Constructivism Reconsidered by Bertucci Mariano E. Hayes Jarrod James Patrick & Jarrod Hayes & Patrick James

Author:Bertucci, Mariano E.,Hayes, Jarrod,James, Patrick & Jarrod Hayes & Patrick James
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: University of Michigan Press (limited)

Reflexive Pragmatism as an Epistemology

The epistemology of constructivism has been the subject of much debate (Adler 2013, 130–33). As Jackson put it, “no other identifiable subset of the contemporary IR scholarly literature has worried as long and as loudly about its epistemic standing over the past few years, probably in large part due to the repeated efforts to de-legitimate constructivism as either not scientific or as not yet scientific enough” (2011, 201). As a result of these debates, it can be difficult to see what the four categories of constructivists—modernist, linguistic, radical, and critical—identified by Adler (1997) or the two categories—critical and conventional—identified by Hopf (1998) have in common in terms of epistemology. There are entrenched epistemological oppositions between Wendt’s scientific realism (1999), Weldes’ critical constructivism (1999), and Guzzini’s reflexive constructivism (2000, 2013). This leaves the question of constructivism’s epistemology open and allows critics of constructivism to question its foundations. Building on pragmatism, PT rests on an interpretive, empirical, and reflexive epistemology that contributes to reinforce a meta-theoretical foundation to constructivism, while opening a space for critical involvement of scholars in the world.

Analyzing the traces left by habits and the disclosure of mental dispositions always depends on an analyst’s point of view. PT therefore builds on a specific epistemology that locates it among interpretivist approaches. The position of the researcher is here characterized by a subtle equilibrium between distance and involvement, an understanding of practices from both “inside” and “outside” the field under study (Pouliot 2007). As Turner (1994, 24) put it, “practices are objects of a peculiar kind, dependent on a cultural perspective.” For Bueger (2014, 389), “the praxiographic research process is one of turning implicit knowledge into explicit. This implies a high degree of interpretation.” PT therefore stands against neopositivism and its “hubristic claims” that the world can be explained (Brown 2012, 456; McCourt 2012; Navari 2011; Pouliot 2014).

What Turner labeled the “Mauss problem” explains more precisely why practices cannot be studied objectively (Pouliot 2012). At the beginning of the twentieth century, French sociologist Marcel Mauss observed that French women were changing the way they walk to walk more like American women. Mauss’s problem was that he needed to be situated within French society to identify and understand this change. Only through his position within that culture could he attribute causality. How can he be sure that this was not a “natural” phenomenon? Turner (1994, 21) explains: “Mauss could distinguish the walk as habit because he could say that the difference in walks he had noticed was not a natural difference, and he could say that it was not a natural difference because he could give a historical account of it. He started, so to speak, within a culture with its expectations.” Turner imagines a Martian making the same observation. Martians would be unable to see the different ways women walk as a difference of habits and practices, because they are outside French (or US) culture. The attribution of causality to practice requires knowledge of that culture. Practices are always (implicitly) compared to other practices.

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