Tactical Constructivism, Method, and International Relations by Steele Brent J.;Gould Harry D.;Kessler Oliver;

Author:Steele, Brent J.;Gould, Harry D.;Kessler, Oliver;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Taylor & Francis (CAM)
Published: 2020-03-13T16:00:00+00:00

Reflexivity as constructivist method

In the remainder of this chapter, I will briefly present some directions in which Constructivism can develop practices of ethics that locate reflexivity’s agency as central. This line of thought offers an alternative to norms-based ethics and represents a tactical choice to shift the focus away from structure, offering distinct benefits that appeal more to Constructivism’s critical sensibility. Taking agency seriously puts us in a position to move toward an ethics of judgment rather than having to rely exclusively on norms,6 avoiding some of the problems presented in the previous section and offering a spatial and temporal reorientation toward the everyday and a horizon of ‘natality’.

There is much work to be done on theorizing agency that retains the basic feature of open-endedness that we tend to associate with it (Barkin 2010; Epstein 2012). I propose that re-thinking agency for ethics in a way that benefits from and is consistent with constructivist insights might begin with the Constructivism of Nicholas Onuf. Doing so illustrates how there is room in Constructivism for an account of agency that is a better fit for a praxis of judgment. Inattention to agency extends to much of the work of international political theorists, adding further impetus to the overall project of this chapter – to elaborate practices of ethics that empower political actors and scholars to grapple with difficult ethical questions. I accept the point of Erskine (2012) and Barkin and Sjoberg (2011, 2019) that Constructivism on its own cannot generate an ethics, but constructivists have nevertheless articulated normative implications and visions in their writing (e.g., thin cosmopolitanism, liberal institutionalism, pragmatism). In the previous section, I rejected the visions that constructivist scholars such as Price and Frost have offered on the grounds that they neglect complexity, difference and history, as well as the importance of agency for producing and responding to these conditions.

Turning to Onuf offers a picture of the agencies that other Constructivisms often miss – the everyday agencies of the ‘smaller worlds’ in which we reside as we confront specific ethical questions and dilemmas, making choices in light of rules but not entirely constrained or determined by them. Putting Onuf in conversation with Aristotle, Arendt and the work of postcolonial IR scholars working with a constructivist ontology like L.H.M. Ling further underscores the desirability of emphasizing agency and particulars rather than rules for ethics.7 Rules, an example of what Aristotle referred to as ‘universals’ (principles, beliefs, values, etc.), can be treated as ethical resources and as contingent on our experience with them.

At first glance, Onuf’s Constructivism may appear to be not that much different from abstract, norm-based accounts of Constructivism previously discussed. Onuf acknowledges norms but prefers to discuss norms as rules. Rules ‘set standards and prescribe conduct meeting those standards’ (Onuf 1998b, 670). When we act, then, our action refers to standards: ‘Ethical conduct reflects what we feel we should or must do, given available standards’ (ibid., 669). When we don’t know the relevant standards we might look to others around us to ‘read’ the standards they are using.

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