Reciprocity, hierarchy, and obligation in world politics: From Kula to Potlatch

Abstract

The observation that agents and structures are co-constituted is now commonplace, yet scholars continue to struggle to incorporate this insight. Rationalists tend to overemphasize actors’ agency in the constitution of social order while constructivists tend to overstate the degree to which structures determine action. This article uses The Gift to rethink the agent–structure debate, arguing that the model of social relations Mauss outlines in this work sheds new light on basic concepts in international relations theory such as reciprocity, hierarchy, and obligation. Mauss’ social theory locates the generative structure of social order in diffuse exchange relations, what he terms gift exchange, and assumes that actors are both socially positioned within hierarchical relations of exchange and reflexive agents who are able to understand and strive to change those relations. In so doing, he avoids reducing social order to either deeply internalized social norms or instrumental interests, navigating between agents and structures to develop a more dynamic model of social relations. This model of social order permits a richer understanding of hierarchy in world politics that appreciates the experience of domination and the possibility of resistance. It also provides a distinct understanding of the nature of social obligation and the “compliance pull” of social norms, locating their force in the reflexive recognition by actors that they are dependent on shared social relations for meaningful social agency. This points toward an ethics of stewardship that opens up new perspectives on the duties that states and others owe to each other, a duty grounded in an acknowledgment of our mutual vulnerability as socially constituted agents.