Constructivism & Interpretive theory

What are social constructs

The power of collective ideas, beliefs, norms, identities

Gives 3 examples of how ideas have changed social constructs

1. Abolition of slavery

2. Women’s voting rights

   1. Switzerland in 1970 although 30% were against it

3. Fall of the Berlin Wall - Collapse of the Soviet Union

   1. Desire to lose a common understanding

What are actions structured by

Meanings - we exist in ‘a world of our making’

Subjective interpretations affects what people do

What are the 4 key principles:

1. Human action is primarily shaped by ideational, not material factors

   1. Ideas about ourselves shape our ideas about the world

2. Intersubjective beliefs as shared social constructs that shape actors identities & interests

3. Ideas like state, sovereignty, or human rights are socially constructed through implicit shared understandings in groups

4. Material factors are important but only based in specific intersubjective understandings

Can social constructs/shared understandings be changed?

• Yes - when it stops being practiced

• Allows for reinterpretation & evolution (dynamic)

• e.g. Russia’s Nord Stream

Distinguish between logic of consequence & appropriateness

• Logic of consequence = how can I get what I want? 

• Logic of appropriateness = what am I supposed to do here?

What are the origins of constructivism?

• Durkheim = societies are held together by ‘social factors’ in the 19th century 

• Weber = Influence of religious ideas & culture on the development of capitalism

• Emerged as a result of the failures of previous theories to explain post-Cold War IR & predict the grand changes

• Resurgence = explosion of work in 1980’s —> “anarchy is what states made of it” (Wendt)

What are the 2 distinctions in constructivist approaches

Differences in epistemology & causality:

• Interpretive epistemology

• Modern constructivism 

Explain interpretive epistemology 

• Interpretive epistemology

  • If the world is socially constructed, there is little ‘real world’ to study = anti-foundationalist

  • Requires interpretive search for meanings rather than a scientific search for causal relations 

  • Concerned with qualitative methodology 

Explain modern constructivism

• Modern constructivism 

  • Employs scientific (positivist) epistemology = we should still study cause & effect in careful research & open debate

  • Action is shaped by meaningful social constructs, not just material forces

Explain the Understanding vs. Explanation

• Explanation:

  • Asks ‘why?’

  • Adequacy on a causal level (predictable outcomes)

  • How well it shows someone’s actions follow predictably from certain conditions 

• Understanding:

  • Asks ‘what?’ and ‘how?’

  • Adequacy on the level of meaning (how the actor interpreted action)

What did Weber argue in the Explanation vs. understanding debate?

• That constructivism (understanding/insider) is separate from traditional science (explanation/outsider)

• Human action is never responds in an automatic stimulus-response causal relationship, but through meaning

What is the Humean view

• Causations = regularities

  • (X causes Y because X has been repeatedly followed by Y in the past)

• Norms/institutions = conventions, products of habit

• No metaphysical structures

• Anti-foundationalist

• Explanation = identifying the causal patterns

• Understanding = interpreting meanings, beliefs, understanding

• Contingency 

What is meant by contingency

• Highlights the openness, variability, & non-determined character of social & political life

• When facing unknown conditions, people adopt certain social constructs, constituting a course of action

• A contingent fact is one that is true, but didn’t necessarily need to be

  • e.g. Human rights norms are widespread today, but they are not built into nature; they emerged historically and could have evolved differently 

What is the post humean view?

• Rejects this separation

• Social causes are not just brute regularities

  • Constituted by meanings, interpretations, identities

• There are generative mechanisms 

• Removes the distinction between the Explanation/Understanding line between constructivists & non-constructivists 

• Explanations require both correlation & causational mechanisms 

  • e.g. Rational Choice

Outline the causal vs. constitutive argument

• Causal-explanatory = ‘why’ questions about how one set of conditions produced another

• Constitutive = ‘how’ or ‘what’ questions about the properties that constitute things

List the 3 mechanisms of influence in constructivism

1. Socialisation

2. Persuasion

3. Bricolage

What is socialisation?

• Consensual collective identities

• Gradual building of collective identities relating to a certain social fact, institution, organisation, university, family, nation…

• We are socialised to think of something in a certain way & take it for granted because we are educated in that context = socialisation mechanisms 

• Doesn’t always depend on ‘carriers’ with special authority 

What is persuasion?

• ‘Norm entrepreneurs’ or ‘carriers’

• They invent new ideas & purposefully spread them to others

• Often succeed because new ideas ‘fit’ existing norms

• Change is happening in how norms come to be & individuals take part in this process

  • Civil societies, organisations, individuals

  • e.g. #MeToo, Amnesty International, Greta Thunberg, advocation by the EU for the creation of a European single currency

What is Bricolage?

• Messy world with overlapping constructs

• We all have different jobs, identities, families, ethnicities…

• They overlap = collective identities are not coherent 

• Actors ‘tinker’ with the messy social constructs to develop discrete goals = changes limits & reveals future overlaps

• Incoherencies can become conflicts but different understandings of norms can emerge

What is choice constructivism?

Theorists make methods connect most strongly to the kind of constructivism in which they are trained

What is Process Tracing

• IR focused training

• To seek evidence of the pressures, incentives, motivations, & decision-making calculations in any instance of action 

  • e.g. Did the push to reform largely circumvent business people or bureaucratic people