Social Constructivism and Discursive
Approaches
Dr Monika Brusenbauch Meislová
IRE110 Theory of International Relations and European Integration
23 April 2019
Introduction
̶ Social constructivism and discursive approaches: what do they have in common?
̶ Share emphasis on the role of norms, values, ideas, identities and discourse in the constitution
of the social world.
̶ Point to the constitutive dimension of language.
̶ But there are also many differences. Which ones? (this is what our today‘s session will be about :-)
Social constructivism
̶ Human beings are not separate from their environmental context (structure) and ideas and beliefs
that form the ideational environment that actors find themselves within inform the actions of
individuals.
̶ Individuals (collectively) reproduce or ‘reconstruct’ this environment through their behaviour and
actions. Risse (p. 160) argues that constructivism “is based on a social ontology which insists that
human agents to not exist independently from their social environment and its collectively shared
systems of meanings (‘culture’ in a broad sense)”.
Social constructivism
̶ Constructivism is not ontologically rationalist or materialist
̶ To study actors effectively one needs to understand how their beliefs about themselves and about
what the correct or ‘right’ thing to do impact on what they do
̶ Key thinkers
̶ Thomas Risse
̶ Jeffrey Checkel
̶ Thomas Christiansen
Social constructivism
Structure and agent
̶ Distinction between agents (actors such as individuals or states) and the structural context that they
find themselves in
̶ Agents and structures are mutually constitutive (structural factors both shape the way that actors
behave and who they are + at the same time the regular actions of individuals - collectively following
these ideas - reconstruct these structures.
̶ Real-life example: a good citizen who does not steal
Social constructivism
̶ Logic of appropriateness: behaving in line with what is acceptable in a given society (including a
society of states)
̶ Logic of consequences: operating according to what will happen to the actors (i.e. will they benefit or
lose out from their actions).
̶ Different theories based on different logics.
Social constructivism
Social constructivism and study of the EU
̶ Areas of study
̶ Identity as a core part of states’ decisions to integrate
̶ Importance of states perceptions and their impact upon EU decision-making.
Social constructivism
̶ Three variants of constructivism (accoding to Checkel)
̶ conventional
̶ interpretative
̶ critical/radical variants
Conventional constructivism
• school dominant in the US
• examines the role of norms and, in fewer cases, identity in shaping international political outcomes.
scholars positivist in epistemological orientation
• strong advocates of bridge building among-diverse theoretical perspectives;
• their typical methodological starting point: the qualitative,´process-tracing case study
• Examples of EU studies research:
•exploring functioning of EU institutions with the explicit goal of building bridges between rationalist and
sociological work (Caporaso)
• causal effect of norms by focusing on mechanisms of persuasion and role playing within COREPER (Lewis)
Social constructivism
Interpretative constructivism
̶ greater popularity in Europe
̶ explores the role of language in mediating and constructing social reality.
̶ commitment to various forms of post-positivist epistemologies → not explanatory in the sense that A
causes B
̶ ‘how possible’ questions
̶ deeply inductive research strategy that targets the reconstruction of state/agent identity, with the
methods encompassing a variety of linguistic techniques
̶ Example: Hopf (study of Soviet and Russian identity)
Social constructivism
Critical/radical constructivism
̶ maintains the linguistic focus, but adds an explicitly normative dimension
̶ discourse theoretical methods emphasized, but with a greater emphasis on the power and domination
inherent in language.
̶ sources of theoretical inspiration: linguistic approaches (e.g. Wittgenstein) and continental social theory
(e.g. Habermas, Bourdieu, Derrida)
̶ the scholarly enterprise is not neutral (our choices - analytic or methodological - are not innocent)
̶ politicized view of academy
Discursive approaches
̶ Discourse analysis = one of the most widespread research approaches across the social sciences
̶ DA challenge the idea of fixedness that is presented by the main rationalist theories
̶ Supports the social-constructivist idea that Europe and European identity are constructed from the
perspective of the individual.
̶ ‘Things do not have meaning in and of themselves, they only become meaningful in
discourse.’ (Wæver).
̶ Europe as ‘an essentially contested concept.’ (Thomas Diez)
̶ ‘All our accounts of the world… are embedded in certain discourses’ (Thomas Diez)
Discursive approaches
̶ Large variety of research questions and epistemological and ontological stances
̶ Peculiarity of discourse analysis, can be both used as
̶ a mere analysis technique by the most rationalist and positivist scholars,
̶ a general theory of politics in a constructivist and interpretive perspective.
̶ European discourse as a dependent or independent variable?
Thank you very much for your attention
(brusenbauch.meislova@email.cz)