ABSTRACT
The WTO is not abstract to its wider context, as has been argued thus far. The validity of this argument, and the utility of a discourse theoretical framework to help understand what it means, is made evident in this chapter by exhibiting the contingency of who (or what) constitutes an ‘actor’ within the discursive formation of the WTO. The value of this analysis is that it helps better to understand both the discursive formation of the WTO, and the changing definition of an actor within its management of trade. In so doing, the WTO is seen as intimately tied into its historically contingent discursive context through a mutually constitutive relationship in which the WTO is both shaped by, but also shapes, that context.
