Social Constructivist approaches to international security

Question 1

In a cold war context exemplify the importance of discourse in society

Answer 1

• Gorbacheve renunciation of Brezhnev doctrine

- Reagan 1987 “tear down this wall”

Question 2

how does social constructivism question rationalist approaches to security studies?

Answer 2

• Rationalism has positivist reductionist methodology where the criterion of truth is not sensory but is individual and deductive
• For example realism or liberalism

Question 3

Name some of the things which social constructivists will question

Answer 3

• Role of military power in IR
• If norms have any real impact on state behaviour
• If it is possible for human nature to change
• If change is driven by something other than material structures

Question 4

What are the key tenets of social constructivism / the main idea and who is a key thinker?

Answer 4

• Reality is result of the social construct of people and the structure it produces defines people themselves
• Norms of an actor guide behaviour
• Actors and the world they live in are mutually constituted
• ALEXANDER WENDT
• REJECTS THE MATERIALIST FOCUSES OF LIBERALISM / REALISM

Question 5

what are possible applications of SC?

Answer 5

• WOT
• End of CW
• European integreation
• Nato persistence and post CW enlargement

Question 6

Exemplify the importance of identity and how it can change over time.

Answer 6

UK is a member of NATO, OSCE, EU and at the same time has a strong USA relationship and strong link to favour the colonies

Question 7

why is culture important?

Answer 7

it defines the strategic posture of a state in international relations, interpretations of human rights etc

Question 8

How does Katzenstein explain norms?

give info on them for identity, their relation to the actor, and how they may be constitutive on behaviour

Answer 8

“collective explanations about proper behaviour for a given identity”

• they are vital for identity info
• constructed by the actor
• may be constitutive on behaviour e.g. self dtermination

Question 9

what are critiques of social constructivism?

Answer 9

• it is more interpretation than explanation
• cant help predict future change in identities of actors
• essentially considers ideas / identity in a casual way when they should be an intersubjective relationship
• how can change take place in the international system if actors permanently involved in a process of construction?

Question 10

Quote from Kratochwil

Answer 10

• ‘the human world is not simply given and or natural but that, on the contrary, the human world is one of artifice, that it is constructed through the actions of actors themselves’

Question 11

Exemplify the importance of identity. Give a quote from Wendt to support it

Answer 11

• it’s why states like the USA and Iran do not agree
• ‘a gun in the hands of a friend is a different thing form one in the hands of an enemy and enmity is a social, not material relation’

Question 12

Exemplify a good discursive construction of a security threat

Answer 12

• War on terror “this is the fight for all those who believe in progress and pluralism, tolerance and freedom”

Question 13

What did Adler say about identity?

Answer 13

• the identities, interests and behaviour of political agents are constructed by collective meaning, interpretations and assumptions; about the world
• e.g. why the USA allows the UK to have nuclear weapons but not Korea (history, identity, shared language, intersubjective meanings and ideas are held in common

Question 14

what do Berger and Luckman say about identity?

Answer 14

• Identity is formed by social processes

- e.g. france and Germany used to be enemies but are no longer

Question 15

Wendt said there are distinctions between what? (identity)

Answer 15

• corporate and social identity,
• corporate is intrinsic self realised identity of actor (exists pre interaction with others)
• Social identity sets meanings an actor attributes to itself while taking the perspective of others (actors may have multiple identities that vary in importance)

Question 16

what additional identity distincitons did Wendt add to corporate and social?

Answer 16

• Type, role and collective identity
• type identities are multiple and intrinsic to actors
• Collective identity - “takes relationship between self and other to its logical conclusion” (identification)

Question 17

Frederking said what about collective ideas and culture?

Answer 17

• ‘social rules that primarily make truth claims about the world … beliefs are shared understandings of the world’

Question 18

Exemplify a study of culture that gives meaning to shared experience and action

Answer 18

• Berger’s study of German and Japanese post war anti militarism
• Strategic culture where culture is institutionalised

Question 19

how does Katzenstein describe norms? (collective….)

Answer 19

• “collective expectations about proper behaviour for a given identity” e.g. DPT or R2P

Question 20

how do norms work in society?

Answer 20

• norms compete with other norms. Then they are sometimes institutionalised if successful (Berger and Luckmann see this institutionalisation as habitualised human activity from the individual to the collective)
• regulatory norms tell us what to do

Question 21

Nina Tanenwald says what? She examines what systemic and international norm?

Answer 21

• examines the norm of nuclear taboo as an interntional and systemic norm

Question 22

Finnenmore looks at liberal norms how in the mid 19th century?

Answer 22

• he shows how humanitarian norms influence patterns since the mid 19th century like decolonisaiton, abolition of slavery, human rights and USA anti apartheid

Question 23

What did Wendt argue that neorealism did? Gun

Answer 23

• Gave anarchy a privileged position in IR

“self help and power politics are institutions, not essential features of anarchy” its created from a mistrust and lack of cooperation

Question 24

what does Hopf say? About social construct and the possibility of change

Answer 24

• everything is social construct which presents the possibility of change

Wendt “the logic of anarchy is constant”

Question 25

What are Wendt’s three cultures of anarchy?

Answer 25

• Hobbesian (states enemies, no self restraint, no cooperation)
• Lockean (culture of rivalry domination since treaty of westphalia and beginning of modern states)
• Kantian (friendship, cooperation etc)

Question 26

Why can you criticise wendt?

Answer 26

• he accepts some realist tenets, like states being the main societal actors
• therefore in this sense he conveys himself as a rationalist constructivist by seeing similarities between rationalism / constructivism

Question 27

how is constructivism not unified in its approaches?

Answer 27

• Conventional versus critical camp
• Conventional is likely to accept key aspects of neorealist systemic theorising, e.g. state centrality / importance of scientific approach
• Critical is likely to find conventional assumption problematic, argue the distinction between material and ideational structures just creates a binary opposition that characterises positivist methodology (so critical explore language, reality, discourse, meaning etc)

Question 28

exemplify two critical constructivists and their studies into language, reality, discourse and meaning

Answer 28

• Doty (who explores civilising discourses in north - south relations and how they established regimes of truth and knowlege
• Weldes (worked on CMC)

Question 29

quote form finnenmore and Sikkink on power?

Answer 29

• ‘many of the categories we treat as natural are in fact products of past social construction processes, processes in which power is often deeply implicated’

Question 30

Which critical theorists have been known to focus on language?

Answer 30

• Onuf, Kratochwil, Fierke , Hyusmans
• Fierke ‘by speaking, we make the world what is is’
• Hyusmans ‘Language and speech acts have enormous importance because they can scrutinise’ (e.g. WOT or Rwanda local tribal warfare

Question 31

what are criticisms you can give of social constructivism?

Answer 31

• rationalists say it cannot be empirically assessed or observed
• Wendt 3 cultures of anarchy cant tell us much about domestic identity formation because his focus is states system
• PS critiques say refication of state and singular / essentialised identity. As well as putting culture at the centre could be dangerous and privilege dominant power relations

Question 32

a view of norms is dependent on what?

Answer 32

• individual outlook