Year: 2014
Type: article
Abstract: 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.
Source: British Journal of Sociology
Author: Bob Jessop
Institution: Lancaster University
Language: English
Subfield: Sociology and Political Science
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W1903839720