Albert Weale's Democratic Justice and the Social Contract is an important book. It offers an innovative and original (proceduralist) account of justice. In so doing, it places what Brian Barry called 'the empirical method' at the centre of normative political philosophy's attempts to generate determinate answers to moral questions. This article-written from the perspective of someone sympathetic to both the commitment to mutual advantage and the empirical method – focuses on the kind of argument it is that Weale is offering and in particular on the nature of his constructivist project. It argues that Weale's commitment to equality lies outside the constructivist project and that this undermines his aspiration to genuine constructivism. The article goes on to consider, on the basis of arguments found in Democratic Justice and the Social Contract, various ways in which Weale might have grounded his egalitarian commitments from within the constructivist project.
"German Idealism as Constructivism is the culmination of many years of research by distinguished philosopher Tom Rockmore--it is his definitive statement on the debate about German idealism between proponents of representationalism and those of constructivism that still plagues our grasp of the history of German idealism and the whole epistemological project today. Rockmore argues that German idealism--which includes iconic thinkers such as Kant, Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel--can best be understood as a constructivist project, one that asserts that we cannot know the mind-independent world as it is but only our own mental construction of it. Since ancient Greece philosophers have tried to know the world in itself, an effort that Kant believed had failed. His alternative strategy--which came to be known as the Copernican revolution--was that the world as we experience and know it depends on the mind. Rockmore shows that this project was central to Kant's critical philosophy and the later German idealists who would follow him. He traces the different ways philosophers like Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel formulated their own versions of constructivism. Offering a sweeping but deeply attuned analysis of a crucial part of the legacy of German idealism, Rockmore reinvigorates this school of philosophy and opens up promising new avenues for its study."--Publisher's description
ObjectiveWe argue that the "everyday nationalism" approach is both useful and necessary for improving existing constructivist approaches in the comparative study of nationalism and ethnic politics.MethodsA meta‐analysis of existing studies reveals pervasive conceptual and methodological problems of contemporary constructivist approaches. We consider the implications of replacing individuals or groups with ethnic or nationalist practices as units of analysis.ResultsEveryday nationalism promises to address the gap between constructivist theory and the methodological individualism of existing studies. This approach proceeds from ethnographic observation and utilizes methods reliant on observing societal interaction or relational meaning making for verification. We illustrate such a research strategy using examples of nationalist legitimation in authoritarian regimes and the ethnicization of economic development.ConclusionThe everyday nationalism approach promises to overcome the shortcomings in much contemporary constructivist work. The potential for developing qualitative data sets of nationalist or ethnic practices further promises to complement constructivist insights.
Fully accessible to students and scholars alike, this engaging book introduces the constructivist approach to understanding world affairs. In a highly readable and witty way, it shows how people and their social relations are the basis for everything around us -- International Relations included
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Social constructionism can be seen as a source of the postmodern movement, and has been influential in the field of cultural studies. The article is devoted to the analysis of the influence of social constructionism in modern Anglophone historiography and historical epistemology (2000-2015). The research results show the meaning and place of social and cultural constructivism in contemporary Anglo-American theoretical historical reflection. Nowadays constructivism is the theoretical framework for many quantitative researches in history. The authors have discussed constructivism and post-constructivism as "umbrella-approaches" and not as "fully-fledged theories" in modern Anglophone historiography. The presence of theoretical foundations of social constructivism in contemporary Anglophone historiography, its role and level of influence can be accurately described as a "critical inoculation constructivism". To this day the theories of social constructivism perform many reflective and critical functions in cultural history and contemporary Anglo-American historiography. The ideas and postulates of social constructivism continue to play a prominent role in the "democratization" of modern socio-humanitarian knowledge, rethinking ethnicity, gender, socio-cultural identity. The theories of social constructivism are actively used in such historical projects and research directions as gender history, feminism history, sport history, the history of popular culture, media communications, and many others.
One of the major and increasingly more contested discourses on Thai society, politics and culture is that of "Thainess". Thainess is notoriously difficult to define. However, two basic approaches or attitudes to the notion of Thainess can be discerned – primordialism and constructivism. The primordialist vision sees Thainess as an axiomatic given that is ultimately unsusceptible to scientific, rationalist explanation. It is something that is inherent in the "blood" of Thais. It is a set of cultural, social and political beliefs and practices that are intuitively understood, maintained and practiced by all true Thais. By contrast, the constructivist approach, as its name would suggest, sees Thainess as a construction, rather than an essence, and as a discourse that has been used to justify and sustain centralized power and hierarchy in the Thai state. In this paper, I look at a perhaps neglected source of information about Thainess. I analyze constructivist and primordialist visions of Thainess and Thailand in two popular Thai expat crime novels, Christopher G. Moore's The Corruptionist and John Burdett's Bangkok Haunts.
Abstract In this article I argue that G.A. Cohen is mistaken in his belief that the concept of justice needs to be rescued from constructivist theorists of justice. In doing so, I rely on insights of John Rawls' later work Political Liberalism and Rainer Forst's discourse theory of justice. Such critical engagement with Cohen's critique of constructivism is needed, because Cohen bases his critique of constructivism almost exclusively on Rawls's arguments and positions in A Theory of Justice. He thus neglects - at least by and large - that Rawls had further developed his constructivist method of justification in his later work Political Liberalism, as well as that Forst's discourse-theoretical works offer elaborate versions of constructivism. These refined versions of constructivism recognize a plurality of reasonable conceptions of ideal justice and draw an important distinction between moral and political constructivism. Because of these features these advanced constructivist theories are not in need of Cohen's rescue.
