Understanding and Classifying Constructivisms

The chapter discusses various ways that constructivism might be defined, and finds in them a tendency to make constructivisms into at once more than they are (by imbuing them with “naturally” associated politics) and less (by divorcing them from their roots as social theory). The chapter builds an argument that what constructivisms have in common is the ontological assumption of the social construction of international politics as expressed in methodology for doing International Relations research. This assumption should not be understood as taking specific ontologies, let alone methods, methodologies, or politics, as definitional of constructivism. Work can reasonably be described as constructivist if it builds on an ontology of co-constitution and intersubjectivity in the context of a particular set of methodological claims underlying a research exercise about global politics. This brackets what work might be called constructivist but does not associate constructivism either with any specific ontology or with any specific methodology.

The Constructivist–Critical Theory Synthesis

Is there a constructivist–critical theory synthesis? This chapter makes the case that such a synthesis can indeed be found, both in the practice and the politics of the discipline of International Relations. The chapter locates the synthesis both in broader social science debates about social construction and in disciplinary histories of International Relations that see both critical theory and constructivism on the same side of the so-called third debate. The chapter sees the synthesis being expressed implicitly, as a default category for work that does not fit into the realist/liberal synthesis or is outside the neopositivist mainstream. The chapter also sees the synthesis in explicit claims—of nonfoundationalism, of the rejection of metanarratives, or of the embrace of progressive politics. Finally, the chapter sees traces of a synthesis even when critical theory and constructivism are presented as paradigmatically distinct.

A Case against the Constructivist–Critical Theory Synthesis

This chapter builds on the understandings of constructivist and critical International Relations theories laid out in the book so far to make an argument that constructivisms and critical theories are not the same thing, naturally aligned, or necessarily productive bedfellows. Furthermore, there are both analytical and political downsides to the constructivist/critical theory nexus, which are evident in work in international relations that pairs the two unreflectively. In fact, many of the intersections between constructivisms and critical theories in the current International Relations theory literature are contrived at the expense of some or even most of the core tenets of either theory. This chapter suggests that the “end of International Relations” and the lost, confused nature of International Relations theory (particularly progressive International Relations theory) can find their origins in the underspecification and overreached application of pairings between constructivisms and critical theorizing in International Relations. These implications make it necessary to critically evaluate figurations of constructivist and critical International Relations.

Understanding and Classifying Critical Approaches

This chapter argues that what various theoretical approaches to IR that describe themselves or are described as critical share in common is that they are political rather than social theories. There are no other common elements to be found across this group of approaches. Various schemas used to typify different sorts of critical theories (e.g., emancipatory/postmodern; feminist/postcolonial/poststructuralist; Copenhagen School/Aberystwyth School/Paris School) signify different political theories with different political content but share political investment in both disciplinary International Relations and global politics. They are explicitly engaged in International Relations theorizing and International Relations research as a political enterprise with political ends.

Constructivism Does Not Have a Politics

This chapter lays out the argument that constructivism is fundamentally a social theory of the mechanisms at work in global politics, rather than a political theory of what, in international politics, constitutes “good” and “bad.” Constructivisms provide a set of tools that can inform understandings of the substance of global political structures and decisions about how it is possible to maintain or change political structures, but constructivisms cannot by themselves inform decisions about the desirability of particular political structures. Constructivisms, as social theories, can only meaningfully inform the practice of international politics in combination with some political theory, understood as a theory concerned with the “ought” when constructivisms are concerned with the “is.” Constructivisms as such are no more “naturally” wed to critical theory than they are to realisms, liberalisms, Marxisms, or any other political theories.

Thinking beyond the Constructivist–Critical Theory Synthesis

This chapter returns to the concept of affordances introduced in chapter 1. It proceeds in the spirit of thinking through theoretical approaches’ affordances to ask how specific critical theories and constructivisms might inform each other in the absence of a broader constructivist–critical theory synthesis. It does so in two parts. The first looks at examples of specific overlaps in which the affordances of a particular constructivism serve the needs of a particular exercise in critical theory, or vice-versa. It demonstrates that, while there are approaches that do not afford overlap, there are also approaches that do afford overlap. The second part argues that a politics and an ontology are not strictly analogous; the scope for constructivist tools in critical research is in fact narrower than the scope for critical reading of constructivist research.

Critical Theory Is Ontologically Promiscuous and Methodologically Agnostic

Do critical approaches to International Relations have some ontological commonality? Is there some tenet about what the world is (or should be) that critical approaches share? Does critical International Relations scholarship have methodological, perhaps even constructivist, commonality? This chapter makes the case that critical theories are sets of political commitments, not ontologies or sets of research methods. To read critical theories as ontology or method is to do injustice to their ties to politics; to read critical theories as methodologically bound is unfairly limiting to them. The chapter provides an overview of the range of ontologies and methods that are useful to the spectrum of International Relations critical theories, suggesting that this spectrum is broad, varied, and not necessarily internally consistent. While constructivisms can be methodologically useful to critical theorizing, they are only some among many of the tools that can be employed fruitfully in service of the various ends of International Relations critical theories.

Introduction

This chapter sets up an identity crisis in International Relations theorizing as the context for the currently complicated relationship between constructivism and critical theorizing, both in disciplinary International Relations–centered theory discussions and in empirical research about global politics. It argues that in the face of a proliferation of theoretical perspectives and increasing uncertainty about the nature of the world of global politics “out there,” there has been a tendency of theorists outside the “neo-neo synthesis” of realisms and liberalisms to consolidate their work into another synthesis, one between constructivist and critical International Relations. The chapter makes the preliminary case that constructivism and critical theory should be seen as orthogonal rather than complementary, and that the two should be seen as sets of tools for research and argumentation, rather than as paradigmatic unities. Finally, the chapter introduces the idea of affordances as a way of thinking about what the two can do well.