Browsing by Autor "Esteban Nicholls"

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COVID-19: Anxiety vs Fear and the Dangers of Future Global Problems
(Scientific Research Publishing, 2024) Esteban Nicholls
My aim in this paper is to ask whether anxiety or fear would incentivise change when facing global problems. In the context of the SARS-CoV-2, I shall analyze the pandemic in the context of the ontological in structural, institutional and behavioral settings. Given that pandemics occur sparsely I have employed analytical theoretical construction, some statistical comparison and transcendental arguments in a logical nest of analytic inferences. I should note that I am not interested in what the wake of the pandemic looks like. This paper is about is to do so I appeal, in general terms on the philosophy or Martin Heidegger. Along the same lines, this time following Anthony Giddens, I argue, contrary to what many ascertain, that anxiety is a force which pushes people to want to return to normalcy; and fear to change. For example, Agamben argues that emergencies [fear] push for a return to normalcy and a state of exception is there to change in a systemic order. Again, I disagree, I posit that COVID-19 showed that fear is a more powerful engine of change. Anxiety which is stronger than fear to the contrary is that the strongest force to element to propel a return to normalcy is anxiety not fear. This paradox is what this paper’s primoradial wants to contribute. Ontological dissonance or existential threats put into question our ability to be-in the world. What I would posit is that emergencies may lead to change while anxiety leads to stagnation and useless attempts to return to a pre-pandemic world.
El mecenazgo estructural y la movilización social en Ecuador
(2022) Esteban Nicholls
RESUMENEl objetivo de esta investigación es profundizar el tratamiento teórico que se da entre Estado y demandas sociales. En particular, utilizando el caso ecuatoriano como estudio de caso, la inferencia descriptiva y el análisis teórico como metodologías, se argumenta que el mecenazgo estructural es una de las maneras de entender movilizaciones sociales. Su originalidad yace en destacar y orientar nuestro entendimiento del porque en ciertas sociedades latinoamericanas la “cultura” del mecenazgo prevalece ante otras fuerzas, típicamente asociadas a las “condiciones objetivas” de la vida de la gente pobre, particularmente en este caso, los pueblos indígenas ecuatorianos. La conclusión a la que he llegado es que el mecenazgo estructural es útil para entender el por qué y la fuerza de ciertas movilizaciones sociales.
Government through Inaction: The Venezuelan Migratory Crisis in Ecuador
(2020) Christiaan Beyers; Esteban Nicholls
Abstract This article analyses strategies for channelling a migrant population out of a country by indirect means. Specifically, we examine the response of the Ecuadorean state to the influx of Venezuelan newcomers since 2015. We argue that this response has been characterised by inaction, rooted not in policy failures or bad governance, but rather in a strategic governmental rationality. We show how migrants are ‘herded’ out of the country as a result of a form of indirect government that works differently from other ‘anti-immigrant’ policies like forced deportations or incarceration at the border, and yet produces similar outcomes.
Los críticos de lo crítico: una defensa de la razón posestructuralista en la teoría de relaciones internacionales
(2012) Esteban Nicholls
This paper presents a defense of postructuralism in International Relations (IR) theory. I particular, I focus on three specific assertions made against this approach: the empty critique and the anti-realist (reality-denying) claim and the relativism argument. More specifically, I argue that these common criticisms focus not on what the approach actually says, but on what it refuses to say, and in doing so often engage in a fruitless reiteration of their own theoretical postulates. My analysis places special attention on poststructralism’s circumvention of foundational positions in IR theorizing and the way in which the critiques addressed here fail to capture the reasons for and results of this argumentative choice. In this sense, I also maintain that much of what is useful in poststructural analyses rests not only in what they say, but also in the theoretical paths they evade.
Studying the state: a Global South perspective
(2018) Esteban Nicholls
This introductory article presents an overview of the collection. It places its importance in relation to relevant literature and critically highlights the importance of and contributions to each of the articles in this collection. The introduction also stresses the importance of continuing to study the state, particularly from the perspective of the Global South. This entails looking at the state both as an real “thing” as an object of theory. The Introduction emphasizes the polycentric understanding of the state that the collection adopts and the diversity and complementarity between the articles presented. Above all the Introduction highlights the relevance, importance and originality of the collection of articles as a whole and as individual pieces of scholarship.
The strategic use of radical indigenous narratives by the Ecuadorian state
(2018) Esteban Nicholls
This paper is a study of the strategic use of language by the Ecuadorian state between 2008 and 2014. The paper analyses the relationship among state-sponsored language games, state images, and contemporary forms of domination in Ecuador. More specifically, the paper studies certain strategies of state domination rooted in the employment of the ‘radical’ political narratives of indigenous peoples in state-planning documents. However, unlike similar studies about how indigenous peoples’ narratives have been co-opted by Ecuador’s government, I develop my arguments in state-theoretical terms. Specifically, I argue that the use of indigenous narratives by the state represents a form of state domination rooted in a seemingly contradictory discursive strategy – one that blurs and simultaneously reaffirms the dividing lines between state and society. I posit that the strategic use of language by the state through what I call, following Mary Louise Pratt, reverse auto-ethnographies, reveals an important dimension of state power – one rooted in the strategic positioning of the state through language games.