Post-Modern Constructivism

1. Ontology (Being)2. Epistemology (Knowing)3. Methodology (Verification)

Post-Modernism: An epistemological critique

Philosophies of Inquiry

Underlying theory of knowledge that defines the relationship between the investigator and the world that he or she is attempting to study

Examples of Theories of Knowledge

1. Positivism

2. Phenomenology

3. Linguistic Approaches

4. Post-Modern Approaches

Positivism

Empiricist Tradition of the Early 19th Century

“Relationship between measurable properties of objects, things, or persons”

Positivism (continued)

Reliance on quantification: fragment “reality” into sets of observable data

Objects are static fixed entities that are frozen in descriptions

Speech is about “things”

The language of inquiry is taken to be transparent

Phenomenology

Intellectual counteroffensive against positivismat the turn of the 20th century (Husserl and Schutz)

“The mind as an active, interventionist processthat constructs the world of objects in imaginative enactments”

Edmund Husserl

Phenomenology (continued)

Privileges the actor rather than the object as the locus of meaning (“a knowing subject”)

The subject is the author of “reality.”

Subjects are the planners of their deeds and are thereforeresponsible

Insensitive to the societal productions of meaning withinwhich the author resides

Linguistic Analysis

Focuses squarely on language as a locus of meaning

“Language is not about objects and experience, it is constitutive of objects and experience” (Shapiro, 1983, p. 20)

Linguistic Analysis (continued)

Language is more than a de-notational tool

Statements are complex, rule-governed behavior

Political positions are embeded in figures of speech, such as metaphors

Figures of speech are not mere adornments: they help to produce our world

Language and Political Understanding

A Seminar by Michael J. Shapiro16 November 1983

Post-Modern Approaches

View language as the “container” of possible practices within a discourse (profession).

Speaking is not an innovative activity, but a selection froma fixed set of practices, governed by rules that are permissible in the language.

Post-Modernism (continued)

Discoursive practices limit the range of objects thatcan be identified (e.g. Inuits and “snow’)

Define the perspectives that one can legitimately regarded as “knowledge.” (e.g., the Bible)

Constitute certain kinds of people as AGENTS ofknowledge (e.g., the scientist, the doctor, or the bureaucrat)

Thereby establishing norms for developing concept-izations that are used to “understand” the world

Post-Modern International Relations

A Seminar by Nicholas Onuf at Syracuse University on 3 March 1995