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£69.99

Plastic Power

The Symbolic-Materialist Human and International Politics
Juan Recce

£69.99

This book offers an interdisciplinary framework for understanding global transformation. It reveals how human consciousness and global structures co-evolve, forging new forms of power through symbolic-material struggles over meaning, legitimacy, and resources.

Plasticity is not just the subject of this book—it is also its method. This book offers an ambitious, interdisciplinary framework for understanding global transformation at…
£69.99
£69.99
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Plasticity is not just the subject of this book—it is also its method. This book offers an ambitious, interdisciplinary framework for understanding global transformation at its roots, treating symbolic and material forces as co-constitutive. It weaves together a philosophy of history and a critical anthropology grounded in neuroplasticity, revealing how human consciousness and global structures co-evolve. By interrogating the deep tensions between identity and ideology, geopolitics and geoeconomics, the book reconceptualises the world as a theoretical laboratory and the post-Cold War international agenda as its empirical field. Drawing on case studies from Latin America, Eurasia, Africa, and Eastern Europe, it reveals how emerging forms of power are forged through symbolic-material struggles over meaning, legitimacy, and resources. By combining political theory, international relations, and critical sociology, it offers a distinctive framework for grasping the fluid architecture of the emerging world order. This is a vital contribution for scholars and practitioners seeking to understand how the global operates—not just through structures or interests, but through narratives, asymmetries, and historical fractures.

Juan Recce (Buenos Aires, 1979) holds a master’s degree in Military Affairs and undergraduate degrees in International Relations and Philosophy. He has been a fellow in defence policy programmes across multiple countries and has completed postgraduate training at institutions throughout the Americas and Europe. His interdisciplinary background spans strategic foresight, intelligence analysis, local development, and cultural and social studies. He has taught postgraduate courses in Strategic Forecasting, Latin American Foreign Policy, and Complex Thinking at leading military and civilian institutions. His publications explore the philosophical foundations of international relations, strategic identity, and the evolution of global actors. He has travelled extensively, gaining first-hand exposure to complex social and strategic realities across diverse regions. He has also held government positions in strategic decision-making, contributing to national planning and defence policy. Beyond academia, he is an industrial entrepreneur and founder of environmental initiatives in the third sector, leading projects focused on sustainability and ecosystem protection. His career bridges theory and practice, rooted in both institutional experience and social commitment.

Hardback

  • ISBN: 1-0364-6614-0
  • ISBN13: 978-1-0364-6614-5
  • Date of Publication: 2026-03-17

Subject Codes:

  • BIC: JPS, HPS, JPSL
  • BISAC: POL010000, POL011000, POL062000, SOC026040, SOC042000, SOC002010
  • THEMA: JPS, QDTS, JPSL
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  • "A creative vision grounded in philosophical and anthropological reflection which, in addressing both dimensions, offers a lateral perspective on the contemporary world. By bringing together the symbolic and material dimensions of international politics, and by revealing the mutable essence of power—constantly reconfigured on a global scale in its geographical, material, and symbolic aspects—[the author] offers one of the most original academic visions of the 21st century on humanity, power, and international politics."
    - Professor Fred Halliday, London School of Economics, British Academy, UK
  • "An ingenious challenge to conventional thought, tracing the symbolic-material labyrinth of power."
    - Victor Krasilshchikov, Russian Academy of Sciences
  • "An innovative approach to world power that deserves the attention of the academic community."
    - Arno Tausch, University of Innsbruck, Austria
  • "This book casts the Leviathan as Sisyphus’s rock, caught in a process of ascent and descent, in a pendular alternation between identity and ideology, and between geopolitics and geo-economics."
    - Dora Elvira García, Monterrey Institute of Technology, Mexico
  • "At once an essay in the Philosophy of History, an anthropological theory, and an interpretation of the international system."
    - Augusto Pérez Lindo, Catholic University of Leuven, University of Buenos Aires, Argentina
  • "A work that marks a return to dialectics, in which holism as a methodological resource in research, together with transdisciplinarity in theoretical inquiry, makes possible the development of a critical approach to the grounding of analysis."
    - Aldo Olano Alor, Externado University of Colombia
  • "A southern vision that re-oxygenates International Relations theory and encourages a reappraisal of the still enduring modern heritage."
    - Henry Baldelomar, Nur University of Bolivia

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