Commonsense Constructivism, Or, The Making of World Affairs

Front Cover
M.E. Sharpe, 2000 - Philosophy - 248 pages
This engaging book presents an intriguing new approach to understanding world affairs.

"Constructivism" first found its way to IR -- the field of international relations -- in an exceptionally demanding form. This book is quite the opposite. In a highly readable and witty way, Commonsense Constructivism, or the Making of World Affairs, makes clear how everything around us (IR included) is constructed.

In the process, it also shows how narrow the standard IR approaches are, and how much we miss as a consequence. Ralph Pettman's conceptual framework of state-making, wealth-making, self-making, and mind-making allows us to see such notions as "globalization" in a revealing new light.

This work is intended to be fully accessible to students, but it will be welcomed by anyone who has been mystified by constructivism -- or who simply wants to better understand the ways we understand our world.

CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION: Commonsense Constructivism

1. Making World Affairs

I. THE NEGLECTED ASPECTS OF THE DISCIPLINE

2. Making Modernity

3. Making Sovereign Selves, Social Collectives, and Nations

II. THE DOMINANT ASPECTS OF THE DISCIPLINE

4. Making States and Making Markets

CONCLUSION: A Constructed World

 

Contents

Making World Affairs
31
THE NEGLECTED ASPECTS OF THE DISCIPLINE
69
Making Modernity
71
Making Sovereign Selves Social Collectives and Nations
110
THE DOMINANT ASPECTS OF THE DISCIPLINE
149
Making States and Making Markets
151
A Constructed World
210
References
231
Index
241
Copyright

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Page 33 - And every language is a vast patternsystem, different from others, in which are culturally ordained the forms and categories by which the personality not only communicates, but also analyzes nature, notices or neglects types of relationship and phenomena, channels his reasoning, and builds the house of his consciousness.
Page 37 - But yet, if we would speak of things as they are, we must allow that all the art of rhetoric, besides order and clearness, all the artificial and figurative application of words eloquence hath invented, are for nothing else but to insinuate wrong ideas, move the passions, and thereby mislead the judgment, and so indeed are perfect cheat...