Monday, December 05, 2005

Whose Context?

Inayatullah and Blaney – Substanive

Well, I’m going to take a stab at this with no direction on where anybody else from the class is going to go in relation to this book.  I would first like to point out the difficultly in understanding and concentrating on the core content of Inayatullah and Blaney’s book.  I would like to immediately say, in jest of course, is that this is the reason that some IR theorists would rather just avoid the whole subject of behaviorism.  But of course I do recognize the importance of understanding individual perspectivism in building up IR locally.  States are not simply distant entities that that act on a singularity of unified perspectives.  No, international relations are instead built by individuals making decisions.

A major point that the authors attempt to relay to the audience is the socially conditioned structures of the environment (politically, socially, ets.) in which people live.  Because an idea exists does not mean that its existence is natural and real.  For the most part structures and institutions are created and should not be dogmatically accepted.  If the idea was not intentionally created then it would not exist to begin with.  This critique appears to be aimed at realist notions of the inevitability of the political environment in which international relations/politics must occur.  Hedley Bull’s defense of the anarchical society as an inevitability for example is a misleading assumption, which creates a cycle of dependence on the current political structure.  The authors of this book seem to call forth a questioning and re-examination of preexisting notions, from internal to external, from local to universal.  But then can we say that just because these features are socially constructed that we can act in a manner that is inconsistent and which does not recognize the constructions.  No, I believe that it would be foolish to act in a manner that disregards major social constructions, the international realm for example, even though our authors believe that they are created by the dominators of policy.  We can of course work toward the deconstruction of the present system but only working to build a replacement system so as not to create a political vacuum.  Who exactly should build/create this new realm?  How can one be created that takes into account differences while not relocating the “other” spacio-temporally into a zone that identifies it as backwards?