Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-l7hp2 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-23T21:03:35.791Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Peirce’s semeiotics: a methodology for bridging the material–ideational divide in IR scholarship

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  30 January 2017

Alena Drieschova
Alena Drieschova*
Affiliation:
Cardiff University, Department of Politics and International Relations, Cardiff, United Kingdom
*
E-mail: [email protected]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

The New Materialisms in IR scholarship seek to transcend the divide between matter and ideas, with among others such concepts as practices, or artifacts. This paper makes a start in developing a systematic methodology for the New Materialisms. It proposes Peirce’s semeiotics as one way to unpack how practices and artifacts are ideational and simultaneously material. Peircean semeiotics is a semeiotics of materialism, which creates room for material constitution and analyses practices and artifacts as signs. Peircean semeiotics acknowledges that many signs are objects and practices in the material world, and therefore underlie material constraints, while they also limit and enable the possibilities for action upon the world. Simultaneously though, as signs they convey a particular meaning to the people who surround them, not always by intent. Just as language, material things can signify by arbitrary social convention, but they can also signify by resembling the object they represent, or by being causally related to it. The linguistic model is thus incomplete to study the significative role of material reality. I will illustrate the use of Peircean semeiotics on an analysis of GDP as an inscription device and a complex sign.

Keywords

methodologysignssemioticsartifactsmaterialismGDP
Type
Original Papers
Information
International Theory , Volume 9 , Issue 1 , March 2017 , pp. 33 - 66
Copyright
© Cambridge University Press 2017 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Adler, Emanuel. 1997. “Seizing the Middle Ground: Constructivism in World Politics.” European Journal of International Relations 3(3):319–363.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Adler, Emanuel, and Pouliot, Vincent. 2011. International Practices. New York: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Adler-Nissen, Rebecca. 2012. Bourdieu in International Relations: Rethinking Key Concepts in IR. London: Routledge.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Aly, Goetz, and Roth, Karl Heinz. 1984. Die restlose Erfassung: Volkszählen, Indentifizieren, Aussondern im Nationalsozialismus. Berlin: Springer.Google Scholar
Anderson, Victor. 1991. Alternative Economic Indicators. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Aradau, Claudia. 2010. “Security that Matters: Critical Infrastructure and Objects of Protection.” Security Dialogue 41(5):491–514.Google Scholar
Aradau, Claudia, and Huysmans, Jef. 2014. “Critical Methods in International Relations: The Politics of Techniques, Devices and Acts.” European Journal of International Relations 20(3):596–619.Google Scholar
Arrington, Edward, and Francis, Jere. 1989. “Letting the Chat Out of the Bag.” Accounting, Organizations and Society 14(1–2):1–28.Google Scholar
Ashley, Richard, and Walker, Rob. eds. 1990. “Speaking the Language of Exile: Dissidence in International Studies.” International Studies Quarterly 34 (3, Special Issue).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Atkin, Albert. 2005. “Peirce on the Index and Indexical Reference.” Transactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society 41(1):161–188.Google Scholar
Beaulieu, Emily, Cox, Gary, and Salegh, Sebastian. 2012. “Sovereign Debt and Regime Type: Reconsidering the Democratic Advantage.” International Organization 66(4):709–738.Google Scholar
Bennett, Jane. 2010. Vibrant Matter: A Political Ecology of Things. London: Duke University Press.Google Scholar
Best, Jacqueline, and Walters, William. 2013. “‘Actor-Network Theory’ and International Relationality: Lost (and Found) in Translation: Introduction.” International Political Sociology 7(3):332–334.Google Scholar
Bially Mattern, Janice. 2001. “The Power Politics of Identity.” European Journal of International Relations 7(3):349–397.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Black, Jeremy. 2008. Great Powers and the Quest for Hegemony: The World Order Since 1500. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Bourdieu, Pierre. 1990. The Logic of Practice. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.Google Scholar
Branch, Jordan. 2011. “Mapping the Sovereign State: Technology, Authority, and Systemic Change.” International Organization 65(1):1–36.Google Scholar
Braudel, Fernand. 1979. Civilisation matérielle, Economie et Capitalisme, XVe – XVIIIe siècle, 3 vols. Paris: Armand Colin.Google Scholar
Brooks, Stephen, and Wohlforth, William. 2000–01. “Power, Globalization, and the End of the Cold War: Reevaluating a Landmark Case for Ideas.” International Security 25(3):5–53.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bryman, Alan, and Cramer, Duncan. 2009. “Constructing Variables.” In Handbook of Data Analysis, edited by Melissa Hardy, and Alan Bryman, 17–34. London: Sage Publications.Google Scholar
Bueger, Christian. 2014. “Pathways to Practice: Praxiography and International Politics.” European Political Science Review 6(3):383–406.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bueger, Christian, and Gadinger, Frank. 2015. “The Play of International Practice: Minimalism, Pragmatism and Critical Theory.” International Studies Quarterly 59(3):449–460.Google Scholar
Büthe, Tim, Major, Solomon, and de Mello e Souza, André. 2012. “The Politics of Private Foreign Aid: Humanitarian Principles, Economic Development Objectives, and Organizational Interests in NGO Private Aid Allocation.” International Organization 66(4):571–607.Google Scholar
Carson, Clarence. 1975. “The History of the United States National Income and Product Accounts: The Development of an Analytical Tool.” Review of Income and Wealth 21(2):153–181.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Chase-Dunn, Christopher. 1979. “Comparative Research on World System Characteristics.” International Studies Quarterly 23(4):601–623.Google Scholar
Checkel, Jeffrey. 2005. “International Institutions and Socialization in Europe: Introduction and Framework.” International Organization 59(4):801–826.Google Scholar
Cipolla, Carlo. 1956. Money, Prices, and Civilization in the Mediterranean World, Fifth to Seventeenth Century. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Clark, Andy. 1997. Being There: Putting Brain, Body and World Together Again. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Coole, Diana. 2010. “The Inertia of Matter and the Generativity of Flesh.” In New Materialisms: Ontology, Agency, and Politics, edited by Diana Coole, and Samantha Frost, 92–115. London: Duke University Press.Google Scholar
Coole, Diana, and Frost, Samantha. 2010. New Materialisms: Ontology, Agency, and Politics. London: Duke University Press.Google Scholar
Coyle, Diane. 2014. GDP: A Brief but Affectionate History. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Cramer, Duncan, and Howitt, Dennis. 2004. The Sage Dictionary of Statistics. London: Sage Publications.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Doty, Roxanne. 1993. “Foreign Policy as Social Construction: A Post-Positivist Analysis of U.S. Counterinsurgency Policy in the Philippines.” International Studies Quarterly 37(3):297–320.Google Scholar
Edgerton, Samuel. 1975. The Renaissance Rediscovery of Linear Perspective. New York: Basic Books.Google Scholar
Fearon, James. 1995. “Rationalist Explanations for War.” International Organization 49(3):379–414.Google Scholar
Fogel, Robert, Fogel, Enid, Guglielmo, Mark, and Grotte, Nathaniel. 2013. Political Arithmetic: Kuznets and the Empirical Tradition in Economics. Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Foucault, Michel. 1983. This is Not a Pipe. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Foucault, Michel. 2007. Security, Territory, Population. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.Google Scholar
Foucault, Michel. 2010. Archaeology of Knowledge. New York: Vintage Books.Google Scholar
Fourcade, Michel. 2009. Economists and Societies: Discipline and Profession in the United States, Britain, and France, 1890s to 1990s. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Goddard, Stacie. 2006. “Uncommon Ground: Indivisible Territory and the Politics of Legitimacy.” International Organization 60(1):35–68.Google Scholar
Goldstein, Judith, and Keohane, Robert. 1993. Ideas and Foreign Policy: Beliefs, Institutions, and Political Change. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.Google Scholar
Gottdiener, Mark. 1995. Postmodern Semiotics: Material Culture and the Forms of Postmodern Life. Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Goudge, Thomas A. 1965. “Peirce’s Index.” Transactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society 1(2):52–70.Google Scholar
Gregory, Brad. 2006. “The Other Confessional History: On Secular Bias in the Study of Religion.” History and Theory 45(4):132–149.Google Scholar
Haack, Susan. 1977. “Two Fallibilists in Search of the Truth.” Proceedings from the Aristotelian Society 51:63–84.Google Scholar
Hall, Rodney. 2003. “The Discursive Demolition of the Asian Development Model.” International Studies Quarterly 47(1):71–99.Google Scholar
Hamilton, Keith, and Langhorne, Richard. 2011. The Practice of Diplomacy: Its Evolution, Theory and Administration. London and New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Hansen, Hans, and Porter, Tony. 2012. “What Do Numbers Do in Transnational Governance?” International Political Sociology 6(4):409–426.Google Scholar
Hansen, Lene. 2006. Security as Practice: Discourse Analysis and the Bosnian War. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Hassner, Ron. 2003. “‘To Halve and to Hold’: Conflicts Over Sacred Space and the Problem of Indivisibility.” Security Studies 12(4):1–33.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hekman, Susan. 2009. “We Have Never Been Postmodern: Latour, Foucault and the Material of Knowledge.” Contemporary Political Theory 8(4):435–454.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Holmqvist, Caroline. 2013. “Undoing War: War Ontologies and the Materiality of Drone Warfare.” Millennium: Journal of International Studies 41(3):430–450.Google Scholar
Hookway, Christopher. 1985. Peirce. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Hopf, Ted. 2010. “The Logic of Habit in International Relations.” European Journal of International Relations 16(4):539–561.Google Scholar
Jerven, Morten. 2013. Poor Numbers: How we are Misled by African Development Statistics and What to do About it. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.Google Scholar
Kangas, Anni. 2009. “From Interfaces to Interpretants: A Pragmatist Exploration Into Popular Culture as International Relations.” Millennium: Journal of International Studies 38(2):317–343.Google Scholar
Kelly, Mark. 2009. The Political Philosophy of Michel Foucault. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Kendrick, John. 1970. “The Historical Development of National-Income Accounts.” History of Political Economy 2(2):284–315.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kennedy, Paul. 1987. The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers. New York: Random House.Google Scholar
King, Gary, Keohane, Robert, and Verba, Sidney. 1994. Designing Social Inquiry. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Klein, Judy. 1997. Statistical Visions in Time. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Kolenda, Konstantin. 1977. “Two Fallibilists in Search of the Truth.” Proceedings from the Aristotelian Society 51:85–104.Google Scholar
Krasner, Stephen. 2000. “State Power and the Structure of International Trade.” In International Political Economy: Perspectives on Global Power and Wealth, edited by Frieden, and David Lake, 19–36. Boston, MA: Bedford/St. Martin’s.Google Scholar
Kratochwil, Friedrich. 2000. “Constructing a New Orthodoxy? Wendt’s ‘Social Theory of International Politics’ and the Constructivist Challenge.” Millennium: Journal of International Studies 29(1):73–101.Google Scholar
Lakoff, George, and Johnson, Mark. 1980. Metaphors We Live By. Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Latour, Bruno. 1990. “Drawing Things Together.” In Representation in Scientific Practice, edited by Michael Lynch, and Steve Woolgar, 19–68. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Legg, Catherine. 2008. “The Problem of the Essential Icon.” American Philosophical Quarterly 45(3):207–232.Google Scholar
Lele, Veerendra. 2006. “Material Habits, Identity, Semeiotic.” Journal of Social Archaeology 6(1):48–70.Google Scholar
Liszka, James J. 1996. A General Introduction to the Semeiotic of Charles Sanders Peirce. Indianapolis, IN: Indiana University Press.Google Scholar
Lundborg, Tom, and Vaughan-Williams, Nick. 2015. “New Materialisms, Discourse Analysis, and International Relations: A Radical Intertextual Approach.” Review of International Studies 41:3–25.Google Scholar
Maddison, Angus. 2007. Contours of the World Economy, 1–2030 AD: Essays in Macro-Economic History. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Maersheimer, John. 2010. “The Gathering Storm: China’s Challenge to US Power in Asia.” The Chinese Journal of International Politics 3(4):381–396.Google Scholar
McCloskey, Donald. 1998. The Rhetoric of Economics. Madison, WI: The University of Wisconsin Press.Google Scholar
Metro-Roland, Michelle. 2009. “Interpreting Meaning: An Application of Peircean Semiotics to Tourism.” Tourism Geographies 11(2):270–279.Google Scholar
Mick, David. 1986. “Consumer Research and Semiotics: Exploring the Morphology of Signs, Symbols, and Significance.” Journal of Consumer Research 13(1):196–213.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Milliken, Jennifer. 1999. “The Study of Discourse in International Relations: A Critique of Research and Methods.” European Journal of International Relations 5(2):225–254.Google Scholar
Milliken, Jennifer, and Sylvan, David. 1996. “Soft Bodies, Hard Targets, and Chic Theories: US Bombing Policy in Indochina.” Millennium: Journal of International Studies 25(2):321–359.Google Scholar
Mitchell, Audra. 2014. “Only Human? A Worldly Approach to Security.” Security Dialogue 45(1):5–21.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mitchell, Timothy. 2002. Rule of Experts. Berkley, CA: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Mukerji, Chandra. 1997. Territorial Ambitions and the Gardens of Versailles. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Nelson, Stephen. 2014. “Playing Favorites: How Shared Beliefs Shape the IMF’s Lending Decisions.” International Organization 68(2):297–328.Google Scholar
Neumann, Iver. 2008. “Discourse Analysis.” In Qualitative Methods of International Relations: A Pluralist Guide, edited by Audie Klotz, and Deepa Prakash, 61–77. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.Google Scholar
Nye, Joseph. 1990. “Soft Power.” Foreign Policy 80:153–171.Google Scholar
Pape, Robert. 2003. “The Strategic Logic of Suicide Terrorism.” American Political Science Review 97(3):343–361.Google Scholar
Peirce, Charles S. 1931–35. Collected Papers of Charles Sanders Peirce, 1–6 vols, edited by Charles Hartshorne, and Paul Weiss. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Perlman, Mark, and Marietta, Marietta. 2005. “The Politics of Social Accounting: Public Goals and the Evolution of the National Accounts in Germany, the United Kingdom and the United States.” Review of Political Economy 17(2):211–230.Google Scholar
Popper, Karl. 1978. “Three Worlds.” The Tanner Lecture on Human Values. The University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, April 7. Accessed October 8, 2013. http://www.thee-online.com/Documents/Popper-3Worlds.pdf.Google Scholar
Pouliot, Vincent. 2007. “‘Sobjectivism’: Towards a Constructivist Methodology.” International Studies Quarterly 51(2):359–384.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pu, Xiaoyu, and Schweller, Randall. 2014. “Status Signaling, Multiple Audiences, and China’s Blue-Water Naval Ambition.” In Status in World Politics, edited by Thazha Paul, Deborah Larson, and William Wohlforth, 141–163. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Queller, Donald. 1967. The Office of Ambassador in the Middle Ages. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Rees, Ronald. 1980. “Historical Links Between Cartography and Art.” Geographical Review 70(1):60–78.Google Scholar
Robson, Keith. 1992. “Accounting Numbers as ‘Inscription’: Action at a Distance and the Development of Accounting.” Accounting, Organizations and Society 17(7):685–708.Google Scholar
Roover, Raymond. 1963. The Rise and Decline of the Medici Bank. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Savan, David. 1987. An Introduction to C. S. Peirce’s Full System of Semeiotic. Toronto: Victoria College in the University of Toronto.Google Scholar
Scheel, Stephan. 2013. “Autonomy of Migration Despite its Securitisation? Facing the Terms and Conditions of Biometric Rebordering.” Millennium: Journal of International Studies 41(3):575–600.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Schmandt-Besserat, Denise. 1984. “Before Numerals.” Visible Language 18(1):48–60.Google Scholar
Searle, John. 1995. The Construction of Social Reality. New York: Free Press.Google Scholar
Short, Thomas. 1996. “Interpreting Peirce’s Interpretant: A Response to Lalor, Liszka and Meyers.” Transactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society 32(4):488–541.Google Scholar
Short, Thomas. 2004. “The Development of Peirce’s Theory of Signs.” In The Cambridge Companion to Peirce, edited by Cheryl Misak, 214–240. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Short, Thomas. 2007. Peirce’s Theory of Signs. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Sil, Rudra, and Katzenstein, Peter. 2010. Beyond Paradigms: Analytic Eclecticism in the Study of World Politics. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Skagestad, Peter. 2004. “Peirce’s Semeiotic Model of the Mind.” In The Cambridge Companion to Peirce, edited by Cheryl Misak, 241–256. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Smith, Donald. 2008. The Cartographic Imagination in Early Modern England: Re-Writing the World in Marlowe, Spenser, Raleigh and Marvell. Aldershot: Ashgate Publishing Limited.Google Scholar
Sorrell, Kory. 2004. Representative Practices: Peirce, Pragmatism and Feminist Epistemology. New York: Fordham University Press.Google Scholar
Speich, Daniel. 2011. “The Use of Global Abstractions: National Income Accounting in the Period of Imperial Decline.” Journal of Global History 6(1):7–28.Google Scholar
Srnicek, Nick, Fotou, Maria, and Arghand, Edmund. 2013. “Introduction: Materialism and World Politics.” Millennium: Journal of International Studies 41(3):397.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Stiglitz, Joseph, Sen, Amartya, and Fitoussi, Jean-Paul. 2009. “Report by the Commission on the Measurement of Economic Performance and Social Progress.” Accessed August 5, 2015. http://www.communityindicators.net/system/publication_pdfs/9/original/Stiglitz_Sen_Fitoussi_2009.pdf?1323961027.Google Scholar
Suzuki, Tomo. 2003. “The Epistemology of Macroeconomic Reality: The Keynesian Revolution from an Accounting Point of View.” Accounting, Organizations and Society 28(5):471–517.Google Scholar
Waever, Ole. 1995. “Securitization and Desecuritization.” In On Security, edited by Ronnie Lipschutz, 46–86. New York: Columbia University Press.Google Scholar
Wallerstein, Immanuel. 1979. The Capitalist World Economy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Waltz, Kenneth. 1979. Theory of International Politics. Reading: Addison-Wesley.Google Scholar
Waring, Marilyn. 1989. If Women Counted: A New Feminist Economics. London: Macmillan.Google Scholar
Webb, Keane. 2003. “Semeiotics and the Social Analysis of Material Things.” Language and Communication 23(2–3):409–425.Google Scholar
Webster, Charles. 1963. The Congress of Vienna. London: Thames and Hudson.Google Scholar
Weldes, Jutta. 2003. To Seek Out New Worlds: Exploring Links Between Science Fiction and World Politics. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wight, Martin. 1977. Systems of States. Bristol: Leicester University Press.Google Scholar
Yanow, Dvora. 2000. Conducting Interpretive Policy Analysis. Thousand Oaks: Sage Publishing.Google Scholar