Acting abstractions: Metaphors, narrative structures, and the eclipse of agency
Acting abstractions: Metaphors, narrative structures, and the eclipse of agency
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表演抽象：隐喻、叙事结构和代理的衰落
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发表时间：
2014
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通讯作者：
B. Bucher
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作者：
B. Bucher
规范扩散理论家已经推进了我们对“规范如何产生、传播和内化”的理解。虽然这一文献，特别是规范生命周期模型是基于建构主义本体论，给予同等权重的机构和结构，人们可以作出'的倾向，在这一文献中删除'机构规范扩散的叙述。本文认为，“无形化”的代理源于两个相互加强的学术实践。首先，对描述规范传播的隐喻（扩散、级联、生命周期等）关注不够。这些隐喻经常以指向“规范扩散”的机械化和自动化过程的方式使用。第二，规范在句子中常被置于主语位置。虽然在句法方面没有争议，但这种写作模式导致了叙事结构，其中规范起着代理人的作用。规范扩散文献并没有指出实际的行为者，而是认为规范是出现的、扩散的和级联的。这些语义学创造了一种“代理幻觉”，而没有考虑规范被表达、传播、争议、适应、采纳或拒绝的实际过程。规范扩散研究随后开始与自我行动主义的思维模式密切相关，这种思维模式将研究重点放在规范的内在品质上，而不是放在对规范扩散过程至关重要的社会嵌入式机构和权力关系上。更加关注隐喻和句法将有助于将文献从对规范扩散的错位关注转移到对代理规范政治的潜在权力关系的关注。
Norm diffusion theorists have advanced our understanding of how ‘norms emerge, spread and become internalized.’ Although this literature and especially the norm life cycle model is based on a constructivist ontology that gives equal weight to agency and structure, one can make out ‘a tendency in this literature to erase’ agency from norm diffusion narratives. This article suggests that the ‘invisibilization’ of agency stems from two mutually reinforcing scholarly practices. For one, insufficient attention is paid to the metaphors describing norm propagation (diffusion, cascade, life cycle, etc.). These metaphors are frequently employed in ways that point to mechanistic and automatized processes of ‘norm diffusion.’ Secondly, norms are often placed in the subject position in sentences. Although uncontroversial in terms of syntax, this mode of writing leads to narrative structures in which norms function as agents. Rather than identifying actual actors, the norm diffusion literature suggests that norms emerge, norms diffuse, and norms cascade. These semantics create an ‘illusion of agency’ without accounting for the actual processes through which norms are articulated, propagated, contested, adapted, adopted, or rejected. Norm diffusion research subsequently comes to be closely associated with self-actionist modes of thinking, which focuses research on intrinsic qualities of norms, rather than on socially embedded agency and power relations central to processes of diffusing norms. Being more attentive to metaphors and syntax will be instrumental in moving the literature from a misplaced focus on norm diffusion to a focus on the underlying power relations of agential norm politics.