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  • Caselist.RoundClass[15]
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Caselist.RoundClass[15]

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1		-2016-09-17 21:26:00.341
	1	+2016-09-17 21:26:00.0

Caselist.CitesClass[13]

Cites

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	1	+We exist in the Anthropocene, the era of environmental destruction and climate change brought about by human consumption, which changes the political stakes of the ballot - the magnitude of its implications must unite all people at an existential level for a macro political response.
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	3	+The role of the ballot is to endorse the best method for combatting the Anthropocene
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	5	+Institutional solutions through policy are required – localism and rejecting the state prevent collective political organizing against ecological destruction. Localism isn’t mutually exclusive with macro-political solutions, but it can’t effectively respond to the Anthropocene—prioritizing policy is the only option. Biermann 14
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	7	+- two links – local politics and not using the state
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	9	+Biermann 14—Environmental Policy Analysis, VU University
	10	+(Frank, “The Anthropocene: A governance perspective”, The Anthropocene Review 2014 1: 57, dml)
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	12	+The classification of a new epoch in planetary history as the ‘Anthropocene’ is fundamentally changing how we understand our political systems. The transition from the Holocene to an Anthropocene signifies a new role for humankind: from a species that had to adapt to changes in their natural environment to one that has become a driving force in the planetary system (Steffen et al., 2011; Zalasiewicz et al., 2011). Yet the human species, as the defining element of this notion of an Anthropocene, remains a highly abstract concept. It masks the multitude and variety of human agency, the differences in human resources and the diversity of human desires. It masks, in particular, the political nature of human society. Following Aristotle, humans are a zoon politikon, a ‘political animal’ that distinguishes itself from other species by its capacity to collectively organize its affairs through joint institutions. This political characteristic of humans is fundamental also for the notion of the Anthropocene. The Anthropocene is political; it has to be understood as a global political phenomenon (see, in more detail, Biermann, forthcoming). To start with, the Anthropocene creates, changes or reinforces multiple interdependence relations within and among human societies. For one thing, it creates new forms and degrees of interdependence among the more than 190 formally sovereign countries and their national jurisdictions. Some of these new interdependencies emerge from functions of the Earth System that transform local pollution into changes of the global system that affect other places that have (much) less contributed to the problem, with examples being climate change, stratospheric ozone depletion, the global distribution of persistent organic pollutants and the global spread of species with potential harm for local ecosystems. Countries are also becoming more interdependent when local environmental degradation leads to transregional or global social, economic and political crises, for instance through decreases in food production that raise global food demand and prices. In short, the Anthropocene creates a new dependence of states, even the most powerful ones, on the community of all other nations. This is a defining characteristic as well as a key challenge that requires an effective institutional framework for global cooperation. Second, the Anthropocene increases the functional interdependence of human societies. For example, political response strategies in one economic sector are likely to have repercussions for many others. Functional interdependence also relates to the mutual substitutability of response options, which poses special problems of international allocation. In climate governance, for example, for every global policy target there are an unlimited number of possible combinations of local responses across nations and time frames with equal degrees of effectiveness. In short, increased functional interdependence in the Anthropocene requires new degrees of effective policy coordination and integration, from local to global levels. Third, the Anthropocene creates new intergenerational dependencies that pose novel political challenges. Causation and effect of transformations of the Earth System are usually separated by (often several) generations. Sea-level rise, for example, is expected within a time-range of 100 years and more. Such planning horizons exceed the tenure and often the lifetime of present political leaders. Among other things, this poses the questions of international credibility and trust that future governments will reciprocate and comply with international rules, and the problem of democratic legitimacy of policies in the intergenerational context. What rights and responsibilities do present generations – and their representatives in parliament – owe to their unborn successors? And to what extent can present generations be held accountable for activities of their ancestors, for instance regarding the burning of fossil fuels in Europe before the greenhouse effect became more widely known in the 1990s? Fourth, the Anthropocene comes with persistent uncertainty about the causes of Earth System transformation, its impacts, the links between various causes and response options, and the broader effects of policies. Most transformations, such as global climate change, are non-linear and might accelerate, or slow down, at any time. Surprises in system behaviour can be expected, but are by definition unforeseeable. This creates a new political context, as exemplified by Ulrich Beck’s notion of a global ‘risk society’. Finally, the Anthropocene is an epoch that sees the human species with extreme variations in wealth, health, living standards, education and most other indicators that define wellbeing. According to the World Bank, the richest 20 of humanity account for 76.6 of the world’s total private consumption. The poorest 20, on their part, account for just 1.5 of global wealth. Almost half of humanity – roughly, 3 billion people – lives on less than US$2.5 per day (Chen and Ravallion, 2008). 850 million people lack sufficient food. The poorest 25 of humanity still has no access to electricity (United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), 2007). About one-third of all children in developing countries are underweight, and every day, 20,000 children die of poverty (United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), 2004). Today, 1 billion people lack sufficient access to water, and 2.6 billion have no basic sanitation (UNDP, 2006). Politics in the Anthropocene has to operate in this global situation of large inequalities in resources and entitlements. All these developments call for a new perspective also in political science. One such new perspective is a newly emerging paradigm in the social sciences, ‘Earth System’governance (Biermann, 2007; Biermann et al., 2009). The Earth System governance paradigm is a response and a reaction in the social sciences to the notion of an Anthropocene (and related concepts such as Earth System analysis). It accepts the core tenet of the Anthropocene, that is, the understanding of the Earth as an integrated, interdependent system transformed by the interplay of human and non-human agency. The focus of Earth System governance is not ‘governing the Earth’, or the management of the entire process of planetary evolution. Instead, Earth System governance is about the human impact on planetary systems. It is about the societal steering of human activities with regard to the longterm stability of geobiophysical systems. The notion of Earth System governance now underpins a 10-year global research initiative under the auspices of the International Human Dimensions Programme on Global Environmental Change. This initiative – the Earth System Governance Project – was launched in 2009 and has evolved into a broad, vibrant and global community of researchers who share an interest in the analysis of Earth System governance and in the exploration of how to reform the ways in which human societies (fail to) steer their co-evolution with nature at the planetary scale. More than 2500 colleagues are subscribed to the Earth System Governance newsletter, and about 250 researchers belong to the group of lead faculty and research fellows closely affiliated with the Project. The term ‘Earth System governance’ already generates about 450,000 Google hits daily. Research on Earth System governance needs to address both analytical and normative questions. The analytical theory of Earth System governance studies the emerging phenomenon of Earth System governance as it is expressed in hundreds of international regimes, international bureaucracies, national agencies, local and transnational activist groups, expert networks, etc. The analytical perspective is, in short, about how the current governance system functions. The normative theory of Earth System governance is the critique of the existing systems of governance in light of the exigencies of Earth System transformation in the Anthropocene. The normative theory understands Earth System governance as a political reform programme that will benefit from both evidence-based policy research and more fundamental social science critiques of underlying systemic driving forces. Such critiques are surely needed, given that – to name one example – after 20 years of global negotiations and national policies, carbon dioxide emissions in 2010 still grew by 5.9 to a new record high (Peters et al., 2012). In the academic community, pleas for drastic change in global governance are becoming a frequent feature of scientific gatherings. For example, the 2011 Nobel Laureate Symposium on Global Sustainability called in its Stockholm Memorandum for ‘strengthening Earth System Governance’ as one of eight priorities for coherent global action (Third Nobel Laureate Symposium on Global Sustainability, 2011). One year later, the 2012 State of the Planet Declaration, supported by various global change programs and international agencies, called for ‘fundamental reorientation and restructuring of national and international institutions’. It is fundamental, the Declaration continues, ‘to overcome barriers to progress and to move to effective Earth-system governance. Governments must take action to support institutions and mechanisms that will improve coherence, as well as bring about integrated policy and action across the social, economic and environmental pillars’ (Co-chairs of the Planet under Pressure Conference, 2012: C1). A press release preceding this Declaration, supported by the International Council for Science and others, even requests governments to fundamentally ‘overhaul’ the entire UN system (Planet Under Pressure Conference, 2012). In the preparation to the 2012 UN Conference on Sustainable Development, members of the Earth System Governance research alliance had advanced a number of proposals for such an overhaul of the UN system, for example to create a new World Environment Organization and a UN Sustainable Development Council; to better monitor and support private governance mechanisms; to strengthen the involvement of civil society in international institutions; and to more often rely on qualified majority-voting as opposed to the more common system of consensus-based decision-making (Biermann et al., 2012). Yet Earth System governance is not only about strengthening global institutions, which are merely part of the entire effort. Notably, also technological change and incremental policies at local and national levels will remain a driving force of progress in Earth System governance. For instance, just cutting down the emissions of black carbon and methane – which is a precursor of tropospheric ozone – could be a win-win solution by reducing global mean warming by around 0.5°C by the middle of the 21st century (Shindell et al., 2012). Incremental change by national and regional policies is possible, too. For example, a mix of technological change and climate change policy has allowed the European Union member countries to cut greenhouse gas emissions by 18 from 1990 while growing their economies at the same time by 48 (European Commission, 2013). Transformations in social behaviour are crucial as well, moving from a focus on mere cooperation and efficiency to broader notions of ‘sufficiency’ (Princen, 2003). Large-scale changes of lifestyles are likely to be non-linear and might depend on ‘social tipping points’ (Lenton et al., 2008: 1792). There is ample historic precedence of drastic changes in perceptions of good and appropriate lifestyles, often motivated by religion, national renaissance (for example, Gandhism) or philosophy. Environment-related changes in public perceptions of good and appropriate living include the public ban on smoking as inappropriate behaviour for movie actors, politicians and other perceived role models; the change in perception of whale-meat consumption that is hardly affected by a recovery in some species stocks; and the rising social movement of vegetarianism. Another example is the increasing acceptance of bicycles as default vehicle of transportation in cities. In October 2013, 70 top managers of Dutch companies publicly left their chauffeur-driven cars behind in support of a week-long national ‘Low Car Diet’ campaign, thus accepting a partial redefinition of the appropriate lifestyle in the most affluent segments of society (Takken, 2013). The branding of bicycle transportation as the ‘new normality’ is also rapidly taking off in parts of North America. New York City, for instance, has, in recent years, increased its network of bicycle lanes by 700 km and counts today 73,000 members in its bicycle sharing programme, with 35,000 rides per day (Kuin, 2013). However, it would mean throwing out the baby with the bathwater if intergovernmental institutions were discarded. The UN system and international negotiations do not stand in an antagonistic relationship with local action and non-state movements. The one needs the other. In a world of over 190 independent nation states, there is no way around strong and effective international cooperation. Effective international cooperation must be a basis for Earth System governance in the Anthropocene. A concerted effort is needed to bring these institutions in line with the exigencies of the changed political context of Earth System transformation. In sum, in the course of the 21st century the Anthropocene is likely to change the way we understand political systems both analytically and normatively, from the village level up to the United Nations. This makes the Anthropocene one of the most demanding, and most interesting, research topics also for the field of political science, which has to develop novel, more effective and more equitable governance systems to cope with the challenges of Earth System transformation.
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	15	+Climate change disproportionately affects the most marginalized. Pellow 12
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	17	+David Naguib Pellow 12, Ph.D. Professor, Don Martindale Endowed Chair – University of Minnesota, “Climate Disruption in the Global South and in African American Communities: Key Issues, Frameworks, and Possibilities for Climate Justice,” February 2012, http://www.jointcenter.org/sites/default/files/upload/research/files/White_Paper_Climate_Disruption_final.pdf
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	19	+It is now known unequivocally that significant warming of the atmosphere is occurring, coinciding with increasing levels of atmospheric CO2. Dr. John Holdren, Director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, prefers the term “global climate disruption” to “climate change” because it more fully captures the harm being done to the planet (Holdren 2007). The term “climate change” infers a naturally occurring process rather than a disruption created by specific human activity. Moreover, the terms “global warming” and “climate change” might be construed as occurring in a uniform, even, gradual, and benign fashion, none of which is true. One solid indicator of Holdren’s point is the fact that climate disruptions affect communities, nations, and regions of the globe in vastly different ways. While contributing the least of anyone to the causes of climate disruption, people of color, women, indigenous communities, and global South nations often bear the brunt of climate disruption in terms of ecological, economic, and health burdens—thereby giving rise to the concept of climate injustice (Roberts and Parks 2007). These communities are among the first to experience the effects of climate disruption, which can include “natural” disasters, rising levels of respiratory illness and infectious disease, heat-related morbidity and mortality, and large increases in energy costs. They also bear the burdens created by ill-conceived policies designed to prevent climate disruption. The effects of climate injustice have been evident for years. Flooding from severe storms, rising sea levels and melting glaciers affect millions in Asia and Latin America, while sub-Saharan Africa is experiencing sustained droughts. Consider that nearly 75 percent the world’s annual CO2 emissions come from the global North, where only 15 percent of the global population resides. If historic responsibility for climate change is taken into account, global North nations have consumed more than three times their share of the atmosphere (in terms of the amount of emissions that we can safely put into the atmosphere) while the poorest 10 percent of the world’s population has contributed less than 1 percent of carbon emissions. Thus the struggle for racial, gender, and economic justice is inseparable from any effort to combat climate disruption. Climate justice is a vision aimed at dissolving and alleviating the unequal burdens created by climate change. The topic of climate justice is a major point of tension in both U.S. and international policy efforts to address climate disruption because it would require wealthy nations that have contributed the most to the problem to take on greater responsibilities for solutions. For many observers, the path is clear: for humanity’s survival, for justice, and for sustainability, they maintain that we must reduce our emissions and consumption here at home in the global North.
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	22	+The external impact outweighs - the Anthropocene causes massive death and exacerbates every form of oppression. The alternative is using the state strategically to combat the anthropocene – we don’t say “state’s always good” but that the question of how to engage can’t be ignored. Rowan 14
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	24	+ - extinction impact
	25	+ - poverty/starvation impact
	26	+ - cede the political/authoritarian control impact
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	28	+Rowan 14—Wageningen University
	29	+(Rory, “Notes on politics after the Anthropocene”, from After the Anthropocene: Politics and geographic inquiry for a new epoch, Prog Hum Geogr February 7, 2014, dml)
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	31	+The recent popularity of the Anthropocene within the social sciences, humanities, and arts relies in part on the fact that it answers a certain subterranean yearning for a framework in which to address macro-scale concerns after the eclipse of ‘globalization’, a term that seemed to slip off the critical agenda as it sank into the sediment of our political unconscious. The Anthropocene hence presents an opportunity for critical thinking to reconnect with macroscalar concerns in a way that escapes the ideological over-determinations of globalization while engaging with the deep ramifications of anthropogenic environmental change through an examination of the planet’s material processes. Whereas ‘the global’ suggests a relatively flat, anthropocentric conception of the Earth focused on the construction of social relations on the surface, ‘the planetary’, by contrast, points to a more complex, volumic, stratified understanding of an Earth constituted through dynamic geo-social entanglements. Accordingly, the Anthropocene creates opportunities to cast the planet itself as a key player in the drama of human politics rather than simply its stage. This raises the question of what consequences an engagement with the planet has for political thought. What challenges might the Anthropocene present to political thought, and what forms of politics might be adequate to face them? In the space remaining I examine these questions with regard to three broad areas: the relationship between the scale and form of politics; the subject of the Anthropocene; and the relationship between technology and politics. First, while it seems clear that the Anthropocene calls for thinking through the relationship between politics and the planet, it is important not to assume that a certain scale of politics maps naturally against a certain form of politics. More precisely, thinking about politics in planetary terms does not require a totalizing understanding of politics confined to technocratic dreams of a World State or reactionary Big Space geopolitics. How a planetary politics might be understood depends not simply on questions of scale (itself a social constituted and politically contestable concept) but on how the political is conceived. Hence, the Anthropocene marks an occasion to return to fundamental questions of political thought, but within an expanded conceptual horizon produced by a new planetary circumstance. To my mind the political is best understood as a terrain of contestation in which struggles take place on numerous fronts, across different geographic and temporal scales, the chance of successfully shaping social forces being increased if hegemonic alliances can be built across struggles. The Anthropocene potentially widens the scope of the political because understanding social forces as embedded in a dynamic relationship with geophysical forces opens up both as potential objects and sites of political struggle. However, this is not to suggest that the scale of the challenges raised by the Anthropocene has no implication for the form of politics that might take shape in its wake. Indeed, the Anthropocene raises concerns of such vast geographic and temporal scope and depth that any response must involve questions of long-term planning, sustained funding, and significant transnational cooperation and collective organization that effectively render certain forms of politics inadequate. This is especially, perhaps uncomfortably, true of conceptions of politics widely celebrated on the critical Left that emphasize temporary occupations, local direct action, or horizontal and non-representational modes of organization. Yet the Anthropocene seems to demand that some of the problems the critical Left prefers to shy away from, such as representation and institutionalized power, need to be faced anew unless the future is to be ceded to ever more intensive forms of capitalist exploitation, environmental degradation, and the possibility of mass unemployment, escalating food insecurity, resource wars, and increasingly reactionary forms of identity politics. This is not to claim that politics should be constituted around macro-scale concerns alone, but that these must make up a key element of any politics that recognizes the significance of the Anthropocene. Second, there is the question of the subject of the Anthropocene and its implications for politics, already the topic of heated debate. Some have advanced the term Capitalocene as an alternative to Anthropocene on the grounds that the historically specific set of social relations structured around capital accumulation mark a more accurate genesis of global climate change than the activity of a singular, universal humanity, or anthropos. This argument has much to commend it, at once insisting that the Anthropocene not become a depoliticizing meta-abstraction that conceals the constitutive fractures of sociopolitical relations and highlighting the dominant role that the historical development of the capitalist world economy has had in producing it. I am, nonetheless, apprehensive for two reasons. First, the concept of the Capitalocene seems to emphasize social relations internal to the human sphere when perhaps the most important aspect of the Anthropocene is that it allows the distinction between the social and the natural, the human and the inhuman to be muddied by way of their mutually constitutive intrusions. Second, even if it can be granted that capitalist social relations created the conditions for the Anthropocene, the Anthropocene’s effects will be universal, shaping all future human communities (although unevenly) regardless of what new forms of social relations may replace capitalism. Even if we regard the Anthropocene to be capitalogenic it has something of a universal address, affecting the lives of everyone even if ‘all’ are not responsible for it equally. In this light, anthropos can be understood not as a pre-constituted identity but rather as the object of political contestation in the struggle to define the terms of future human existence on the planet. In signalling a crisis in our fundamental conceptual categories and our relation to the planet, the Anthropocene appears to raise that old political question: what is to be done? However, it also complicates this question, throwing ideas of agency into a new, problematic light. The question of what then is coupled with its more difficult, demanding twin: how is it to be done? This brings me to the third area of concern: technology. Any attempt to address the long-term, macro-scalar challenges that the Anthropocene presents must be willing to engage with the question of the relationship between politics and technology. This is not to evoke a simple means-ends discussion but to recognize that socio-political formations are bound up with specific technological platforms and energy regimes, so that any alternative future politics must make technology not only a tool but a crucial terrain of struggle. Nick Srnicek and Alex Williams, authors of the recent #Accelerate manifesto, have been germane in questioning the critical Left’s knee-jerk reaction to the question of technology and the ease with which discussions slip into well-worn critiques of ‘enframing’, ‘instrumental reason’, and ‘apparatuses’ that exclusively address technology’s ‘great danger’ rather than its ‘saving power’ (Srnicek and Williams, 2013). The Anthropocene should not lead us to simply recoil in horror at the effects of industrialization or remain paralysed by the sense that technological progress can only make things worse. A more open debate about technology and climate politics does of course not mean cultivating a naive technophilia or uncritically accepting geo-engineering’s promise of sublime technical fixes, but rather acknowledging the key role technology must play in any attempt to secure a more socially just and ecologically sound future within the horizon of the Anthropocene. Facing trenchant socioecological challenges that afford neither clear exits nor ‘pure’ positions means jettisoning perspectives that reject technological intervention into complex environments in principle. The question then is not one of abandoning the critique of technology as such, or ignoring the interests served by particular technologies, but rather of making the subjectivities, relations, and forms of life that they might open or foreclose, produce, or negate, sites of political struggle. For example, a ‘progressive’ Leftist approach to the question of ‘climate technologies’ might require a program to establish rigorous institutional norms to effectively govern their use and a radical pluralization of the sites of decision-making and subjects empowered to decide – a difficult labour indeed. Yet the central point remains: political struggles need to be fought over technology rather than against technology. If technology is rejected or neglected as the object of political struggles, then our fate is left to the nostalgia of localist escapisms, the passivity of Leftist melancholia or the reactionary psychosis of Right-wing identity politics, all wholly compatible with the enormous adaptive capacities and increasingly catastrophic trajectory of capitalist economics.
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	33	+Using the state strategically still allows us to critique it and doesn’t moralize it. Zanotti 14
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	35	+Dr. Laura Zanotti is an Associate Professor of Political Science at Virginia Tech. Her research and teaching include critical political theory as well as international organizations, UN peacekeeping, democratization and the role of NGOs in post-conflict governance.“Governmentality, Ontology, Methodology: Re-thinking Political Agency in the Global World” – Alternatives: Global, Local, Political – vol 38(4):p. 288-304,. A little unclear if this is late 2013 or early 2014 – The Stated “Version of Record” is Feb 20, 2014, but was originally published online on December 30th, 2013. Obtained via Sage Database.
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	37	+While there are important variations in the way international relations scholars use governmentality theory, for the purpose of my argument I identify two broad trajectories.2 One body of scholarship uses governmentality as a heuristic tool to explore modalities of local and international government and to assess their effects in the contexts where they are deployed; the other adopts this notion as a descriptive tool to theorize the globally oppressive features of international liberalism. Scholars who use governmentality as a heuristic tool tend to conduct inquiries based upon analyses of practices of government and resistance. These scholars rely on ethnographic inquiries, emphasizes the multifarious ways government works in practice (to include its oppressive trajectories) and the ways uneven interactions of governmental strategies and resistance are contingently enacted. As examples, Didier Bigo, building upon Pierre Bourdieu, has encouraged a research methodology that privileges a relational approach and focuses on practice;3 William Walters has advocated considering governmentality as a research program rather than as a ‘‘depiction of discrete systems of power;’’4 and Michael Merlingen has criticized the downplaying of resistance and the use of ‘‘governmentality’’ as interchangeable with liberalism.5 Many other scholars have engaged in contextualized analyses of governmental tactics and resistance. Oded Lowenheim has shown how ‘‘responsibilization’’ has become an instrument for governing individual travelers through ‘‘travel warnings’’ as well as for ‘‘developing states’’ through performance indicators;6 Wendy Larner and William Walters have questioned accounts of globalization as an ontological dimension of the present and advocated less substantialized accounts that focus on studying the discourses, processes and practices through which globalization is made as a space and a political economy;7 Ronnie D. Lipschutz and James K. Rowe have looked at how localized practices of resistance may engage and transform power relations;8 and in my own work, I have studied the deployment of disciplinary and governmental tools for reforming governments in peacekeeping operations and how these practices were hijacked and resisted and by their targets. Scholars who use governmentality as a descriptive tool focus instead on one particular trajectory of global liberalism, that is on the convergence of knowledge and scrutiny of life processes (or biopolitics) and violence and theorize global liberalism as an extremely effective formation, a coherent and powerful Leviathan, where biopolitical tools and violence come together to serve dominant classes or states’ political agendas. As I will show, Giorgio Agamben, Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri, and Sergei Prozorov tend to embrace this position.10 The distinction between governmentality as a heuristic and governmentality as a descriptive tool is central for debating political agency. I argue that, notwithstanding their critique of liberalism, scholars who use governmentality as a descriptive tool rely on the same ontological assumptions as the liberal order they criticize and do move away from Foucault’s focus on historical practices in order to privilege abstract theorizations. By using governmentality as a description of ‘‘liberalism’’ or ‘‘capitalism’’ instead of as a methodology of inquiry on power’s contingent modalities and technologies, these scholars tend to reify a substantialist ontology that ultimately reinforces a liberal conceptualization of subjects and power as standing in a relation of externality and stifles the possibility of reimagining political agency on different grounds. ‘‘Descriptive governmentality’’ constructs a critique of the liberal international order based upon an ontological framework that presupposes that power and subjects are entities possessing qualities that preexist relations. Power is imagined as a ‘‘mighty totality,’’ and subjects as monads endowed with potentia. As a result, the problematique of political agency is portrayed as a quest for the ‘‘liberation’’ of a subject ontologically gifted with a freedom that power inevitably oppresses. In this way, the conceptualization of political agency remains confined within the liberal struggle of ‘‘freedom’’ and ‘‘oppression.’’ Even researchers who adopt a Foucauldian vocabulary end up falling into what Bigo has identified as ‘‘traps’’ of political science and international relations theorizing, specifically essentialization and ahistoricism. I argue here that in order to reimagine political agency an ontological and epistemological turn is necessary, one that relies upon a relational ontology. Relational ontological positions question adopting abstract stable entities, such as ‘‘structures,’’ ‘‘power,’’ or ‘‘subjects,’’ as explanations for what happens. Instead, they explore how these pillar concepts of the Western political thought came to being, what kind of practices they facilitate, consolidate and result from, what ambiguities and aporias they contain, and how they are transformed.12 Relational ontologies nurture ‘‘modest’’ conceptualizations of political agency and also question the overwhelming stability of ‘‘mighty totalities,’’ such as for instance the international liberal order or the state. In this framework, political action has more to do with playing with the cards that are dealt to us to produce practical effects in specific contexts than with building idealized ‘‘new totalities’’ where perfect conditions might exist. The political ethics that results from non-substantialist ontological positions is one that privileges ‘‘modest’’ engagements and weights political choices with regard to the consequences and distributive effects they may produce in the context where they are made rather than based upon their universal normative aspirations.13

EntryDate

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	1	+2016-09-17 21:26:01.849

Judge

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	1	+Lawrence Zhao

Opponent

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	1	+Valley SC

ParentRound

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	1	+15

Round

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	1	+3

Team

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	1	+Harvard Westlake Engel Neg

Title

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	1	+1 - K - Athropocene

Tournament

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	1	+Greenhill