International political economy and the question of ethics

Abstract

ABSTRACT The article provides a critical analysis of how IPE might engage with the question of ethics. After reviewing existing calls to bring ethics and ethical considerations within the mainstream of the discipline several questions are made. Drawing from critical and post-structural thought, it is argued that existing accounts of ethics privilege a problematic separation between ethics and power. Power is depicted as obligation – as power over –while ethics is depicted as an ameliorative other to power. We draw out several limits in this separation – including the reification of market subjectivities of contract, individualism, and a problematic global scale – arguing that ethics should be seen as a constitutive discourse like any other. Power is re-phrased as productive, as the power to. We conclude by articulating a pragmatist research agenda that seeks to foster the kernel ‘possibility’ in discourses of ethics while retaining sensitivity to the potential constitutive ‘violence’ of ethics. Given this dilemma, we argue that ongoing practices of ‘resistance’ – in both practical and scholarly senses – should be a central problematic for engaging with the (political) question of ethics in IPE.