How (not) to Talk about Technology: International Relations and the Question of Agency

Author(s): Marijn Hoijtink, Matthias Leese
Editor(s): Marijn Hoijtink, Matthias Leese
Book Title: Technology and Agency in International Relations
Series: Emerging Technologies, Ethics and International Affairs
Publisher(s): Routledge
Publication Year: 2019

The introduction to this book claims that, against the backdrop of more and more powerful algorithmic and robotic technologies that have profound effects on international politics, the study of technology and agency is important for the discipline of International Relations (IR). It identifies two tendencies that have long prevented meaningful engagement with these questions in IR (deterministic accounts of technology and the externalization of technology as an explanatory variable; the reduction of agency to its relationship vis-à-vis social structures) and suggests to overcome these tendencies by unpacking technologies and their effects in the constitution of agency through perspectives from STS and New Materialism.

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