Rights statement: This is the peer reviewed version of the following article:Jessop, B. (2014), Towards a political ontology of state power. The British Journal of Sociology, 65: 481-486. doi:10.1111/1468-4446.12087 which has been published in final form at http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/1468-4446.12087 This article may be used for non-commercial purposes in accordance With Wiley Terms and Conditions for self-archiving.
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Research output: Contribution to Journal/Magazine › Journal article › peer-review
}
TY - JOUR
T1 - Towards a political ontology of state power
T2 - A comment on Colin Hay's article
AU - Jessop, Bob
N1 - This is the peer reviewed version of the following article:Jessop, B. (2014), Towards a political ontology of state power. The British Journal of Sociology, 65: 481-486. doi:10.1111/1468-4446.12087 which has been published in final form at http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/1468-4446.12087 This article may be used for non-commercial purposes in accordance With Wiley Terms and Conditions for self-archiving.
PY - 2014/9
Y1 - 2014/9
N2 - This article offers some critical realist, strategic-relational comments on Colin Hay's proposal to treat the state as an 'as-if-real' concept. The critique first develops an alternative account of ontology, which is more suited to analyses of the state and state power; it then distinguishes the 'intransitive' properties of the real world as an object of investigation from the 'transitive' features of its scientific investigation and thereby provides a clearer understanding of what is at stake in 'as-if-realism'; and it ends with the suggestion that a concern with the modalities of state power rather than with the state per se offers a more fruitful approach to the genuine issues raised in Hay's article and in his earlier strategic-relational contributions to political analysis.
AB - This article offers some critical realist, strategic-relational comments on Colin Hay's proposal to treat the state as an 'as-if-real' concept. The critique first develops an alternative account of ontology, which is more suited to analyses of the state and state power; it then distinguishes the 'intransitive' properties of the real world as an object of investigation from the 'transitive' features of its scientific investigation and thereby provides a clearer understanding of what is at stake in 'as-if-realism'; and it ends with the suggestion that a concern with the modalities of state power rather than with the state per se offers a more fruitful approach to the genuine issues raised in Hay's article and in his earlier strategic-relational contributions to political analysis.
KW - Critical realism
KW - Fallacy of misplaced concreteness
KW - Ontology
KW - State
KW - State power
KW - Strategic-relational approach
U2 - 10.1111/1468-4446.12087
DO - 10.1111/1468-4446.12087
M3 - Journal article
C2 - 25251141
AN - SCOPUS:84927512905
VL - 65
SP - 481
EP - 486
JO - British Journal of Sociology
JF - British Journal of Sociology
SN - 0007-1315
IS - 3
ER -