The Politics of Beginning: The Origin of Private Authority in the Process of Translation
The Politics of Beginning: The Origin of Private Authority in the Process of Translation
by Alejandro Esguerra
University of Michigan Press, 2025
ISBNs
Cloth: 978-0-472-07765-6
Paper: 978-0-472-05765-8
eISBN: 978-0-472-90524-9 (OA)
About the Book
The Politics of Beginning traces the formation of the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC), now the most authoritative private organization for forestry certification. It starts with recounting the highly politicized forest politics of the late 1980s, when activists protested human rights abuses and deforestation while experimenting with sustainable forestry practices. The book then follows the people who became the founding members of the Forest Stewardship Council. By using live audio recordings of the FSC founding assembly in 1993, this book provides an in-depth analysis of a constitutional moment for private authority in world politics.
To explore how timber merchants, Indigenous communities, and social and environmental NGOs engaged in private institution-making, Alejandro Esguerra works with the concept of translation developed in Actor-Network Theory—a process in which knowledge about governance is continuously recontextualized—and introduces it to International Relations theory. He develops a dramaturgical methodology with metaphors of theatre such as stage, script, and performance. This methodology can be used to analyze the ways in which activists and others translate knowledge about governance and the practices of inclusion and exclusion that appear during this process. The environmental crisis requires a transformation in the ways societies value and govern human–nature relations, and The Politics of Beginning reveals the conditions under which even formerly antagonistic actors start developing a common political project.
To explore how timber merchants, Indigenous communities, and social and environmental NGOs engaged in private institution-making, Alejandro Esguerra works with the concept of translation developed in Actor-Network Theory—a process in which knowledge about governance is continuously recontextualized—and introduces it to International Relations theory. He develops a dramaturgical methodology with metaphors of theatre such as stage, script, and performance. This methodology can be used to analyze the ways in which activists and others translate knowledge about governance and the practices of inclusion and exclusion that appear during this process. The environmental crisis requires a transformation in the ways societies value and govern human–nature relations, and The Politics of Beginning reveals the conditions under which even formerly antagonistic actors start developing a common political project.
About the Author
Alejandro Esguerra is Senior Lecturer in the Working Group Political Sociology at Bielefeld University, Germany.
Reviews
“Esguerra provides a valuable and insightful multidisciplinary ethnographic study of the interplay between social institutions and those who are appointed the curators of tropical forestry policy, offering a critical yet positive view that diverse constituencies of actors can yield better policy outcomes. While political institutions appoint curators and validate their knowledge base, the actors manage to escape some of the direct control exercised by the institutions. His ‘dramaturgical’ turn offers a novel and creative frame for how NGOs choose and present their strategies at multilateral meetings.”— Peter M. Haas, University of Massachusetts Amherst
“With The Politics of Beginning, Alejandro Esguerra delivers a tremendously persuasive prequel to interdisciplinary scholarship on the privatization of international politics. He presents an utterly fascinating take on ‘private authority in the making,’ placing struggles over representation, expertise, and legitimacy center-stage in the analysis of the constitutional moments of global forest governance.”— Anna Holzscheiter, TUD Dresden University of Technology
Tags
Configurations: Critical Studies Of World Politics, Politics, Public Policy, Political Science, History
Open Access Information
License: CC BY-NC
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