new materialist turn in social and political theory. The article argues that there is much to be gained for the logics approach in paying closer attention to the materiality of practices in terms not only of lending greater clarity to the conception and role of social practices in the logics approach but also in enabling it fully to deliver on its critical ambition. The article explores an alternative materialist approach to the study of social practices, which hails from the post-actor–networktheory tradition and which has ontological affinities with post-structuralism. The article begins with a brief analysis of the new materialist turn in its various guises. It then critically examines the logics approach, and, in particular its conception of practice. It then explores an alternative materialist and ethnographic reading of practice, focusing on medical and care practices. It concludes with an examination of the implications for a more materialist conception of practices for the LCE’s broad deconstructive, psychoanalytic and onto-political ambitions.

'Only in the leap from the lion's head will he prove his worth':natural law and international relations

This article argues the benefits of including a theological interpretation of natural law morality within the normative discourses of international politics. It challenges the assumption of a Grotian secular natural law arguing that practical reason, in a Thomist interpretation, is better suited to the demands of international political theory. It engages with themes of agency, practical reason, and community in order to enhance the content of the post-territorial community evidenced in ethical cosmopolitan debates. Likewise, it envisions a simultaneously enhancing a rapprochement among cosmopolitan and communitarian discourses of international politics facilitated through an institutional design guided by the morality of natural law.