IRTD-C10: Constructivism §

Class: IS310, IS405 Created Time: September 15, 2021 9:33 AM Database: Class Notes Database Is Reference for: Constructi Last Edited Time: March 21, 2022 10:21 AM Tags:#NEED-RESEARCH Type: Lecture, Reading Notes

Introduction §

History §

• There was two social movements that proved useful for constructivism’s development
  • US and Europe Lobbies During the Cold War: US’s public lobbied the government to nuclear disarmarment that put pressure on the government. Loose European Nuclear Disarmament movement in Netherlands, Germany, Italy
    • They both helped show that the individual level could also interact and influence the international level as well
  • 1980s: there was dobts and challenges to the assumptions of IR theories on the Cold War
    • Traditional IR scholars failed to predict or explain the Cold War with their predetermined assumptions (liberalism and realism)

Concepts §

• Social Construction: something is only different from another because we give it different meaning
  • A plank of wood is just another form of a dead tree
  • State, alliance, international institutions or any concept in IR is resulted from built up social interactions in the social world

Constructivism Assumptions §

1. Reality changes over time and in different contexts:

   • Behavior of actors
   • Characters of states, interests, and international system

2. Emphasize the social dimensions of international relations such as international norms, rules, and language

   • Criticized Realism of exclusive emphasis on power and material interests who unable to explain post-Cold-War
   • Ex: Gorbachev’s new thinking ending the Cold War, rise of Humanitarian norms, spread of liberalism

3. Process of Interaction: actors make choices when interaction with each other, which brings historically, culturally, and politically distinct ‘realities’ into being.

   • Creating social constructions, norms, rules, and ideas into being

   💡 Ex: International relations is a social construction brought into being and changed by interactions between actors. They don’t just react to the world, they interact with it.

   • Criticize: Traditional IRT’s determined structures of neorealists and neoliberalists (anarchy, selfishness, utopian peace…)

Constructivism IR Debates §

How Constructivism-Rationalism debate shaped constructivism §

• The two theories argues about ontology, agreeing positivism as both their epistemology
  • Due to adopting positivism, constructivism gained more legitimacy
  • The debate becoming important in IR

1. The nature of being: social ontology

   • Rationalism follows logic of consequences: a rational act is one that produce an outcome that maximizes interest of the individual actor

   • Constructivists: follows logic of appropriateness focus on norms and shared understanding as source of behavior

     • Actors rarely make rational decisions, but follows what is expected of them or established as norms/habits already

     • Structures shapes identity of actors in it

     • A rational choice = legitimacy of shared values and norms in institutions or social structures

     💡 Ex: Norms constrain states less because power consideration, but more for states wanting to do the right thing (human rights, sovereignty, peace)

2. The relationship between structures and agents: (Agent Structure Problem)

   • Rationalism: structures constrain states
   • Constructivism: structures and agents mutually constitute each other through norms, shared understandings, relationships between agency & structure
     • States relationships evolve over time: enemies $\stackrel{becomes}{\leftrightarrow }$ friends
       • Mutual Constitution: the actor and space they inhabit shape each other during social processes.

3. The constitution of the material world

   • Social Facts: Material things mean different things according to their context and what meaning/value we all give them

     • Money, sovereignty, state borders,

   💡 Ex: NATO & US had interest of mass producing nuclear weapons

   • That interest is constituted by Soviet Union as an enemy

   • Distinction between Capitalist and Communist & want to contain USSR

4. The role of cognition

   • Rationalism: actors make decisions for self-interest
   • Constructivists emphasize on Rational Choice Theory: choices depends on social dimensions, shared values, understanding, knowledge

Constructivism as a middle ground §

• Conventional Constructivism is the middle ground between Rationalism and Post-Structuralism
  • Ontology: positivism: there is an objective world
  • Sharing grounds with English School
  • more critical variation of constructivism is Post-Structuralism
• Critical Constructivism:

  • Ontology: Post-Positivism: emphasize language

    • Something is only different because we name/categorize it differently using languages

    💡 Ex: A Knight on a chess board is only different from the other peices of wood because we name it differently, put different rules to it.

  • Conventional constructivism is a collection of principles from social theories

  • Critical constructivism has more consistent theoretical and epistemological follow through

    • Ted Hopf thinks the meshing of social ontology with positivist epistemology is makes for inconsistent theory or is not even possible
• Constructivism gained more legitimacy by adopting the Positivism Epistemology
• Constructivism aims to bring the social back into a discipline (IR) that has been under-socialized

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Summary §

• What did constructivism born from?
  • Constructivism in IR emerged from a critique of the more traditional IR theories during the Cold War period.
  • They shared a rejection of the static material assumptions that dominated and instead emphasized the social dimensions of IR and the possibility for change.
• What does constructivism assume about the world?
  • Constructivism is based on the general notion that international relations are socially constructed.
  • To construct something is an act which brings into being a subject or object that otherwise would not exist.
  • Social phenomenon such as states, alliances or international institutions, are not thought to exist independent of human meaning and action.
• The central themes of change, sociality, and processes of interaction point to the added value of constructivism within a field that has emphasized generalization across time, materiality and rational choice.
• How does constructivism relate to other IR perspectives?
  • The term constructivism was introduced to IR by Nicholas Onuf (1989) to refer broadly to a range of postpositivist perspectives, which shared a critique of the static assumptions of mainstream IR theory.
  • However, scholars have since made a distinction between ?conventional? constructivism and more critical variations, including poststructuralism.
  • Conventional constructivism is said to occupy the middle ground between rationalism and poststructuralism. By adopting a positivist epistemology, constructivists have gained considerable legitimacy, such that their debate with rationalists has come to occupy an important place in the discipline.
• How shared social structures and norms in constructivism define what is rational?
  • Constructivism adds a social dimension that is missing from rationalist approaches. What is rational is seen as a function of legitimacy, defined by shared values and norms within institutions or other social structures rather than purely individual interests.
• Critical constructivists have questioned the individualist ontology of rationalism and instead emphasize a social ontology. As fundamentally social beings, individuals or states cannot be separated from a context of normative meaning which shapes who they are and the possibilities available to them.
• Structures not only constrain actors they also constitute identities. The individual or state can also influence their environment as well as being influenced by it, through a process of interaction and mutual constitution.
• Constructivists emphasize social cognition where intersubjective meanings have some independent status as collective knowledge not merely the aggregation of individual beliefs. Although a closer look at the role of individual cognition and rationality in constructivism suggests this difference is less stark.
• There is a tension between conventional constructivism and that with its roots in the linguistic turn, particularly regarding consistency.
• In conventional constructivism, these inconsistencies arise from the combination of a social ontology with an epistemology that rests on a separation between an external world and the internal thought processes of individuals.
• It rests on positivist epistemology, however, and thus on a correspondence theory of language. That is, objects are assumed to exist independent of meaning, and words act as labels for objects in this reality. Hypothesis testing is then a method of comparing scientific statements about the world with the world to see whether they correspond.
• Consistent constructivism rests on a longer lineage, outside of IR, with a genealogy that intersects with, but is distinct from, poststructuralism. Constructivism is, from this perspective, first and foremost an epistemological position, heavily indebted to the ?linguistic turn?.
• The linguistic turn builds on the notion that we cannot get behind our language to compare it with that which it describes. Language is bound up in the world rather than a mirror of it.
• Consistent constructivism is based on an understanding of language and action as rule-based. This approach to language requires that we ?look and see? how language is put to use by social actors as they construct their world.
• As such it is less concerned with the intentions of individuals than the intention expressed in social action. For example, the ?intention? of individuals engaged in ethnic cleansing in the Former Yugoslavia could not be separated from a world in which neighbours had become ?dangerous others?. Intention and action were defined in a public language by socially constituted actors.
• This approach also highlights problems apparent in the frequent emphasis on causality of conventional constructivism and the conflation of reason and cause. The competition to identify the ?true? cause or intention usually devolves into a battle of interpretations. Reasons, however, can be given in public language and make actions possible, such as the presence of WMD in Iraq, whether they were believed or not.
• This suggests we should focus less on the desire for ultimate truth and more on social fact that the action happened and then how this became possible.
• Case Study. Realists approaches the study of terrorism and war on terror through a state-based lens. Constructivism moves away from this emphasis on states or threats as given and objective phenomena. It explores how identities, actions and human suffering are constructed through a process of interaction, and thus emphasizes a social epistemology.
• Case study continued. In the aftermath of 9/11 identity was mutually constituted as negative othering, around a stark difference between good and evil, both by Bush and by Osama Bin Laden.
• Case study continued. Constructivists ? following securitization theory - have raised a question about how some threats come to be elevated above others to become the focus of security efforts, which suspends normal politics and allows for extraordinary measures not otherwise considered acceptable. The question, from a constructivist perspective, is thus whether there were alternative frameworks for giving meaning to and responding to an attack like 9/11.
• Case study continued. It is not only threats and violence that are constructed, but human suffering and trauma as well. Both played a crucial role in the War on Terror, where shattered feelings of safety were quickly followed by a mobilization of military might first in Afghanistan and then in Iraq.
• Conclusion. The interactions of the War on Terror have produced a reality, but this reality is constituted out of meanings that the main actors have brought to their interactions. The reality is therefore far more multidimensional and social than posited by epistemological approaches that assume an objective reality ?out there?. Constructivist analysis opens a space for greater reflexivity by actors, making it possible for actors to step back and ask questions about how their own actions may contribute to the construction of the very problem they seek to address.