Rethinking Britain's Role in the World for a New Decade: The Limits of Discursive Therapy and the Promise of Field Theory

Debate over the future of British foreign policy will doubtless invoke Britain's 'role in the world', but the interconnection between Britain's role as an analytical concept within the academic field and as a category within the political field renders this starting point problematic. It underpins a tendency to take descriptive statements for objective analysis, leaving the language of British foreign policy saturated with clichés and tropes-like the 'special relationship'-that constitute rather than describe Britain in the world. Given this, the present article assesses two theoretical approaches to UK foreign policy: discursive 'therapy', which denaturalises this language, and is both necessary but limited in its impact; and field theory, which enables a move beyond the level of discourse to the structure of British foreign policy knowledge and expertise creation. The latter approach is particularly promising for the attempt to say something new about Britain in world politics for the 2010s.