Saving Identity From Postmodernists

Original Article
Saving identity from postmodernism?

The normalization of constructivism in
International Relations
Nik Hyneka,* and Andrea Tetib

a
Institute of International Relations, Nerudova 3, 118 50 Prague 1, Czech Republic.
E-mail: hynek@iir.cz, web: http://www.iir.cz/display.asp?ida=441&idi=427
b
Department of Politics and International Relations, University of Aberdeen, Edward Wright
Building, Dunbar Street, Aberdeen AB24 3QY, UK.
E-mail: a.teti@abdn.ac.uk, web: www.abdn.ac.uk/Bpol244
*Corresponding author. Institute of International Relations, Nerudova 3, 118 50 Prague 1,
Czech Republic.
Abstract International Relations’s (IR’s) intellectual history is almost always

treated as a history of ideas in isolation from both those discursive and political
economies which provide its disciplinary and wider (political) context. This
paper contributes to this wider analysis by focusing on the impact of the field’s
discursive economy. Specifically, using Foucaultian archaeologico-genealogical
strategy of problematization to analyse the emergence and disciplinary
trajectories of Constructivism in IR, this paper argues that Constructivism
has been brought gradually closer to its mainstream Neo-utilitarian counterpart
through a process of normalization, and investigates how it was possible for
Constructivism to be purged of its early critical potential, both theoretical and
practical. The first part of the paper shows how the intellectual configuration of
Constructivism and its disciplinary fortunes are inseparable from far-from-
unproblematic readings of the Philosophy of Social Science: the choices made at
this level are neither as intellectually neutral nor as disciplinarily inconsequen-
tial as they are presented. The second and third parts chart the genealogies of
Constructivism, showing how its overall normalization occurred in two stages,
each revolving around particular practices and events. The second part
concentrates on older genealogies, analysing the politics of early classificatory
practices regarding Constructivism, and showing how these permitted the
distillation and immunization of Constructivism – and thus of the rest of the
mainstream scholarship which it was depicted as compatible with – against
more radical Postmodernist/Post-structuralist critiques. Finally, the third part
focuses attention on recent genealogies, revealing new attempts to reconstruct
and reformulate Constructivism: here, indirect neutralization practices such as
the elaboration of ‘Pragmatist’ Constructivism, as well as the direct neutraliza-
tion such as the formulation of ‘Realist’ Constructivism, are key events in
r 2010 Macmillan Publishers Ltd. 1470-8914 Contemporary Political Theory Vol. 9, 2, 171–199
www.palgrave-journals.com/cpt/
Hynek and Teti
Constructivism’s normalization. These apparently ‘critical’ alternatives that aim

to ‘provide the identity variable’ in fact remain close to Neo-utilitarianism, but
their successful representation as ‘critical’ help neutralize calls for greater
openness in mainstream IR. Rather than a simple intellectual history, it is this
complex process of (re)reading and (re)producing that counts as ‘Constructivism’,
which explains both the normalization of Constructivism and the continued
marginalization of Postmodernist/Post-structuralist approaches in mainstream
IR’s infra-disciplinary balance of intellectual power.
Contemporary Political Theory (2010) 9, 171–199. doi:10.1057/cpt.2008.49
Keywords: Constructivism; international relations theory; Foucault; Philosophy of

Social Science; Postmodernism/Post-structuralism
Introduction
Reviewing two decades of debates over Constructivism in International

Relations (IR) suggests that few such interventions since have shifted the field’s
centre of intellectual gravity away from the Neo-Realist/Neo-Liberal
convergence. These debates, however, taken as pivotal events are woven into
the field’s intellectual history, and unproblematically conflated with IR’s
evolution as a field. Undoubtedly useful, these histories remain nonetheless
limited insofar as they ignore other factors that affect disciplinary fortunes,
from the discursive and political economies of knowledge production, to wider
intellectual trends and political contexts. Responding to calls for existing
accounts to be supplemented or questioned (Deibert, 1997; Waever, 1998),
this paper focuses on IR’s discursive economy: it analyses the links between the
intellectual histories of Constructivism in IR and the field’s broader discursive
economy, analysing how Constructivism has come to be thought of as
compatible with the Neo-Realist/Neo-Liberal convergence, and the consequent
impact on IR’s balance of infra-disciplinary power. To do this, debates about
Constructivism are approached as discursive practices within an existing
discursive economy: these practices – ultimately imposed upon events –
produce that ‘principle of regularity’ (Foucault, 2002 [1969], p. 191) upon
which IR’s ‘intellectual history’ is built. A ‘strategy of problematization’, will
help retrieve both the synchronic rules according to which the discourse around
Constructivism operates (its ‘archaeology’) and their diachronic evolution
(its ‘genealogy’; Foucault, 1992 [1984], pp. 11–12). This, in turn, enables an
analysis of the intellectual and disciplinary political impact of those particular
constructions.
The paper first outlines basic positions in Philosophy of Social Science
(PoSS) in order to clarify both Constructivism’s and mainstream IR’s
172 r 2010 Macmillan Publishers Ltd. 1470-8914 Contemporary Political Theory Vol. 9, 2, 171–199
Normalization of Constructivism in international relations
intellectual commitments. These discussions then enable an analysis of how

selective readings of those terms of reference were deployed in debates over
Constructivism’s classification, and over its compatibility with ‘social scientific’
IR. Viewed in this light, debates over taxonomies and over Constructivism’s
relations with Realism and Pragmatism reveal a series of ‘blind spots’ and a
convergence with Neo-utilitarian IR which cannot be explained purely in
terms of intellectual history but suggest a process of normalization of
Constructivism’s radical potential, a process which must in turn be read in
the context of wider relations between Neo-utilitarianism and Postmodernist/
Post-structuralist IR.1
Positions and Boundaries: Constructivism(s) in Philosophy of Social

Science and International Relations
The ‘Philosophical Turn’ has made serious IR scholarship impossible

without reference to PoSS: at once grounding and legitimizing theoretical
arguments, the selectivity/partiality of borrowings helps untangle how a
discursive economy of IR within which Constructivism can be normalized is
articulated.
Constructivism(s) and Philosophy of Social Science
Most Constructivists embark upon the obligatory journey to philosophical

legitimacy arguing that understanding Constructivism requires a grasp of basic
PoSS positions (for example Adler, 1997, 2003; Wendt, 1999; Guzzini, 2000;
Jørgensen, 2001). This section outlines those positions, how they have been
represented and appropriated, and the disciplinary effects of these readings
(cf. Hynek and Hynek, 2007).
As Table 1 indicates, there is no single constructivist position in PoSS, but
rather a multiplicity of ontological and epistemological constructivisms.2
Ontologically, a distinction is usually made between mind-independence
and mind-dependence: proponents of the former argue objects exist
independently of observation, their counterparts suggest they exist at least
partly as a result of observers’ beliefs. There are two main mind-
independent positions: empiricism and scientific realism, with logical
positivism (or ‘logical empiricism’) less frequently mentioned. Empiricism
occupies positions (1A) and (1B). This monist position accepts that social
and natural sciences are both based on objects with analogous ontological
properties, and on the neutrality of observation, emphasizing that impartial
observation is not only possible, but necessary, insofar as value biases
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Hynek and Teti
Table 1: Main ontological–epistemological positions in PoSS
ontology epistemology
non-constructivist (naı¨ve) Constructivist
mind-independence 1A. naı̈ve empiricism 1B. constructivist empiricism

2A. naı̈ve realism 2B. constructivist realism
mind-dependence 3A. naı̈ve constructivism [non-sequitur] 3B. social constructivism
Based on Sismondo (1996, pp. 6–7, 79) and Sayer (1992, pp. 39–84).
threaten the entire research programme. Furthermore, empiricists argue

scientific knowledge can be closely connected to direct evidence by testing
all theories and hypotheses against direct observations. The difference
between naı̈ve and constructive empiricism (1A and 1B) is epistemological
and lies in scientists’ role both in knowledge translation/production and in
different understandings of verification: unlike naı̈ve empiricists defending
simple induction and maintaining that ‘immediate sense experience is by
itself sufficient to provide the foundations for knowledge’ (Uebel, 1992,
p. 205), constructive empiricists emphasize the importance of scientists in
knowledge production, with scientific theories being both semantically literal and
empirically exact as a result (van Fraassen, 1980, pp. 10–11). As for
verification, whereas naı̈ve empiricists take individual scientific statements
as the basis for knowledge verification, for constructive empiricists, theories
as a whole are the basis for verification or refutation: an untenable theory
will be replaced by a more literal and adequate theory (van Fraassen, 1980,
pp. 35, 78).3 Both positions concur that observational evidence is an
important source for knowledge, although logical positivists acknowledge
its limits (Kolakowski, 1972) and assert that knowledge also includes
elements not derived from direct empirical observation (Russell, 1978
[1924]; Schlick, 1978 [1932]), arguing that some propositions are known
only by intuition and deduction (for example logical inferences from
‘protocol sentences’) (Ayer, 1978; Carnap, 1978 [1931]; cf. Popper, 1959).
Positions (2A) and (2B) encapsulate scientific realism, which requires
mind-independence ontologically, and shares empiricism’s trust in law-like
generalizations. The ontological difference between them stems from differ-
ences concerning what can be observed and thus researched: although
empiricism claims only observable entities can be objects of scientific inquiry,
scientific realism makes causal statements about underlying structures,
including unobservable ones (Harré and Madden, 1975; Sayer, 1998) – what
matters are objects’ real, internal and manipulable mechanisms (Bhaskar, 1979;
Archer, 1998). Scientific realists give structures causal powers, arguing that
positing their existence provides the best explanation of behaviour (Lipton,

1991). As with empiricism, scientific realism is epistemologically divided into
naı̈ve (common-sense) (2A) and constructivist (critical) (2B) variants (Varela
and Harré, 1996).4 Whereas the former largely brackets the impact of scientists
upon knowledge creation, the latter acknowledges the importance of
perception and cognition, and the active role scientists play (Sellars, 1970;
Outhwaite, 1998). The epistemological axis emphasizes differences between
empiricist and scientific realist perspectives on truth. Although constructivist
empiricists (van Fraassen, 1980) argue that science’s aim is to produce
empirically adequate theories and that this adequacy should determine a
theory’s acceptance, scientific realists aim to portray reality ‘as it is’, accepting
a theory only if it is believed to be true (Sayer, 1992; Sismondo, 1996).
Before the third position is outlined, the distinction between fundamental
physical reality and social reality will be addressed. Here, Kuhn and Searle
both affiliated themselves with constructivist realism (2B). Describing himself
as an ‘unconvinced realist’, Kuhn (1979, p. 415) argues for the coexistence of
social worlds constructed by scientists and the fundamental material world:
transformations in social worlds leave the fundamental world unaffected
because ontology is mind-independent. Analogously, Searle argues that ‘[w]e
live in exactly one world, not two or three or seventeen’ (1995, p. xi),
undermining a monist stance by distinguishing between fundamental material
reality and social realities. Searle’s affinity to constructivist realism is clear
in his defence of scientific realism and the correspondence theory of truth
(ibid., Chapter 9).
In the final position, social constructivism (also ‘constructivism’ or
‘constructionism’, 3B), actors are argued to have both ontological and
epistemic influence, with more radical versions verging on the ‘epistemic
fallacy’ conflating the two. Because the existence of both physical and social
objects depends on thoughts and linguistic structures (ontological mind-
dependence), scientists cannot construct knowledge about these outside their
own ontological representations. The point is not to deny the existence of
material reality, as critics sometimes suggest, but to focus on the consequenti-
ality of representations of that reality. Here, social constructivism differs
from both Searlian and scientific realism: its anti-essentialism and anti-
foundationalism means truth cannot be ‘discovered’, but is created (Sayyid and
Zac, 1998, pp. 250–251).
Intellectual roots
Although roots of IR Constructivisms are richer than this account can render,
its inspirations can be divided into two major tracks: one ‘internal’ to
Hynek and Teti
Anglophone IR, and the other ‘external’, drawing on Continental philosophy

and linguistics (cf. Hynek, 2005).
‘Internal’ inspiration emerged autonomously from external developments
during the late 1980s. The reason for this isolation, as Ashley (1987;
cf. Hoffman, 1987) suggests, was the belief of (mainly US) (neo)realist and
(neo)liberal IR scholars in the unique position, value and exclusivity of their
approaches for policy makers, enhanced by their aim to provide technical
knowledge (manipulation and control) and practical knowledge (scripts for
tackling ‘real’ situations). Despite his behaviouralist commitments, the scholar
whose study of transnational security communities transcended this produc-
tion was Karl Deutsch (1957). His insights into the formation of North
Atlantic collective identity influenced early self-declared Constructivists (for
example Adler and Barnett, 1998). One of his students, Hayward Alker,
influenced several scholars in Constructivism’s ‘first wave’, from Katzenstein,
to Ashley and Onuf (who introduced the term ‘Constructivism’ in IR in 1989).
Comparably important was Ernst Haas’ (1958) liberal/neo-functionalist
analysis of complex social learning and of supra-national organizations
and their bureaucracies and cultures in (re)producing the fabric of world
politics. Haas’ work profoundly influenced his student, John Ruggie, who,
with Kratochwil (for example Kratochwil and Ruggie, 1986), challenged the
lack of reflexivity and the incompatibility of ontology and epistemology in
regime theory. Ruggie (1998), Kratochwil (1989) and Onuf (1989) also made
important contributions in overcoming IR’s intellectual isolation, drawing on
authors such as Weber, Wittgenstein, Searle and Giddens.
The most significant contribution to contemporary Constructivism as a
distinct approach was made by Alexander Wendt, a representative of the
‘Minnesota School’. Wendt wrote several papers in the late 1980s and 1990s,
further elaborated in his Social Theory (1999; see also 1987, 1992). His systemic
approach represented ‘a kind of structural idealism’ (Wendt, 1999, p. xiii), and
has become, criticism notwithstanding, a benchmark for IR Constructivism.
We emphasize the multiplicity of Constructivisms because Wendt’s version,
drawing on an eclectic literature, primarily Giddens’s and later Bhaskar’s, is
very different to Onuf and Kratochwil’s approach. Indeed, Onuf (2001, p. 10)
acknowledges that neither his nor Kratochwil’s founding texts much influenced
IR Constructivism.
Constructivism’s ‘external’ inspiration was rooted in critical social and
political theory, and found its way into IR during the so-called Third Debate
(the 1980s and early 1990s). Although critical social and political theory is
highly diverse, it can be subdivided into a minimal foundationalist current
drawing on cultural Marxism, and an anti-foundational and anti-essentialist
current drawing on ‘Continental’ philosophy and linguistics (cf. Hoffman,
1991; Price and Reus-Smit, 1998). Andrew Linklater (1990) and Robert Cox
(1983) are prominent scholars drawing on the Frankfurt School and Gramsci,
respectively. The second, more radical current is epitomized by Ashley (1986),
Der Derian (1987, with Shapiro, 1989), Campbell (1998 [1992]) and Walker
(1993).
The end of the Cold War and the ‘Neo-Neo Synthesis’’ inability to account
for this macrostructural change provided a symbolic point of convergence
between internal and external strands’ attempts to debunk the myth of
objectivism (Hoffman, 1987). In the early 1990s, however, little indicated
Constructivism’s future intellectual preponderance. Scattered patches of
Constructivist thought were largely ignored: the ‘Third Debate’, a set of
exchanges directing attention to metatheoretical questions, did not involve
Constructivism. Rather, Constructivism’s distinct identity was created in
the wake of the ‘philosophical turn’: the rest of this paper sketches key
practices and events through which the discourse over Constructivism was
shaped, particularly in relation to mainstream Neo-utilitarian IR.
Genealogies of Normalization I: Classification, Distillation and

Immunization
Foundational elements of IR Constructivism were presented above as they are

in the literature: a straightforward, if complex, intellectual history. The
remainder of this paper considers a series of debates around which the
narrative of Constructivism and its relation to mainstream and to Postmodern/
Post-structural scholarship have been built, analysing the way those debates
were articulated, and how their results provided the backbone of what
Constructivism is now commonly held to entail. This analysis suggests that the
modalities and implications of this process are broader than an intellectual
history identifies, effectively leading to the immunization of Neo-utilitarian
IR against Postmodern/Post-structural critiques, and thus Constructivism’s
normalization (see Figure 1).
This section analyses the taxonomical debates over Constructivism’s
ontological, epistemological and methodological commitments. These are
crucial to what is accepted as Constructivism: despite being highly problematic
in terms of PoSS, the accepted solutions to these debates, through a series of
‘blind spots’, help skew IR’s discursive economy against radical critiques,
effectively ‘immunizing’ mainstream IR. Once Neo-utilitarian IR appropriated
a certain understanding of Constructivism, it could also claim to have dealt
with the reflexivist challenge: Constructivism, after all, ‘provides the identity
variable’. Nowhere is this clearer than in debates about Constructivism’s
compatibility with Pragmatism and Realism.
Hynek and Teti
Figure 1: Genealogical topography of Constructivisms.
Given the similarities between Constructivism’s and Postmodernist/Post-

structuralist ontological foundations (Table 1; 3B), simply deploying late-1980s
Constructivism alongside Neo-utilitarianism (1A-B, 2A-B) would be impos-
sible. The proliferation of debates over the nature of Constructivism
throughout the 1990s was integral to its reconciliation with mainstream
scholarship. This ‘construction of Constructivism’, took place in two stages:
in the first, what appeared to be a purely taxonomical exercise was inextricably
linked to a ‘distillation’ of Constructivism, which ‘immunized’ Neo-utilitarian-
ism by effectively delegitimizing Postmodern/Post-structural critiques. At
times, the intention of many Constructivists – particularly ‘Wendtian’ – to
‘save identity from postmodernism’ was openly declared (for example
Checkel, 1998). Classifying Construcitivism, securing what scholarship
may be so labelled, was essential to this process. The second stage involved
debates over building particular theoretical formulations upon these
foundations – for example, ‘Pragmatist’ or ‘Realist’ Constructivism – broadly
securing the ‘neutralization’ of Constructivism’s radical potential by locating it
firmly within the social scientific consensus.
Disciplinary politics of taxonomy
Ruggie’s (1998, pp. 35–36) seminal paper identifies three kinds of Constructi-
vism: neo-classical, post-modernist and naturalistic. ‘Neo-classical’ Construc-
tivism, language-oriented but committed to social science, is identified
with authors such as Onuf, Kratochwil, Finnemore, Adler and so on. ‘Post-
modernist’ Constructivism supposedly builds on Nietzsche, Foucault and
Derrida, and rejects the idea of social science. Finally, ‘naturalist’ Con-
structivists such as Wendt, use Bhaskar’s scientific realism to defend a ‘deep
realism’ which might legitimize ‘scientific’ approaches. In Ruggie, the
Postmodern/Post-structural critics of mainstream IR still feature clearly,
although the sequence of Constructivisms suggests a dialectical overcoming of
these critiques that ‘saves’ social science for mainstream IR.
Another hugely successful taxonomy distinguishes between conventional and
critical Constructivism (Hopf, 1998).5 Rooted in the ‘internal’ strand outlined
above, the former has largely been considered by Constructivists themselves a
result of seeds sown during the Cold War. By identifying Critical
Constructivism with a ‘postmodernism’ with which dialogue is supposedly
impossible either epistemologically or indeed morally, however, this ‘bipolar’
taxonomy delegitimizes Postmodern/Post-structural scholarship. Hopf argues
Constructivism was miscast ‘as necessarily postmodern and antipositivist’,
because conventional Constructivism, despite sharing ‘many of the founda-
tional elements of critical theory, [adopts] defensible rules of thumb, or
Hynek and Teti
conventions, rather than following critical theory all the way up the
postmodern critical path’ (1998, p. 181) and that ‘to the degree that
constructivism creates theoretical and epistemological distance between itself
and its origins in critical theory, it becomes ‘conventional’ constructivism’
(ibid., p. 181). This representation of Postmodern/Post-structural scholarship
implies that work which rejects rationalist ‘rules of thumb’ is indefensible, and
recreates an opposition between ‘social scientific’ Neo-utilitarianism and
Postmodernism/Post-structuralism which, since the epistemic criteria adopted
to adjudicate the viability of Constructivism are ‘rationalist’, delegitimizes non-
positivist scholarship (for example Keohane, 1986; Katzenstein et al, 1998;
cf. Smith, 2003, p. 142).
Drawing a distinction within the broad body of Constructivism between
variously named ‘critical’ and ‘conventional’ approaches immediately raises the
question of the relation of each to IR’s mainstream – indeed, the terminology
itself only makes sense taking Neo-utilitarian IR as its point of reference.
Unsurprisingly, whereas ‘critical’ or ‘postmodern’ Constructivism was attacked
for supposed incompatibility with social science, Constructivism’s emphasis on
that very ‘identity’, which Neo-utilitarianism was unable to account for,
motivated many to argue that a Constructivism existed, which criticized ‘not
what [mainstream] scholars do and say but what they ignore: the content and
source of state interests and social fabric of world politics’ (Checkel, 1998,
p. 324). Thus, Checkel defends a ‘conventional’ Constructivism compatible with
social science (ibid., p. 327), whereas Wendt (1999, p. 75) distinguishes between
‘thick’ linguistic and ‘thin’ social scientific Constructivism.
Although these classifications may be more accurate in terms of some
scholars’ self-identification – Walker or Ashley would hardly consider
themselves Constructivists – they are also more intellectually loaded, implying
Constructivism should not be understood as Postmodern/Post-structural in any
guise (Campbell, 1998 [1992], Epilogue). As such, Neo-utilitarianism’s repre-
sentation of the field not only suggests that no Postmodern/Post-structural
approaches can qualify as interlocutors, as they reject the idea that the study of
(international) politics can be ‘scientific’ (Keohane, 1986), but also marginalizes
non-Wendtian Constructivisms incompatible with a Neo-utilitarian mould.6
By excluding Postmodern/Post-structural scholarship per se, ‘critical’
Constructivism becomes limited to Onuf, Kratochwil and their followers.
But such a ‘bipolar’ representation also neutralizes the radical potential of the
latter, as it must either accept the bounds of social science, moving towards
‘conventional’ approaches, or reject them, thereby disqualifying itself from
‘inter-paradigmatic’ dialogue.7 This polarization therefore has the disciplinary
effect of de-legitimizing ‘postmodern’ critiques as unscientific if not downright
unscholarly,8 and reduces other potentially critical Constructivist voices to
a ‘loyal opposition’, providing at best a ‘thick’ description of norms backing up
‘thinner’ versions. Rooted in the elision of ontological differences between

Constructivism and Neo-utilitarianism, the demarcation between modern/
critical and postmodern/critical Constructivism polices the boundary of
acceptable research, contributing to the ‘immunization’ of mainstream IR
against Postmodern/Post-structural critiques.
From boundaries to bridges
Attempts to find a ‘unity of Constructivism’ have therefore involved presenting

it as homogeneous, and substantially continuous with (and complementary to)
mainstream IR. Conducted under the rubric of several devices – most
significantly the metaphor of Constructivism as a bridge between IR social
science and its critics – this quest enables a simultaneous distillation of a certain
kind of Constructivism, and the immunization of mainstream IR through its
purported compatibility with this Constructivism, erecting a fence between
Constructivism ‘proper’ and everything beyond its margins, that is, critical
Constructivism and especially Postmodernism/Post-structuralism.
Given early Constructivism’s ontological commitments (3B), it should be
clear that whether this distillation is at all possible is far from obvious. One
explanation for how this might have occurred lies in what Foucault calls
the ‘principle of commentary’. Foucault (1984, pp. 76–100) distinguishes
between the ‘principal discourse’ and the ‘mass of commentaries’: the principal
discourse – a new speech act – is always original and inventive, whereas
commentaries claim to repeat and gloss what has allegedly been pronounced in
the principal discourse. However, this ‘repetition’ can be rather different from
what might have originally been intended. In this case, if commentaries are
taken as accurate representations of primary sources and these are
simultaneously dropped from debate, commentary limits interpretive possibi-
lities, channelling discourse in certain directions whereas precluding others.
This took place at several junctures in Constructivism’s case, with a series of
supposedly crucial references – Giddens, Searle, Wittgenstein, Foucault, Rorty
and so on – being notably absent from the debates they supposedly inform save
in their earliest days, and very marginally even then (see Figure 2).
Coupled with the disciplinary politics of taxonomy described above, the
bridge metaphor facilitated such a swap. The original principal Constructivist
discourse represented by Onuf, Kratochwil and Wendt, particularly its ‘double
hermeneutic’ implications, faded into the background through exposure to
Constructivism as presented by commentaries – secondary sources (for
example Adler, 1997, 2003; Checkel, 1997, 1998; Hopf, 1998; Katzenstein
et al, 1998; Smith, 2001) that eventually supplanted primary discourse. It
was through precisely such commentaries that Constructivism came to be
Hynek and Teti
Figure 2: Principal discourses and commentaries (based on Foucault, 1984).
understood as an unproblematic continuation of ‘social science’, that it has

repeatedly been judged by objectivist criteria, and that everything lying farther
than modern ‘critical Constructivism’, with its role of separating the acceptable
from the unacceptable, has been marginalized (cf. Price and Reus-Smit, 1998;
Guzzini, 2000).
The metaphor of Constructivism-as-bridge between Neo-utilitarianism and
Postmodernism/Post-structuralism facilitates this distillation of Constructivism
in three moments: first, the mainstream definition of knowledge as science
during the Third Debate and the predication of ‘inter-paradigmatic dialogue’
in ‘rationalist’ epistemologies effectively silences radical critiques, Constructi-
vist or otherwise (for example Campbell, 1998). Second, the combination of
dichotomizing taxonomies of Constructivism with its location as potential
inter-paradigmatic bridge ‘distills’ it, emptying it of critical potential, and
foregrounds continuities with Neo-utilitarianism (epistemic and methodo-
logical commitments, the state’s ontological privilege and so on).
Finally, this definition of ‘knowledge’ also enabled the development of
‘bridges’ compatible with Neo-utilitarianism such as Pragmatist or Realist
Constructivism. In this sense, mainstreaming Constructivism ‘immunizes’
Neo-utilitarianism from both Postmodernist/Post-structuralist critiques and
from Constructivism’s own ontology.
Genealogies of Normalization II: Neutralizations by New Reconstructions
Whatever their intellectual merits, these debates effectively neutralized the

radical potential entailed by Constructivism’s ontologico-epistemological
commitments (Figure 1; 3B). A discursive economy rooted in these readings of

‘social science’ could not but de-legitimize a non-positivist scholarship that
rejected the possibility of quests for ‘timeless wisdoms’.
But this balance of blindnesses remained delicate. What stabilized it and
legitimized the bridging function to which Constructivism was assigned was the
elaboration of theoretical constructs upon these mainstreamed foundations.
Two notable efforts in this direction were the invocation of Pragmatism to
emphasize the compatibility between Constructivism and social science
(Cochran, 2002) and defend Wendtian commitments to states (Haas and
Haas, 2002; Widmaier, 2004), and the theorization of a ‘Realist Constructi-
vism’. Reading philosophical Pragmatism as an epistemic stance bypassed
dangerous debates over Constructivist ontological foundations: ‘Pragmatism’s
pragmatism’ effectively rendered Constructivism’s ontological compatibility
with Neo-utilitarianism unproblematic. And ‘Realist Constructivism’ silenced
Postmodernist/Post-structuralist critiques by ‘providing the identity variable’.
Pragmatist constructivism as an indirect neutralization
That Pragmatism was concerned with ‘practical’ interventions is straight-

forward: why and how this entails Constructivism’s compatibility with
Neo-utilitarianism is less so. A considerable component of this appropriation
relies simply on the association – if not conflation – of Pragmatism and
pragmatism, associating Pragmatism with practicality, claiming Pragmatism-
as-pragmatism as philosophical legitimization of mainstreamed readings of
Constructivism. This conflation, or at least resemblance between terms is
present in Widmaier (2004), where Pragmatism supposedly corrects the
abstract excesses of both Neo-utilitarianism and Postmodernism/Post-struc-
turalism for the explicit purpose of policy relevance. Both Widmaier and
Millennium’s 2002 special issue use the lower case when referring both to
Pragmatism-as-philosophy and to pragmatism-as-practicality, giving rise to
ambiguity concerning what is meant (Pragmatist? pragmatic? both?). Widmaier
does this arguing that Dewey’s and Galbraith’s strength was that they were
both worldly and scholarly, ‘engaged in theoretical debates while also pursuing
policy agendas’ (2004, p. 443), emphasizing Pragmatism’s potential for
practical political engagement. Albert and Kopp-Malek (2002) explicitly argue
for a ‘non-capital-p-pragmatism’. Haas and Haas (2002) carefully distinguish
between ‘international relations’ and ‘International Relations’, but ambigu-
ously label their approach simply ‘pragmatic constructivism’, whereas Bohman
(2002) and Owen (2002) declare this association of meanings in their titles:
‘How to make Social Science Practical: Pragmatism, Critical Social Science and
Multiperspectival Theory’ and ‘Re-Orienting International Relations: On
Pragmatism, Pluralism and Practical Reasoning’ (emphasis added).
Hynek and Teti
Haas and Haas (2002) and Widmaier (2004) provide archetypical examples
of the appropriation of Pragmatism supporting mainstreamed Constructivism.
Widmaier calls for Pragmatism as an underpinning for Wendtian Constructi-
vism,9 calling Dewey ‘a pragmatist proto-constructivist’ (2004, pp. 428, 432,
436, 438). Yet, these appropriations are themselves if anything more pragmatic
than Pragmatist. Widmaier’s (2004) ‘pragmatist-constructivism’ and Haas and
Haas’ (2002) ‘pragmatic constructivism’ sound similar, but the latter proposal
for Pragmatist Constructivism seems barely nominal, based merely on passing
references to Rorty and Menand. Neumann (2002) shifts the emphasis even
further, never invoking Pragmatism (aside from a solitary footnote mentioning
Peirce), never claiming to contribute to that intellectual tradition, and focusing
entirely and explicitly on the virtues of practice-grounded analysis. The very
inclusion of this paper in a special issue about ‘capital-p-Pragmatism’ implies
that Pragmatism and pragmatism are one and the same.
Pragmatists clearly always thought the political dimension of philosophy
important, and to the extent that they realized the intractability of
foundational and epistemological questions and ‘side-stepped’ some of them,
they were also practical, both academically and politically. But advocating
avoiding dogmatism means little beyond what should be canons of good
scholarship – conversely, being practical does not make one a Pragmatist.
Moreover, although there is a legitimate overlap between the two terms rooted in
the origins and political as well as epistemological project of Pragmatism, their
distinction and its disciplinary politics are equally important. Resolving the
ambiguity around both uses of ‘pragmatism’ in Millennium’s special issue
required little effort: adopting lower or higher cases for the two meanings, for
example. Blurring the Pragmatism/pragmatism boundary, whether intentionally
or not, effectively produces a ‘linguistic gambit’: the mainstream – particularly
Realist – infatuation with being ‘pragmatic’ makes the meliorative reform of
Pragmatism as an addition to Constructivism difficult to object to, despite its
implications being potentially far-reaching and indeed not dissimilar to those of
more explicitly radical Postmodern/Post-structural critiques (Albert and Kopp-
Malek, 2002, p. 469, fn. 38). This is the implication of work by Bohman,
Cochran, Festenstein and Isacoff. However, this ‘opening’ has also been used by
other authors – Haas and Haas, Albert and Kopp-Malek, Owen, Widmaier, and
Neumann – to deflect radical critiques by invoking Pragmatism/pragmatism in
defence of an only slightly modified mainstream position (for example Wendt or
Checkel) thereby indirectly (and at least in some cases, unintentionally)
neutralizing Constructivism and bringing it closer to mainstream IR.
Pragmatism is also used by some to argue explicitly for an understanding of
Constructivism, compatible with Neo-utilitarianism and squarely within
Wendt’s via media. Millennium’s editorial offered a candid statement echoing
many of Constructivism’s mantras: Pragmatism affords the possibility of
overcoming the ‘stalemate opposing positivism and post-positivism’, and IR’s

‘fixation with absolute and exclusive ontological solutions’ by ‘[encouraging] a
multi-perspectival style of inquiry that privileges practice and benefits from the
complementarity, rather than opposition, of different understandings’ (Haas
and Haas, 2002, p. iii). Specifically: ‘Pragmatism explicitly anchors social
science (and IR) to a notion of community – of inquiry, of agents – and gears
research to the idea of its betterment’ (ibid., p. iii). Through Pragmatism,
those refusing to ‘follow critical theory all the way up the postmodern
path’ can simultaneously claim a legitimate disregard for ontology and an
acknowledgement of the importance of ‘identity’ while having to sacrifice
neither social science, nor the objective moral purchase it promises. Several
contributors echo this stance, such as Haas and Haas, who argue that
‘incommensurate ontological and epistemological positions [y] fundamentally
impair the ability to develop cumulative knowledge about international
institutions and their role in international relations’ (ibid., p. 573). Analo-
gously, claiming that Constructivism is in fact a form of constructivist realism
(2B), Adler (2003, p. 96) states that one of the four main influences on
Constructivism is Pragmatism.
Whether one draws on classical Pragmatists or on Neo-pragmatists,
however, this move to associate Pragmatism, Constructivism and
Neo-utilitarianism is problematic. Classical Pragmatists – Peirce, William
James, Dewey, Austin – argue ‘truth’ is never a priori, always provisional,
always context-specific, and therefore must be judged solely on its usefulness in
achieving some purpose. Moreover, Pragmatists do not believe one can talk
about a world external to language, the implication being that agents
build knowledge from different standpoints and in order to change the world
in different ways: hence, social ontologies must be ‘fluid’.
Neo-pragmatism builds particularly on Dewey and James, emphasizing the
language-dependent nature of claims to ‘knowledge’, that the world can be
described correctly from multiple perspectives, and that therefore an idea’s
‘truth’ is dependent on its context and usefulness, and cannot indicate anything
beyond this. Putnam (1990) and Rorty (1979, 1991) conclude that science does
not and cannot possess a privileged vantage point upon reality. Moreover,
although Putnam and Rorty disagree on the extent to which the ‘external
world’ provides some constraint on truth – Putnam trying to rescue some such
dimension, Rorty opposing this – Neo-pragmatists are committed to the idea
that the social world is changeable, and all Pragmatists remain sceptical of
transcendental claims.
Against this background, some readings of Pragmatism offered in
Millennium’s special issue are puzzling. Pragmatism is used to address
ontological and epistemological tensions arising from Neo-utilitarian
attempts to counter Postmodern/Post-structural critiques by assimilating
Hynek and Teti
Constructivism. Although Pragmatism generally eschews ontological claims

while arguing that it is possible to proceed accumulating valid knowledge and
acting upon the world meaningfully despite this ‘knowledge’ being only
temporarily valid, it nonetheless sits decidedly ill at ease with conventional
Constructivism. Firstly, Pragmatism rejects that ontological realism character-
istic of much Neo-utilitarianism which transpires – declared or otherwise – in
criticism of Postmodern/Post-structural theories of power as ‘inadequate’
because they do not reflect the ‘realities’ of politics. This anti-realism leads
Pragmatists to reject questions of essences – sovereign, anarchic and so on –
emphasizing that both questions and essences or indeed foundations are
inevitably context-dependent, subjective, programmatic and transformative.
There can be no ‘timeless wisdom’, Realist or otherwise. Secondly, Pragmatism
also rejects the idea that Neo-utilitarianism somehow accesses a superior form
of knowledge. Most Pragmatists do not believe science ‘succeeds’ because it is
in touch with reality in privileged ways, with Rorty (1998, p. 48) arguing that
concepts of truth, objectivity and reality cannot be invoked to explain
inferential references or standards of warrant. Finally, Neo-utilitarian social
science’s promise to retrieve spatio-temporally invariant and observer-
independent law-like generalizations relies crucially on the fixity of the
properties of the objects it analyses: if either Constructivists or Pragmatists are
right about the ‘fluidity’ of ontology, this project becomes impossible. This is
not to say social scientific methods cannot generate ‘knowledge’, but espousing
Pragmatism renders indefensible claims about its spatio-temporally invariant
and observer-neutral status.
Given this fundamental tension between Neo-utilitarianism and the
implications of a ‘fluid’ ontology in Constructivism or indeed Pragmatism, it
is unsurprising that Pragmatism has been read by some as offering the
possibility of eschewing ontology entirely, and, at an epistemological level, of
requiring that regardless of their coherence, ideas should simply ‘work’ in order
to legitimize their use. Nonetheless, the use of Pragmatism to ground
a reconciliation between Neo-utilitarianism and Constructivism’s radical
implications remains unsustainable.
Realist (Re)construction as a direct neutralization
As noted above, the taxonomical division between critical and conventional

Constructivisms ‘immunize’ mainstream IR insofar as it raises the question of
Constructivism’s direct relation to Neo-utilitarian IR and sets up the answer by
delegitimizing non-positivist solutions. To the degree this discursive economy is
unstable, appropriate ‘interparadigmatic’ theoretical elaborations help mask
the precarious nature of Neo-utilitarianism’s solution. Virtually simultaneously
to the ‘taxonomical’ debate and the foray into Pragmatism, a considerable

interest in Constructivism’s ‘liberalism’ and a possible convergence with
Realism emerged. Following the trajectory which led to ‘Realist Constructi-
vism’ is particularly instructive (for example Checkel, 1998; Copeland, 2000;
Sterling-Folker, 2000, 2002a, b; Farrell, 2002; Barkin, 2003; Hamlet, 2003;
Jackson, 2004; Jackson and Nexon, 2004).
Some, like Copeland, argue that ‘Constructivists focus on the intersubjective
dimension of knowledge, because they wish to emphasize the social aspect of
human existence [allowing] constructivists to pose [shared ideas] as a causal
force separate from the material structure of neorealism’ (2000, pp. 189–190).
Similarly, Farrell suggests that the realization that identities are causal with
respect to action ‘leads constructivists and culturalists to problematize that
which realists and neoliberals take for granted, like identities and interests’
(2002, p. 52). Farrell also emphasizes that a ‘common realist misconception
about constructivism [is] that it lacks a positivist epistemology but has a
normative agenda’ (2002, p. 51). Others explicitly argue that, as a theoretical
framework rather than a substantive theory, Constructivism is compatible with
several theories, including Realism: Jepperson et al argue that Constructivism
‘neither advances nor depends upon any special methodology or epistemology’
(in Jepperson et al., 1996, p. 65); Kratochwil and Ruggie add that it is
‘compatible with a positivist epistemology’ (ibid., p. 81), soon echoed by Checkel
(1998, p. 327), whereas Barkin (2003, p. 338) argues that ‘neither pure realism
nor pure idealism [sic] can account for political change, only the interplay
between the two’ (ibid., p. 337). Sterling-Folker (2002a) goes so far as to argue
that Realism and Constructivism share ‘Darwinian’ foundations. Soon after,
explicit suggestions appear that a ‘Realist Constructivism’ should be formulated
(Sterling-Folker, 2002a; Barkin, 2003; Jackson, 2004). These analyses prepare the
discursive grounds for the legitimacy of a Realist–Constructivist convergence.
Beyond being possible, such an approach should also be desirable, and it is
not difficult to find arguments that such ‘Realist Constructivism’ could
contribute to analysis in several ways: Sterling-Folker (2002a, p. 75), for
example, argues ‘Realism and Constructivism need one another in order to
compensate for their worst excesses’. With regard to power, Realist Con-
structivism could fill a gap between mainstream and critical theory by ‘including
in any exploration of power, not only postmodern theory’s study of the
subjective text and positivist realism’s study of objective phenomena, but also
constructivism’s study of intersubjectivity – norms and social rules’ (Barkin,
2003, p. 338). This would involve guiding scholars ‘to think like a classical realist
about the variety of power while guiding [them] to analyze the role of that power
in international political life like a constructivist’ (Mattern, 2004, p. 345). Realist
Constructivism would concede that ‘anarchy [may be] a social construction’
while remaining sceptical ‘about the degree to which power can be transcended’
Hynek and Teti
(Jackson and Nexon, 2004, p. 339). Moreover, ‘Realist Constructivism’ would

furnish Realism with a richer understanding of ‘identity’, ‘change’ and of the
interplay of power and ‘normative change’ (Barkin, 2003, p. 337) while helping
Constructivism compensate for its liberal bias (ibid., p. 326).
This formulation, however, is flawed both logically and in its representations
of Neo-utilitarianism and Postmodernism/Post-structuralism. To ground the
Realist–Constructivist convergence, Barkin (2003, pp. 330–331) characterizes
Neo-realism as ‘logical positivism’, conflates the latter with ‘Positivism’, then
claims that Classical Realism is ‘empiricist’, and that as such it is compatible
with Constructivism. This disregards Neo-utilitarian commitments to the
existence and fixity of a social reality external to and independent of observers,
and to the possibility of socio-political spatio-temporally invariant law-like
generalizations. On these grounds, logical positivism, empiricism and main-
stream IR might agree, but these are precisely the positions that Constructi-
vism’s ontology are incompatible with. For example, Mattern’s (2004, p. 345)
own argument that Realist Constructivism should recognize international
politics’ ‘intersubjectively and culturally constituted’ ontology implies re-
opening precisely the question of Constructivism’s ontological difference from
Neo-utilitarian IR, yet she goes on to advocate and develop ‘Realist
Constructivism’ untroubled.
If Constructivism is about anything, it is not simply ‘identity’, but about the
‘fluidity’ of ontology deriving directly from identity’s mutually constituted
inter-subjectivity. Despite this, the analyses above invariably take Constructi-
vism as a methodological or epistemological standpoint. This does not mean
that Kratochwil, Ruggie or others are mistaken about the compatibility of such
an ontology with Neo-utilitarian epistemology or methods (for example
Farrell, 2002, p. 51). Quantitative methods are not incompatible with ‘an
ontology that gives causal weight to cultural variables’, but the changeable
nature of those cultural variables is incompatible with claims to ‘timeless
wisdoms’: it is the status ascribed to the results of enquiry which is the core
of the Neo-utilitarian–Postmodern/Post-structuralist divide. Yet ‘Realist
Constructivism’ represents nothing if not the aim of retaining the spatio-
temporal invariance of ‘laws’ and observer-neutrality. The possibility and
primacy of these epistemic aims constitutes precisely the Neo-utilitarian–
Postmodern/Post-structuralist disagreement, which genuinely challenges the
possibility of inter-paradigmatic dialogue (for example Teti, 2007).
Moreover, in debates about Constructivism this dividing line seems to have
‘migrated’ from the demarcation of boundaries between Neo-utilitarian IR
and Constructivism per se to a distinction between ‘critical’ and ‘conventional’
Constructivism. The importance of this ‘migration’ is that by ‘mainstreaming’
Constructivism, it effectively reinforces Neo-utilitarianism rather than
challenge it, neutralizing precisely Constructivism’s most radical implications.
That a research programme be capable of incorporating new theses, methods

or research foci is generally a sign of strength, but questions should be
asked when those new elements are accepted despite starkly contradicting
programme’s core.
Nor were these debates over the Neo-utilitarian–Postmodern/Post-structur-
alist divide unprecedented upon Constructivism’s emergence in the late 1980s:
they were central to the ‘Philosophical Turn’. In fact, recent claims about
the importance of social scientific approaches crucial to the quest for
Constructivist/Neo-utilitarian convergence strikingly echo Keohane’s (1986)
call that ‘scientific’ testing adjudicate between ‘rationalism’ and ‘reflectivism’.
Moving away from questions of foundations, there are several other features
of the emergence of Realist Constructivism that deserve attention.
Reprising the familiar Realist Leitmotiv of Liberalism – here reincarnated as
Constructivism – as a well-meaning but naı̈ve and woolly minded and in any
case analytically inadequate attempt to ‘transcend power’, ‘idealist’ in the
derogatory sense, has proven particularly popular. This leads some advocates
of Realist Constructivism to rather odd conclusions. Mattern, for example,
infers that ‘postmodernism’ is unable to conceive power except as ‘passively
enacted through social relationships’, missing those ‘variegated forms of
expression’ and ‘productive’ dimensions that would allow an understanding of
‘power [as] a question to be investigated, not a variable or process to be
accounted for’ whereas Realist Constructivism considers ‘how specific actors
wield different forms of power (authority, force, care, and so on) through
different expressions (linguistic, symbolic, material, and so on) to produce
different social realities’ (Mattern, 2004, p. 345). Attempts to berate
Postmodern/Post-structural scholarship on these grounds are rather ironic,
because the key criticism levelled at Neo-utilitarianism is precisely its limited,
unreflective conception of power.
Another vital aspect of Realist Constructivism’s emergence relates to its role
in the politics of Constructivism’s relations with mainstream IR. Farrell (2002),
virtually alone among those advocating the possibility of dialogue with
Neo-utilitarianism, explicitly acknowledges the politics of relations between the
two, suggesting these pivot essentially on what ‘posture’ Constructivists
take viz. Neo-utilitarianism, ‘friend or foe’. For example, in response to Price
and Reus-Smit (1998), who note the shared roots of Constructivist approaches
in critical political theory and argue for a ‘rapprochement’ between critical and
conventional constructivists rather than with the ‘Neo-utilitarian’ mainstream,
Farrell (2002, p. 60) cautions that this risks incurring dismissal rather than
engagement. This is a recognition that the outcome of these debates – which,
as Farrell notes, could be crucial to Constructivism’s very survival – has at
least as much to do with perceptions about intellectual and political
commitments as with argumentation per se. In the context of a debate which,
Hynek and Teti
although foregrounding the ‘causal importance of ideas’ and their relation with
power, manages to ignore self-reflection on how it goes about constructing
itself, this is a welcome exception. However, it cannot lessen the striking
parallel between this (Realist) Constructivist silence and its counterpart in
debates about Pragmatism.
This section has examined additional disciplinary consequences of ‘taxono-
mical polarization’ in debates on Constructivism, noting how it enables a non-
ontological interpretation of Constructivism as ‘focused on ideas’. This implies
a division of labour between Realism’s materialist focus and Constructivism’s
‘idealism’, complementarity rather than antagonism, making it virtually
impossible for Constructivism to present any substantive challenge. In this
sense, the selective articulation of a Constructivist/Neo-utilitarian convergence
responds to the ‘Constructivist challenge’ by eliding its ontological roots.
Having accepted with little substantial modification mainstream epistemic
standards, de-legitimizing non-Neo-utilitarian epistemologies, this ‘conver-
gence’ can only subsume Constructivism within the paradigm it sought to
undermine, as provider of the ‘identity variable’. This focus on epistemology
and methodology, however, cannot exorcize the implications of the ‘duality
of structure’: in trying to ‘save identity from postmodernists’ (Checkel, 1998,
p. 327) the emperor has acquired decidedly ill-fitting new clothes.
Blind spots
The emerging consensus sketched above is far from logically coherent: it

involves – indeed, requires – ‘blind spots’, such as the lack of reflexivity in
analysing its own ontological, epistemic, methodological and political
commitments. These blind spots are themselves integral to the mainstreaming
of Constructivism.
Two key ‘blind spots’ are related to the intersubjectivity and co-
constitutiveness of Constructivist ontology. The first is a surprising absence
from the literature. If one of the hallmarks of Constructivism is the notion of
co-constitution agency and structure, Constructivists themselves have focused
on discourse, largely ignoring the material, whereas one might have said that
the true ‘promise of Constructivism’ was its ‘double co-constitutiveness’,
the analysis of the co-constitution of both material and ideational structure
and agency. This ‘blind spot’ facilitated branding Constructivism as ‘idealist’
both in the limited sense of dealing with ideas alone, and in the pejorative sense
typical of Realism, which notoriously ‘creates a narrative that uses the
rhetorical device of dichotomization to set itself up as the standard of prudent
statecraft against the utopianism of ‘idealists’’ (Lynch, 1999, p. 59; also: Steele,
2007, p. 28). Wendt himself explicitly distinguished Constructivism from
Liberalism precisely because, since Carr, ‘‘Idealist’ has functioned in IR

primarily as an epithet for naı̈veté and utopianism’ (1999, p. 33). To the extent
that ‘idealism’ signifies a focus on ideas, this label facilitated an interpretation
of its relation to Neo-utilitarianism as one of complementarity rather than
antagonism.
A second ‘blind spot’ is the decreasing concern for Constructivism’s early
ontological claims. During the 1990s, Constructivists seemed to systematically
shift/de-emphasize ontological commitments: indeed, the debate about
Constructivism’s relation to mainstream IR – particularly around ‘Realist
Constructivism’ – bypasses ontology virtually entirely (cf. Reus-Smit, 2002,
p. 493). Wendt, IR’s most influential expounder of PoSS during the 1990s,
provides the best example of this: although his earlier work carefully outlined
the implications of a structurationist ontology for agent-structure co-
constitution, he later abandons Giddens’ ontology and its double hermeneutic
implications (3B) for Bhaskar’s scientific realism (2B). Moreover, Wendt’s
later commitment to ‘positivism’ (‘I am a positivist’; 1999, p. 39) conflates two
ontologically incompatible positions: constructivist empiricism (1B) and
constructivist realism (2B). Simultaneously, his shifting emphasis towards
epistemology obscures ontological discrepancies, highlighting shared epistemic
commitments, implying that a Constructivist ‘scientific’ project is possible.
Similarly, Adler attempts to equate constructivist realism (2B) and IR
Constructivism via Searle and the Pragmatists. Despite acknowledging
Pragmatism’s ontological ‘agnosticism’ Adler (2003, p. 97) argues that since
‘[a]ll strands of constructivism converge on an ontology that depicts the social
world’ (ibid., p. 100), ‘[s]ome differences between Wendt and his critics may be
reconciled by pragmatist realism [y] Contra Smith, we need a realist ontology
[y] Contra Wendt, however, we need a pragmatist epistemology’ (ibid.,
p. 107), thereby effectively transferring Constructivism from 3B to 2B. Thus,
the reconciliation of social science with identity’s constructedness can be
predicated on retaining the latter while taking state identity as given, coherent,
non-contradictory and before context (Adler, 1997; Wendt, 1999; cf. Zehfuss,
2001): when Checkel indicates what challenges face ‘conventional, and
mostly positivist constructivists’ (2004, p. 239) he omits ontology, arguing
that the most important task is to adjudicate whether ‘persuasion’ or
‘deliberation’ are key causal mechanisms of preference change (see Figure 3).
Thus, the implications of Constructivism’s structurationist ontology end up
neutralized either through some ontological privilege for the state, or by
arguing that states behave as if their identity were fixed. Either way, states’
ontological fixity or epistemic privilege remains incompatible with claims that
identities and attendant political practices are spatio-temporally variable.
This neutralization of ontology crucially affects debates about relations
between ‘positivism and its others’, specifically whether Constructivism can
Hynek and Teti
Figure 3: The politics of redrawing boundaries: Re-positioning of constructivism from PoSS to IR.
provide a via media, because on these grounds, echoing Keohane’s 1986 ISA
Presidential Address, it becomes possible to predicate dialogue on those very
‘social scientific’ grounds that are the bone of contention. It is therefore
unsurprising that Wendt alone has been taken as watermark of Constructivism
in bridge-building attempts (Steele, 2007, p. 30) not because he alone is
sympathetic to Neo-utilitarianism (cf. Kratochwil, 1988), but because, unlike
Onuf or Kratochwil, his (later) ontological commitments do not raise the
issue of the status of the ‘knowledge’ generated through Neo-utilitarian
epistemologies applied to changeable ontological foundations.
A third, related ‘blindness’ is the paucity of reflections on how these
analyses are themselves inextricable from particular normative commitments
(and their reproduction). Despite focusing on ‘language games’ and knowl-
edge-praxis relations in agents, Constructivists fail to analyse the linkage
between power, identity and knowledge by reflecting on the process of (their
own) knowledge production. This should be especially surprising given
Wendt’s hugely popular use of Giddens (1984, pp. 32–33, 348), who explicitly
argues that a ‘double hermeneutic’ flows directly from the ‘duality of structure’.
By contrast, Pragmatists, like Post-structuralists, engage with precisely such
questions. Rorty (1982) argues that one must ask not ‘What is the essence
of such-and-such a problem?’ but ‘What sort of vocabulary, what image of
man, would produce such problems? What does the persistence of such
problems show us about being twentieth-century Europeans?’ Pragmatism
provides an unambiguously politicized answer to these questions, recognizing
that observation and knowledge cannot be neutral, fixed or objective,
but are always for someone and for something (Bohman, 2002, pp. 500–501,
fn 1), both insofar as observers come to a problem from a particular
background and agenda, and because their actions are transformative of
‘reality’. The silence on the politics of knowledge production, despite the
supposed ‘critical turn’ that Constructivism affords mainstream IR, is
deafening.
How has the debate over Constructivism avoided such issues, and how have
such ‘blind spots’ been sustained over time? The answer is linked to the
portrayal of Constructivism as a Neo-utilitarian undertaking in two ways.
First, because the ‘scientific method’ supposedly provides a self-correcting
epistemological mechanism, attention to the knowledge production process
becomes ultimately redundant. Second, because the ‘dichotomized ontological
logic that assumes into reality a distinction between a realm of empiricist ‘fact’
and a realm of ‘theorized’ knowledge’ (George, 1994, p. 18), which lies at the
heart of mainstream IR and ‘its associated representationalist view of language,
[tend] to discourage wider reflection on [y] deep intersubjective beliefs that
orient, shape and constrain’ the production of ideas (Deibert, 1997, p. 169) so
that, contrary to Pragmatists, ‘[n]othing social need enter into questions
regarding the truth of a belief, because truth is a relation determined by a
solitary subject standing in relation to an independent reality’ (Manicas in
Deibert, 1997, p. 169). Thus, ‘a number of questions not only go unanswered,
they are never raised. These include questions of the historical origin and
nature of the community-based standards which define what counts as reliable
knowledge, as well as the question of the merits of those standards in the light
of possible alternatives’ (Neufeld, 1993, p. 26).
Conclusion
Although it has at times been recognized that the field’s history cannot be
reduced to a mere sequence of ideas (Waever, 1998), IR’s intellectual history
has less often become the object of sustained analysis. This paper has sought to
make a contribution in this direction by analysing one aspect of the field’s
discursive economy – the emergence and disciplinary trajectories of
Constructivism – by applying Foucaultian archaeologico-genealogical strategy
of problematization. This approach reveals how Constructivism has been
drawn gradually closer to its mainstream Neo-utilitarian counterpart, and
how this normalization effectively purged Constructivism of its early critical
potential.
The paper first showed how Constructivism’s current intellectual configura-
tion and its rise to disciplinary prominence are inseparable from far-from-
unproblematic readings of basic problems in the Philosophy of Social Science:
choices made at this level are neither as intellectually neutral nor as
disciplinarily inconsequential as they are presented. The paper then charted
the genealogy of early Constructivism, analysing the politics of early
classificatory practices to reveal how these permitted the distillation and
immunization of Constructivism against more radical Postmodernist/
Post-structuralist critiques. Finally, the paper focused attention on recent
events that enabled the neutralization of this radical critical potential both
Hynek and Teti
indirectly – for example, through ‘Pragmatist’ Constructivism – and directly,

through the formulation of ‘Realist Constructivism’. Thus, the overall
normalization of Constructivism occurred in different stages, each revolving
around particular debates: apparently ‘critical’ alternatives that aim to ‘provide
the identity variable’, in fact, remain close to Neo-utilitarianism, but their
successful representation as ‘critical’ helped neutralize Postmodern/Post-
structuralist critiques.
A striking implication of this analysis is that Constructivism, as a theoretical
construction assessed against its own standards, strictly speaking does not
exist. If by Constructivism one means the standpoint absorbed into main-
stream IR then, as Sterling-Folker (2002a) argues, one is hard-pressed to find
significant ontological, epistemological or indeed methodological differences
with respect to Neo-utilitarianism. If, on the other hand, moving from early
formulations of its ontology and the double hermeneutics which ensue,
one takes Constructivism to entail ontological anti-foundationalism and anti-
essentialism, one must recognize that such calls and such formulations are
not new, but are present in more rigorous and complete ways in Postmodern/
Post-structuralist critiques. Either way, it is difficult not to conclude that
Constructivism is not all it is made out to be. Yet, if Constructivism does not
‘exist’ in these senses, it has certainly had a crucial impact on the field as
a discursive practice: the debate over its nature has been crucial to IR’s
infra-disciplinary balance of intellectual power, and thus to the vision of
international politics which, from this field, percolates into policy design and
public debate.
Although these results are necessarily partial, this paper has shown that the
intellectual configuration and fortunes of Constructivism are influenced by
more than the straightforward intellectual history through which mainstream
IR usually tells its own story. Specifically, the theoretical moves and ‘blind
spots’ outlined above simultaneously produced the normalization of Con-
structivism and the immunization of its more radical strands, and the silencing
of Postmodernist/Post-structuralist critiques to Neo-utilitarianism. From this
vantage point, calls for Constructivism to ‘save identity from postmodernists’
(Checkel, 1998, p. 325) are clearly rooted in a blindness and selectivity in the
elaboration of contemporary ‘Social Scientific’ forms of Constructivism,
which are themselves built into the very terms through which Neo-utilitarian
scholarship understands its remit (for example Keohane, 1986). This
complex process of (re)reading and (re)producing what counts as ‘Constructi-
vism’ helps explain not only the normalization of Constructivism itself, but,
insofar as it helps explain Neo-utilitarianism’s continued insulation from
Postmodernist/Post-structuralist critiques, also provides an important key
to understanding the reproduction of IR’s infra-disciplinary centre of
intellectual gravity.
Acknowledgement
We thank Jozef Bátora, Theo Farrell, Yale Ferguson, Stefano Guzzini, Audie
Klotz and Cecelia Lynch and three anonymous reviewers and the editors for
comments on earlier drafts. Financial support from the Czech Academy of
Science (grant number KJB708140803) is gratefully acknowledged.
Notes
1 Although the division is usually framed in positivist/post-positivist terms, we resort to this

alternative labelling for reasons elucidated further below (see especially ‘Blind spots’ and Figure 3).
2 Capitalized terms refer to IR scholarship, whereas lower-case terms designate PoSS positions.
3 Partially shared key assumptions by empiricists and logical positivists sometimes lead to their
incorrect conflation. We would like to thank an anonymous reviewer for emphasizing this point.
4 Bhaskar (1997) distinguishes between general scientific-realist theory of science (‘transcendental
realism’) and a narrower version appertaining to social science (‘critical naturalism’).
5 Several earlier formulations echo Hopf’s. Adler (1997) distinguishes between modern, legal,
narrative and genealogical Constructivism, with the first three falling under Hopf’s ‘conven-
tional’ rubric. Adler (1997, 2003) speaks about a ‘weak programme’ designating Neo-Kantian
Constructivism close to (3B) and a scientific ‘strong programme’, encapsulating most IR
Constructivists. Price and Reus-Smit (1998) and Reus-Smit (2002) distinguish between minimal
foundationalist/positivist/modern and anti-foundationalist/interpretive/postmodern currents.
6 Sterling-Folker (2000) consequently argues that functionalist/liberal logic is inherent to all
Constructivism, subsuming under this rubric (neo)Functionalism and (neo)Liberal Institution-
alism.
7 The taxonomies discussed are actually defined in methodological rather than ontological or
epistemological terms, further ‘neutralizing’ ‘thick’ Constructivism, because Postmodern/Post-
structural methods are considered ‘unscientific’.
8 Ironically, the representation of social scientific scholarship as bias-free justifies criticism of
Postmodernists/Post-structuralists on the grounds of their normative commitments (for example
Reus-Smit, 2002, p. 501; Checkel, 2004, p. 236).
9 Widmaier is probably aware of Millennium’s special issue, as he cites Isacoff’s contribution,
although this is the sole piece he refers, ignoring Haas and Haas’ introductory paper.
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Date accepted: 15 September 2008

Saving Identity From Postmodernists

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Saving Identity From Postmodernists

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Original Article

Saving identity from postmodernism?

Nik Hyneka,* and Andrea Tetib

Abstract International Relations’s (IR’s) intellectual history is almost always

Constructivism’s normalization. These apparently ‘critical’ alternatives that aim

Keywords: Constructivism; international relations theory; Foucault; Philosophy of

Reviewing two decades of debates over Constructivism in International

intellectual commitments. These discussions then enable an analysis of how

Positions and Boundaries: Constructivism(s) in Philosophy of Social

The ‘Philosophical Turn’ has made serious IR scholarship impossible

Constructivism(s) and Philosophy of Social Science

Most Constructivists embark upon the obligatory journey to philosophical

Table 1: Main ontological–epistemological positions in PoSS

non-constructivist (naı¨ve) Constructivist

mind-independence 1A. naı̈ve empiricism 1B. constructivist empiricism

threaten the entire research programme. Furthermore, empiricists argue

positing their existence provides the best explanation of behaviour (Lipton,

Anglophone IR, and the other ‘external’, drawing on Continental philosophy

Genealogies of Normalization I: Classification, Distillation and

Foundational elements of IR Constructivism were presented above as they are

Figure 1: Genealogical topography of Constructivisms.

Given the similarities between Constructivism’s and Postmodernist/Post-

Disciplinary politics of taxonomy

‘thinner’ versions. Rooted in the elision of ontological differences between

From boundaries to bridges

Attempts to find a ‘unity of Constructivism’ have therefore involved presenting

Figure 2: Principal discourses and commentaries (based on Foucault, 1984).

understood as an unproblematic continuation of ‘social science’, that it has

Genealogies of Normalization II: Neutralizations by New Reconstructions

Whatever their intellectual merits, these debates effectively neutralized the

commitments (Figure 1; 3B). A discursive economy rooted in these readings of

Pragmatist constructivism as an indirect neutralization

That Pragmatism was concerned with ‘practical’ interventions is straight-

overcoming the ‘stalemate opposing positivism and post-positivism’, and IR’s

Constructivism. Although Pragmatism generally eschews ontological claims

Realist (Re)construction as a direct neutralization

As noted above, the taxonomical division between critical and conventional

to the ‘taxonomical’ debate and the foray into Pragmatism, a considerable

(Jackson and Nexon, 2004, p. 339). Moreover, ‘Realist Constructivism’ would

That a research programme be capable of incorporating new theses, methods

The emerging consensus sketched above is far from logically coherent: it

Liberalism precisely because, since Carr, ‘‘Idealist’ has functioned in IR

indirectly – for example, through ‘Pragmatist’ Constructivism – and directly,

1 Although the division is usually framed in positivist/post-positivist terms, we resort to this

Harré, R. and Madden, E. (1975) Causal Powers. Oxford: Blackwell.

Owen, D. (2002) Re-orienting international relations: On pragmatism, pluralism and practical

Date submitted: 30 April 2008

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