Constructivism in International Relations theory is …

I should pause right there. We are accustomed to defining things in academic discourse and everyday life using the definer-in-chief – ‘is’. The exercise comes automatically, unreflexively. When we want to bring the nature of a phenomenon to the surface, we begin with a definition – however provisional – so we can all begin from the same place. The habit is rooted in the structure of language itself, after all. Ordinary language tells us the world is made up of things, discrete ‘its’ that do things. Why should it be any different with IR Constructivism?

While ‘defining one's terms’ is drilled into us early in our education, in the case of Constructivism, the practice represents a problematic starting point. Even sophisticated constructivists can fall into the trap – for one, for example, ‘Constructivism is about the social embeddedness of human consciousness and its role in international life.’ This definition is not incorrect so much as only one of many possible definitions of ‘it’. (What is ‘consciousness’, after all?) The problem comes because Constructivism resists such substantializationor essentialization: casting Constructivism as a stable thing the nature of which words can straightforwardly capture. Indeed, Constructivism resists substantialization or essentialization in not one but two ways: Constructivism is neither a single thing in IR, be it a theory, approach, perspective, or whatever, nor is it a theory or approach that studies things in world politics. To ask what Constructivism is, therefore, is to pose a crucial question in the wrong way for the object at hand.

Let me try again, then. In this book, I will defend a view of Constructivism less as an essence than a particular kind of space within the professionalized study of international political life – be it political science departments in the United States, or departments of Politics, Government, or International Studies, as elsewhere in the world. The main characteristic of Constructivism as a space is that it is where a certain process obtains: the process of looking at how international political life – its main actors, institutions, rules, language, norms, cultural meanings, identities, roles – are constituted, made, or, simply, constructed.