Understanding International Diplomacy by Corneliu Bjola Markus Kornprobst & Markus Kornprobst

Author:Corneliu Bjola,Markus Kornprobst & Markus Kornprobst
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Taylor & Francis (CAM)
Published: 2018-02-12T16:00:00+00:00

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Second, persuasive communication can change around the substantive beliefs of actors. This may even include the deepest held understandings about how the world works. Research on dialogue argues in this vein. We have already discussed the practical and scholarly usages of the term in Chapter 5. Among diplomatic practitioners, the use of the term tends to be synonymous with the scholarly ‘teacher-student’ view on socialization. It is employed to describe attempts to improve relations with someone by making Other at least a bit more like Self. The EU’s critical dialogue with Iran between 1992 and 1997 is a case in point. In the scholarly use, by contrast, the term dialogue is diametrically opposed to the ‘teacher-student’ view. The participants of the dialogue are equal, and they aim for a deeper understanding of one another’s views instead of one persuading the other. Currently, scholars often use this terminology when they talk about the dialogue of civilizations. Likely communication failures notwithstanding, dialogue sometimes leads to a better understanding of the other side and sometimes even to a convergence of views. Both are seen as contributing to improving relations. They may not necessarily reach shared identifications. Yet relations are already expected to improve if the parties no longer see each other as aliens but come to understand each other and each other’s doings in more detail (Homeira, 2011).

Third, actors can learn or unlearn their relations through practices. These are, according to Adler and Pouliot “socially meaningful patterns of action, which, in being performed more or less competently, simultaneously embody, act out, and possibly reify background knowledge and discourse in and on the material world” (Adler and Pouliot, 2011: 4). The definition gives away an explanatory logic. Agents come to learn background knowledge through practices of interaction. By doing something over and over again, knowledge sinks in and assumes a taken-for-granted quality. Practices and rhetorical strategies, mentioned earlier, can be understood as complementary approaches. The ‘softening talk’ that prevails in the nuclear non-proliferation regime, may very well be understood as evolving from practice and being reproduced through practice. This close linkage between rhetoric and practice is also something that is found in Social Theory. De Certeau (1988) puts strong emphasis on it.

Let us stay with this theorist a bit longer because he also introduced the interesting concept of metis to social theory. Although Iver Neumann (2002) tried to familiarize scholars of diplomacy with this concept some time ago, it still remains widely neglected. Metis is the agential power to change relations. It has three defining features. First, someone who has metis knows how to make use of a favourable situation. Metis is the acquired experience to help create and seize opportunities for change. Crises of everyday routines are possible when actors are confronted with social constellations in which the usual indeterminacies of interpreting the world are especially pronounced. In these moments of openness – the technical term used for this in rhetorical theory is kairos – actors can change structures. For the most part, these opportunities themselves are none of their doing.

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