International relations essay in 6 hrs [urgent] 1300 words
MAIN THEORETICAL APPROACHES
REALISM
LIBERALISM
CONSTRUCTIVISM
Constructivism
- Introduction
- Norms and appropriate behavior
- Changing social structures
- Explaining war and peace
Not too long ago
- Slavery widely accepted
- Discrimination against women and minorities (races, handicapped, homosexuals) too
John Searle
- Social facts (slavery, racism) depend on human agreement.
- Social facts require human institutions for their existence.
We attribute values to things
- Material things (military or economic power) do not just have values in themselves.
- Without the attribution of value, and the existence of financial institutions, a dollar bill or euro note would be nothing more than a piece of paper.
Sovereignty or the borders dividing states
- exist only by virtue of human agreement
So, what all of this means?
- The world of international relations is not just the world of material capabilities and materialistic opportunities
- It is also a social world
The social world (unlike the physical world) is:
- Culturally and historically specific
- It could change dramatically over time (and across cultures)
How do you explain shifts from:
- Slavery to anti-slavery?
- (Institutional) discrimination against women and minorities to their empowerment in societies?
What identifies….
- Realism: a distribution of military capabilities
- Liberalism: a distribution of opportunities and constraints
- Constructivism: a distribution of ideas and associated norms of behavior
Unlike the physical world (the world of objects)
- The social world is of our own making (we construct it)
- In the social world: THERE IS NO SINGLE OBJECTIVE REALITY
- What appears as single objective reality is what changes across cultures and over time
Constructivist scholars (since late 1980s):
- John Ruggie
- Nicholas Onuf
- Martha Finnemore
- Peter Katzenstein
- Alexander Wendt
- Jeff Checkel