Security, identity, and symbolic interactionism

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Security, identity, and symbolic interactionismThierry Balzacq aa Centre of International Studies, University of Cambridge, Churchill College, CambridgeCB3 0DS, UK and Centre for International Conflicts and Crises Studies (CECRI), UniversitéCatholique de Louvain, Belgium. Email: [email protected] online: 03 Jun 2010.

To cite this article: Thierry Balzacq (2002) Security, identity, and symbolic interactionism, International Review ofSociology: Revue Internationale de Sociologie, 12:3, 469-506, DOI: 10.1080/0390670022000041439

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Security, Identity, and Symbolic Interactionism

THIERRY BALZACQCentre of International Studies, University of Cambridge, Churchill College, Cambridge CB30DS, UK and Centre for International Conflicts and Crises Studies (CECRI), UniversitéCatholique de Louvain, Belgium. Email: [email protected]

The claim that international politics is ‘indexically’ and ‘reflexively’1 con-structed highlights the strong link between constructivism and symbolic inter-actionism.2 Indeed, constructivism is, above all else, a powerful illustration ofthe employment of symbolic interactionism in the realm of InternationalRelations.3 However, most constructivists avoid the question of its roots.4 This,I argue, can be misleading in so far as no one who follows a specific theoreti-cal path will ever be satisfied until s/he has understood adequately all theorigins of the approach they use. Since the genetic approach of a theory isobviously multilayered and raises various interpretative challenges, I choose tonarrow my perspective by focusing on Alexander Wendt’s attempt to inter-weave symbolic interactionism with the concerns of systemic theorists ofInternational Politics.5 I do this mainly through an exegesis of his rational-constructivist programme, asserting that it can be seen in terms of a multiplex6

(anarchy, identity and interest, security) interactionism and by showing howWendt’s constructivist approach to perception is paradoxically a structuralone.7 This assumption leads to two points. Firstly, the fact that most proponentsof constructivism have brushed aside its symbolic interactionist inspiration anddeemed it not worthy of thorough attention is very unfortunate and detri-mental to the understanding of their theoretical endeavour. Therefore, in thefirst section, my aim is to recast symbolic interactionism’s disciplinary lineage(via pragmatist, Medean, Blumerian and Simmelian legacies), and sketch outits main theoretical contributions as well as shortcomings. I then galvanize thediscussion by arguing that disregarding a genuine analysis of symbolic inter-actionist premises blurs some key stages of its transference on to internationalconstructivism. Secondly, I claim that although constructivism can be regardedas an anti-essentialist approach to international politics, it can be inferred thatit is also, perhaps more importantly, a degenerating social theory. That raises twoconceptual puzzles, essentialism and the problem of theoretical degeneration.The former is defined by Vivien Burr as follows: ‘essentialism is a way of under-standing the world that sees things (including human beings) as having theirparticular essence or nature, something which can be said to belong to themand which explains how they behave [. . .]’.8 Concerning the latter, Wendt’sconstructivism is said to be a ‘degenerative’ approach because I think it is anad hoc adaptation to neorealist theory9 through the reliance on symbolic

International Review of Sociology—Revue Internationale de Sociologie, Vol. 12, No. 3, 2002

ISSN 0390-6701 print/1489-9273 online/02/030469-38 © 2002 University of Rome ‘La Sapienza’DOI: 10.1080/0390670022000041439

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interactionist premises. This has both weak and strong consequences. By instill-ing symbolic interactionism in international theory, Wendt has opened abreach into the mainstream’s comprehension of core concepts such asmeaning, self help, socialization, system and structure. This is the strong partof the tale. However, by its over reliance on structural realism, Wendt’s con-structivism comes across as being less progressive than at first it might appear.This is the weak side of the story. But even the weak side is promising for mypurpose, since it enables me to unfold not only the links between Wendt andsymbolic interactionism, but also the implicit ties between symbolic inter-actionism and Kenneth Waltz. At this stage, the analytical terrain becomesslippery. Indeed, what I am arguing has various implications. The most obviousis that it is a mistake to see constructivism as completely opposed to structuralrealist ontology (are social structures real?) and epistemology (can we have anobjective knowledge of these structures?).10 The second is more pervasive sinceit reconciles both constructivism and structural realism with their commonintellectual roots, symbolic interactionism. I do not wish to make the claim thatthere are no differences between constructivism and neorealism, but ratherthat given their widely shared theoretical assumptions, there are as manycommonalities as there are differences between the two approaches. There-fore, the task I set myself in the second section is to challenge the orthodoxidea that there is a chasm between constructivism and neorealism, and providea creative interpretation of both approaches by asserting that symbolic inter-actionism provides a synthetic ground on which to build a stronger theory ofinternational politics.

Section I. Symbolic Interactionism: a Processual Account

‘In the beginning is the relationship.’Martin Buber, I and Thou

Pragmatist and Simmelian Legacies

The endeavour to ascertain the roots of symbolic interactionism has proven tobe tricky. Indeed, framing the temporal genesis of symbolic interactionismencounters at least two major hurdles: the elusive quest for an absolutepaternity and the cluster of influential schools of thought that have imparteda peculiar tone to symbolic interactionism. Pertaining to the paternityproblématique, it used to be said in the 1960s that George Mead was theinitiator of this very specific way of thinking about individual relationships.However, since then, more suggestions concerning symbolic interactionism’slineage have been brought to the fore, challenging Mead’s supposed paternity.For instance, to name a few cases, Anselm Strauss and Bernard Fisher have pro-posed Robert Park’s work as the initial point of the symbolic interactionistmovement.11 For Hans Joas, it is the Chicago school as a whole that establishedthis theory. Yet, a vitalizing alternative to this particular interpretation of thegenesis of symbolic interactionism has come from Susan Shott. According toher, Heraclitus, Hume and Smith are the headsprings of symbolic inter-actionism. On the one hand, Heraclitus’ philosophy of becoming—one neversteps in the same river twice—seems to be the rhizome of the symbolic

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interactionist view of the continual negotiation of social order. On the otherhand, Shott assumes that David Hume and Adam Smith are the primary initi-ators of notions like ‘self ’, ‘mind’ and ‘role-taking’ in social theory. She relieson their beliefs that an individual acquires ‘intelligence and moral sentiments’from a societal web.12 However, notwithstanding the pertinence of these storiesabout the potential precursors of symbolic interactionism, it can be argued thatHerbert Blumer was the pioneer and the mastermind of both the theory andthe concept.13 Not only did he coin the term ‘symbolic interactionism’, but healso had a weighty influence on the Chicago school, and provided the theorywith its core principles as well. I will expand upon these issues later.

Secondly, symbolic interactionism springs from a knot of intellectual tra-ditions, mainly pragmatism and Simmelian formalism.14 Since symbolic inter-actionism tries to grasp the multiple forms of social relations, it fits within theSimmelian project of providing a geometry of social life.15 Whereas psychologyand the other sciences work on content (war, politics . . .), sociology, saysSimmel, leans on forms (conflict, coalition . . .), and on pre-existing social for-mations as well as on actions that take place within them. Forms come out ofinteractions, independent of contents. One can then distinguish betweenforms and content, at least, rhetorically. None the less, forms are not rigid.Rather than being static and fixed, they are plastic and fluid. Forms are modi-fied in accordance with the nature of actions (cooperative or conflictual)through which they are configured.16 For Georg Simmel then, interaction isthe fundamental social fact. To put it another way, reciprocal action is thefundamental act of the form.17 Forms are more diachronic than contents, andas such, are the very organizing patterns of social life. For instance, conflict asa form, can occur in various contents, for example war and politics.18

Let us turn to the legacy of pragmatism. Pragmatism can be thought of as alargely North American philosophy which pursues three claims: The first ofthese can be summarized in the injunction to deal with the concrete and thepeculiar, rather than with universal systems of ‘theorization’. In tune with thisposition, symbolic interactionism dislikes any attempt to build grand andabstract theories. It prefers a theory ‘down-to-earth’ with social experience.The task ascribed to the act of theorization is to develop mini-concepts veri-fied through contact with the lived experience of individuals: thus, ‘mini-sensitizing concepts’.19 These concepts give an account of the ebbs and flowsof individual lives.20 Second comes concern with anti-essentialist and anti-foundationalist stances on eclectic notions like ‘truth’,21 ‘knowledge’ and ‘lan-guage’.22 The third claim consists in a rejection of the dualist thinkingcharacterizing Western ‘theorization’ since Descartes.23 Pragmatism tries toovercome Descartes’ elevation of the individual’s doubt into ‘the establish-ment of the self-certainty of the thinking and doubting ego as the firm foun-dation of a philosophy’,24 and, in accordance with this, to cast doubt onDescartes’ ‘cogito ergo sum’, by constructing a ‘true doubt’ which will enablethe ego to be conscious of real questions. Coping with real problems calls fora cooperative attitude toward the quest of truth, in contradistinction to the soli-tary Cartesian one.

The transfer of pragmatism from its philosophical stance to the socialsciences first took place in terms of a ‘functionalist psychology’25 the mainpurpose of which was to understand psychic activities and dynamics in termsof their functionality to human problem-solving conduct. The key, of course,

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was a psychology that viewed human action as a simple reaction to externalstimuli. In John Dewey’s words, this ‘reflex arc model’26 had to be tweaked.27

As stated by Dewey, individual actions are not merely a succession of stimuli,external processing and responses. Thus, in pragmatism, precisely because itconsiders all psychical operations in the light of their functionality for action,it becomes impossible to hold that the setting of an end is an act of con-sciousness per se that occurs outside of contexts of action. Rather, the settingof an end can only be the result of reflection on resistances met by conductthat is orientated in a number of different ways.28

Following an end is shared by almost all of the individuals. Nevertheless,individuals can only achieve the actions affordable within the limitations oftheir power. In addition, their actions are ascertained, monitored and shapedby the actions of others. There are stringent constraints in the creation of newpossibilities of action (power of the self, the other’s action, etc.). However, inthis sociological grounding of pragmatism, the shortcomings of the latter arecarried into the framework of the former. Indeed, in both pragmatism andsymbolic interactionism as social pragmatism, the actor’s action and relationto the environment as well as to other actors are very fuzzy. Charles Peirce, forinstance, tried, but failed to give a thorough account of the relationshipbetween the self and the other.29 The first remarkable attempt of developinga social pragmatism came from Charles Cooley.30 On the one hand, Cooleyattempted to resolve the paradox of the self ’s origin.31 On the other hand,Cooley developed the metaphor of the ‘looking-glass self ’ to give an overviewof the self ’s genealogy. In this vein, the other mirrors what the self is, and theself learns about itself from the other. I nevertheless think, in accordance withGlynis Breackwell, that, as it is stated, the ‘looking-glass self ’ metaphor is mis-leading, since ‘in truth, two mirrors can produce no image’.32 However, thereis good news. Specifying metaphorically the development of the self leads tothe insight that the ‘looking-glass self ’ is only sensical if it is applicable inpractical operations. Basically, the ‘looking-glass self ’ only ‘becomes meaning-ful ultimately if the processes whereby feedback from others is provided andsubjectively interpreted are explained’.33 None the less, Cooley offered anemotional rather than a cognitive view of the self. In addition, his actional foun-dation of consciousness has proven to be weak and has not delivered in tyingthe analysis of interaction and self-consciousness to pragmatic philosophy.34

This challenging project was carried out by George H. Mead’s endeavour tostudy human communication, both gestural and linguistical.35 With Mead, con-sciousness and self-consciousness become important aspects of social psychol-ogy, and as such enjoyed a wide currency. To put it the other way around, theactor is a source of stimuli as well. He grappled with the relation of the actorto itself and to its environment. That explains why he must also analyse his ownway of acting. Only this double attention—to the environment/other and tohimself—fosters the continuation of the action. The generation of self-reflex-ivity in Mead’s work, which was built up during the 1910s led him to the theoryof ‘symbolically-mediated’ interaction.

Mead, Self, and Other

Mead draws a pellucid distinction between the society of human beings andthe society of infrahumans.36 What makes these two societies so different is the

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nature of their cooperative behaviour. Infrahuman societies (insects, forinstance) are naturally or physiologically inclined toward cooperation, whereashuman cooperation and any other patterns of behaviour are far from beingsimply biologically determined. Instead of being biologically driven, withinhuman societies actors must take into account the intention of others and thenact accordingly.37 Thus, every actor accommodates itself to the thoughtguiding the action of others. As Bernard Meltzer points out:

[B]ehavior is not a matter of responding directly to the activity ofothers. Rather, it involves responding to the intentions of others, [thatis], to the future, intended behavior of other not merely to theirpresent actions.38

Therefore, it does not seem unreasonable to hypothesize that, for Mead,human behaviour is tainted with intent or conscious meaning. Human beingsdo not enlist themselves in a stimuli–response course of action. Rather, theyinterpret the action of others before reacting. Sets of actions are mediatedthrough symbols such as culture and values, hence, symbolic interactionism.39

The action of ‘A’ is symbolically interpreted by ‘B’, that is, the action of ‘A’turns out to be a symbol to be given a meaning by ‘B’.40 Moreover, the actors’behaviour becomes a feedback to interpreted stimuli (Figure 1).41

As far as symbolic interactionism is concerned, action is ‘lodged in actingindividuals who fit their respective lines of action to another through a processof interpretation [. . .]’.42 Actions emerge in a particular situation. In return,actions are carved out via the process of elucidating the situation. Therefore,by way of continual appraisal and exegesis, acting units acquire an intersub-jective knowledge of how to act in a particular context. Consequently, sharedmeanings or ‘cognitive templates’43 form the backdrop of cooperationamongst individuals. They are the products of self-stimulation as well as under-standing of others’ actions. In this sense, shared meanings square with the ideaof consensus in social psychology. Meanings are embedded on mental activityand manifest wherein common symbols are shaped. By dint of role-taking, theself perceives what others can tolerate or not. Hence, role-taking enables theself to understand its ontological nature.44 In Mead’s view, being a self is con-current with the recognition of having the ability of viewing oneself as an objectto which one can speak. The self-reflexivity is necessary to its construction asan object for himself. The self appears and is shaped within the intercourse ofsuch reflexive behaviour. Accordingly, having a self is in tune with role-taking.Self-stimulation, as a path to role-taking, involves communication, that is, vocaland/or physical gesture.45 The notion of ‘self ’ is of paramount importance inMead’s interactionism, for it is not just a fashionable concept, nor is it a mererhetorical artifice. Rather, Mead holds that each individual is meant to be anobject of its own action. The self sets up objectives, lays out means to achieve


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Figure 1. A symbolic dyadic interaction.


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them, and eventually assesses the results. The self emerges out of a twofoldprocess: the play stage and the game stage.46

At the first of these stages, the individual’s self is constituted simply by anorganization of the particular attitudes of other individuals toward himself andtoward one another in the specific social act in which he participates withthem. But at the second stage in the full development of the individual’s selfthat self is constituted not only by an organization of these particular individualattitudes, but also by an organization of the social attitudes of the generalizedother or the social group as a whole to which he belongs.47

In the play stage, as opposed to the game stage, the self is only taking suc-cessively the role of others, without internalizing the ‘generalized systematicpattern’ of the social group. In the play stage, the self develops the ability to‘put himself in the place of “others” ’.48 One can detect that the later stage isof greatest interest yet grounded on the former. This final step in the self ’sdevelopment is characterized by multifaceted role-taking. In other words, theself is completed by taking the role of the other and by facing various expec-tations to which it could give specific responses. It internalizes these expec-tations and acquires deeper consistency in its action; this is the generalized other.The self reaches its full consistency by integrating others’ experiences, and byechoing the social attitude of its group.

As an essentially social practice, the self encompasses the I and the Me. TheI is more creative, it is the spontaneous, the uncontrolled part of the self, freedfrom social role, position, status and interpersonal determinants. Conversely,the Me is the organized, the directed side of the self. The Me, socialized side ofthe self, encapsulates the generalized other, the shared meanings within acollectivity.49 Actions mirror the same route: from I to Me, from uncontrolledfeatures of human experiences (I) to organized and internalized sets of otherspresumptions (Me)—James’s social self. The I gives the impulse, initiates theaction, whereas the Me controls and directs the initiated action.50 The I canappear to remain unknown even in an action, but the Me is revealed in theinteraction, it is the socially constructed side of the self. More importantly,what is anticipated here is the distinction between personal and social identityin social theory—Wendt’s province in ‘collective identity formation’. It isnecessary to put up a marker as to the centrality of the distinction between ‘I’and ‘me’ for symbolic interactionism. To put it the other way around, thetheoretical existence of ‘I’ and ‘Me’ parallels that of personal and socialidentity. However, this is getting too far ahead.

The relation of the self to the environment is imbued with two character-istics: (1) the endless process of adaptation and adjustment; and, (2) thesorting out of peculiar events deemed to be of interest for the self ’s attention.Sorting out points towards the selective trait of the self ’s attention, its proactivebehaviour and consciousness of meaning. As Meltzer put it: ‘Mead [. . .]regards all life as ongoing activity, and views stimuli not as initiators of activity—but as elements selected by the organism in the furtherance of that activity.’51

The capacity of selecting, organizing and creating events conveys the explicitidea that individuals construct their acts by way of covert trials. They can, bythe same token, assess prospective obstacles and possible outcomes in relationto the environment: ‘Consequences can be imaginatively “tried out” inadvance. This is what is primarily meant by “mind”, “reflective thinking”, or“abstract thinking”.’52

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What is foreshadowed here is the contention that the mind is social both inorigin and in function. In the first sense, the mind comes out of the social actof communication. That means the mind is only present when the individualuses significant symbols. Communication involves integration of externallinguistic symbols and anothers’ frame of mind. The idea of internalizingothers’ intentions unbolts the second sense of mind: that is, mind as social. Forit indicates how individuals are always adjusting to others, taking their role,while speaking to themselves. In symbolic interactionism, indicating to oneselfis as important as speaking to others. Hence, it is a requisite for the construc-tion of a standpoint for common understanding. The commonality of perspec-tive is not only the result of shared meanings and understandings, but also ofshared objects. For Mead, an object is a plan of action. The environment ispopulated with objects. The object has no other existence and consistency thanthat imposed upon it by individuals’ activity. Further, objects change as theactivity is transfigured. This leads to the conclusion that the act is the basic unitof analysis in Mead’s Social Psychology.53 This view is also found in Dewey’spragmatism:

Only when a man can already perform an act of standing straight doeshe know what it is like to have a right posture and only then can hesummon the idea required for a proper execution. The act mustbecome before the thought [. . .].54

Mead did a great deal in presenting the most important principles of thesymbolic interactionist approach. He unveiled with coherence and rigour thefact that human beings act rather than react to external stimuli. Thus, indi-viduals construct the objective of their action before and during its implemen-tation. This action is conducted in a particular situation, and what this situationsymbolizes is at the base of the individuals’ move. Finally, the meaning of theworld is socially framed and shared by all the members of a specific society.

Despite the high praise bestowed upon his thought, Mead’s social theory hasbeen criticized along three dimensions: conceptual, affectual, and methodo-logical. For Blumer, Mead failed to bring the methodological consequences ofhis ‘theorization’ to the fore.55 In addition, Mead’s work is tainted with incon-sistency in the use of the terms he forged: mind, I, Me, self. For instance, theI is just posited as the not-Me part of the self.

They [I and Me] are identical, for, as I have said, the ‘I’ is something that isnever entirely calculable. The ‘me’ does call for a certain sort of an ‘I’ in so faras we meet the obligations that are given conduct itself, but the ‘I’ is alwayssomething different from what the situation calls for.56

Moreover, there is no precise distinction between the I and the Me sides ofself. To put this point bluntly, concepts such as ‘meaning’ and ‘self ’ areblurred. The self is, to follow this example, used as a synonym of self-consciousness. The shaky and the relative value of the I and the Me accordingto the situation leads one to a situated conceptual axiology. Lastly, emotionsare absent from Mead’s social psychology. Ignoring the role of this affectivefactor in the construction of the self within the process of interaction is still abone of contention amongst symbolic interactionists.57



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Blumer and the Chicago School

The Chicago school, continuing the Meadian tradition, with symbolic interac-tionism as its backdrop, has been the major trend of thought in sociology formore than half a century.58 That said, there is not a single Chicago school. Tobe sure, under this porous heading, there can be found various theorists withcontrasting intellectual backgrounds and driven by sundry projects: from pureand abstract social theoreticians to practically oriented social reformers, allassembled under the same roof at the University of Chicago. The first depart-ment of sociology was set up in Chicago in 1892 by Albion Small and subse-quently one of the leading journals of the field—The American Journal ofSociology—was first published within its ambit in 1895. Given the thorny nexusformed by Chicago thinkers, I will just highlight the role played by those whoare (apart from Mead), in my opinion, the key thinkers of the Chicago school,William I. Thomas and Herbert Blumer. This choice relies on the fact thatWilliam I. Thomas contributed heavily in injecting pragmatism into the socio-logical arena, and Herbert Blumer, apart from being the originator of the term‘symbolic interactionism’, is seen as the main architect of symbolic inter-actionist theory.59

Methodologically, Thomas remained close to ethnography, whereas from atheoretical point of view, he tried to work out the causative role of culture onthe behaviour of individuals and groups.60 According to Thomas, culture is acluster of technical, natural, and cognitive communal resources. What yieldsthis approach is the strong plea that: ‘the level of culture of the group limitsthe power of the mind to meet crisis and readjust’.61 Crises occur when indi-vidual habits confront a new stimulus. This uneven situation can be tran-scended ‘only through a conscious operation (“attention”) on the part of thesubject, through which new habits of behavior originate’.62 Thus, Thomasplaces great confidence in the creativity entailed by new action generated bythe occurrence of an unfamiliar stimulus. Therefore, ‘[I]ndividuals percep-tions and new creations are to be recognized as the mediating link betweensocial facts.’63

Much of the positive reception of Thomas’s project may be attributed to twoaspects of his approach: his model encompasses collective actions and becomessociologically substantial.64 Thomas’s sociology is said to be more substantialhere as far as it paid greater attention to the self-definition of a situation.Actually, situation emerges as a challenge to the customary definition ofactions. Accordingly, Thomas’s motives of actions can be thought of as fourclasses: ‘the desire for new experience; for mastery of a situation; for socialrecognition; and for certitude of identity’.65 Thomas continues by proposing afully fledged theory of personality, through providing a description of the self-construction of life trajectory called ‘life organization’.66 He then differenti-ates three types of personality: ‘the “philistine”, with a rigid orientation of hislife; the “bohemian”, who has no coherent character structure; and lastly, witha clearly positive valuation, the “creative personality”, who is able systematicallyto guide his own development’.67

The second orientation in Thomas’s work pertains to its inclusiveness ofcollective action. He shrinks and even closed the gap between the individualand society, both being the results of conflicting definitions of the situations.For Thomas, sociologists should use the comparative study of the situation in

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order to capture the various adjustments ‘of people and groups to other peopleand groups’.68 Besides, the relationship between individual and collectiveaction is functionally handled. By this, Thomas means that every action conveysthe possibility of a function of both organization and dis-organization. In Joas’words, ‘the opportunity for individual reorganization also exists under con-ditions of social disorganization’.69

What about Herbert Blumer’s insights? Blumer has done a great service tosymbolic interactionism by widening its scope. He first deepened the sense ofself-interaction and self-referentiality by instilling the idea of free choice. Theself can internally think about and deliberate on different alternatives in orderto promote its actions, rather than finding options ‘out-there’ as epitomizedby Leibniz’ philosophy of mind. Secondly, he furthered and contrived sym-bolic interactionism by couching its canon:

The first premise is that human beings act toward things on the basisof the meanings that things have for them [. . .] The second premiseis that the meaning of such things is derived from, or arises out of, thesocial interaction that one has with one’s fellows. The third premise isthat these meanings are handled in, and modified through, an inter-pretative process used by person in dealing with the things he encoun-ters.70

Thirdly, Blumer extended the concept of ‘interaction’ in two decisive ways:on the one hand, he added the notion of ‘joint actions’ which totality formssociety. On the other hand, he brought into light the concept of ‘sharedinterpretation’ which designates the ability of individuals to interpret actionsin the same way, and then, make headways in social construction. Society existsonly within the context of interaction.71 By the same token, meanings stemfrom interactions. In return, meanings are recreated via individuals’ self-reflec-tions on their situated society.72 The channel of interaction allows people todevise their own world, a social one. The concept ‘social world’ points to thecommon concern across time and space on a specific area (political, econ-omical, military, etc.). ‘Social worlds’ are unified and dis-unified social worlds.The level of awareness criss-crosses the local and the global and is thus, notreduced to face-to-face (micro) relations. Actually, symbolic interactionismrejects the micro–macro split. Conversely, it develops a unified view of societyin which micro and macro levels of social life are merged and it also providesan account of its production, growth and end.73 The social is revealed as aseries of concentric circles, calling for empirical study. The level ranges fromthe international (international politics, governmental regulations . . .) to face-to-face relations (micro-interactional level).74 Finally, ‘social worlds’ are nexusof identification that can both gather and dismantle various worlds.75 Whatconstitutes the ‘social life of human society’76 is the ability of human beings toform joint acts. Consequently, a human society is embedded in a cluster offormed social acts, merged and dissolved by its current members.77 In this vein,Blumer rejects determinism in human conduct. It is easier to see what Blumeris getting at, and why he is pushed along this path, if we understand what issueshe sought to address, and what pitfalls he is trying to avoid. This is particularlynecessary because Blumer’s works carried on a submerged, almost silent dia-logue with alternative stances. Indeed, what Blumer tries to do here, is to



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depart from Khun’s Iowa school conception of action. According to thisschool, behaviour is completely determined and predictable ‘on the basis ofinternalized expectations’.78 Therefore, if one knows the actor’s referencegroup, one can predict his behaviour. As Kuhn argues, ‘central to an indi-vidual’s conception of himself is his identity, that is, his generalized positionin society’.79 The individual’s behaviour is a structured set of self-attitudesmade of internalized roles and statutes, fixed and endowed with a causativeinfluence. In other words, actions are externally constrained, released fromanterior and pre-existing social structures. Obversely, Blumer assumes thatactions are built up by individuals rather than being the results of ‘factorsplaying on [their psychological] structures’.80

The likening of human group life to the operation of a mechanical struc-ture, or to the functioning of an organism, or to a system seeking equilibrium,seems to me to face grave difficulties in view of the formative and explorativecharacter of interaction as the participants judge each other and guide ownacts by that judgement.81

Blumer brushes aside the structural dimension of social action.82 Accordingto him, actions supersede the structural scale of the social organization withinwhich they emerge, and, in this sense, they are more processual than structuralas Kuhn argued.

Symbolic interactionism highlights the fact that human group life is alwaysintersubjective, multi-perspectival, reflective, activity-based, negotiable, rela-tional and processual; and that through a close observation of this life a genericprocessual account of its underlying forms may be built up. Central to this arethe processes of acquiring perspectives, achieving identity,83 being involved,doing activity, and experiencing relationships.84

For some authors, symbolic interactionism does not really give a detailedstory of structure and social organization (astructural bias).85 Nor does it raisethe question of both productive and constraining effect of structure within thecourse of interaction.86 Structure turns out to cover the context, the meaningand the activity. Obviously though, the so-called structural void is conveyed bya haphazard treatment of agency and ideas as well as the collective side ofsocial experience encapsulated in the notion of ‘shared meanings’. In effect,agency, idea and structure are interconnected parts of a ‘wider field ofdefinition/action (interaction) or discourse (poststructuralism) rather than[. . .] separate entities’.87 Other scholars like Denzin claim that, ‘the problemof the astructural bias in symbolic interactionism is a dead issue’,88 for it is nowwithout foundation given the large amount of works done by symbolic inter-actionist theorists on discourse,89 communication90 and state’s structures.91 Ina symbolic structurationist perspective, procedures of actions are discursivelycommonalized in everyday life. The mutual knowledge of self and other tran-scends the temporal and the spatial variables. Self and other develop a senseof trust/distrust in the making and reproduction of social practices.

Epitomizing Symbolic Interactionist Contributions

In itself, the compound concept ‘symbolic interactionism’ unveils its ultimaeratio: symbols and interactions. Firstly, experiences are symbolically mediatedwithin communication. Therefore, communication articulates self and other

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meanings, that is, the ‘lived experienced of interacting individuals’.92 Humansocial worlds are both symbolic and semantic as well as material. None the less,it is the channelled communicative symbolic capacity which enables individualsto carve out a society, an identity and a history: 93

Humans create and use symbols. They communicate with symbols.They interact through role-taking, which involves the reading ofsymbols emitted by others. What makes them unique as species—theexistence of mind and self—arises out of interaction, while conversely,the emergence of these capacities allows for interactions that form thebasis of society.94

Interaction is configured by several negotiation practices. What is at stake inthe multilayered phenomenon of interaction is the question of identity.95

Indeed, identity specifies the self in terms of character suffused with charac-teristics. However, identity is not fixed, it can be shifted and broken. Thus,identifying a friend or a foe can prove to be a cul-de-sac if the act of identifi-cation is not seen as processual rather than and end in itself.96 It may be usefulto add that the self plays a role in constructing both individual identity andvarious social worlds. Personal and social identities are twin emergent. Never-theless, social identity is related to external influences on the self. In ErvingGoffman’s terms, social identity can be in conflict with personal identity, for itis the stereotype received from other actors in an environment, whereas, per-sonal identity colludes with the way an actor needs to be seen, the role he wantsto play, in brief, a particular social status.97

The second point directly follows from the first. Individuals act rather thanreact to others’ deeds. Actions are mutually mounted and always come in forprocesses of intersubjective ascertainment of shared meanings.98 The aim ofactions is not to ‘secure a knock-down conviction at any cost; it is to understand[what is going on]‘.99 In addition, actions are not verdicts for, but invitationsto. Within this vein, interaction summons the self and the other to broaden anddeepen their intersubjective comprehension. Such a move enables the self andthe other to work on previous identification/misidentification and allowscommon re-identification.

Thirdly, the dynamic view of self, other, order and worlds, presses symbolicinteractionist thinkers to focus on how self and other adjust to one another,build up meanings, and act toward the environment, negotiate time and order,and open the route to ‘epiphany’, that is, the interactive path to transfigura-tive actions.100 As a result, symbolic interactionists are not prone to writing a‘grand theory’ of a continual emergent phenomenon: society.101 Instead, thetask imputed to sociology is to analyse how people, through meanings theyascribe to others and objects, bring forth their own version of society. Ergo, thecorner stone of sociology is to write small-scale narratives describing the collec-tive scaffolding of different worlds: 102

Symbolic interactionism is a down-to-earth approach to the scientificstudy of human group life and human conduct. It lodges its problemsin this natural world, conducts its studies in it, and derives its interpre-tations from such naturalistic studies. [. . .] Its methodological stance,accordingly, is that of direct examination of the empirical world.103



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In summa, by centring its analysis on ‘collective processing of intentional andunintentional results of action, on the collective constitution of normativeregulations and collective behavior [on] the determination of social structuresby negotiation’,104 symbolic interactionism offers an analytical richness for thestudy of self-identity building, negotiation of intersubjectivity and securitystudies. Within this ambit, security is certainly not given. Security is an alwaysalready emergent concept. It is contextual, processual and embedded in the‘joint acts’ of power relations. Security is one of the concerted interactionsbetween social worlds. To be sure, security is always an ongoing ‘permutationof social acts’ of various social worlds. Security takes place in a particularsociety, a network of intricate meanings. Thus, however turbulent might be thecurrent world, none can argue that it has become meaningless. In the con-trary, continuous reshaping of social worlds are, per se, meaningful.

Symbolic interactionism has provided a range of micro-sensitizing conceptsthat enable us to track down and to come out with a social dynamic accountof subjectivity and intersubjectivity in international politics. Given the mainlydeterminist strand in neorealism,105 an approach that unveils the subjectiveand the intersubjective meaning of action can be regarded as introducing atheoretical equilibrium with its own rationale. To an important degree,Alexander Wendt is the most influential voice in the elaboration of such a pro-grammatic framework in International Relations.

Section II. Wendt and the Culture of Anarchy106

Most international theoreticians might agree with the following: a symbolicinteractionist reading of Wendt’s constructivism encounters with puzzlementthe fact that divergences with neorealism are as frequently observed as con-vergences. Less would be prone to accept my contention that more connectionsthan breaks appear between Wendt’s ‘structural idealism’107 and Waltz’s ‘struc-tural realism’. To the extent that these supposedly opposed approaches—neo-realism or constructivism—share a common interactionist stance and a givenstate of nature prior to interaction, the dilemma of choosing between them isa false one. To move beyond this, I propose that we grapple with and criticallyassess the repot of symbolic interactionism in International Relations byAlexander Wendt. In other words, my goal herein, is to provide an exegesis ofWendt’s re-appropriation of symbolic interactionism through the lens of itscritique of neorealism.

One important caveat must be made from the outset concerning thepremises on which Wendt’s approach dwells. Firstly, Wendt’s project is to builda bridge between modernist and postmodernist constructivist traditions, ‘(andby extension, between the realist-liberal and rationalist-reflectivist debates) bydeveloping a constructivist argument, drawn from structurationist and sym-bolic interactionist sociology’.108 Secondly, Wendt associates himself withGeorge Mead, Peter Berger and Thomas Luckmann, Sheldon Stryker, RobertPerinbanayagam, John Hewitt and Jonathan Turner.109 He goes on to add: ‘thefact that I draw from these approaches [structurationist and symbolic inter-actionist sociologies] aligns me with modernists constructivists’.110 The firstremark is made in relation to Waltz’s conception of structures as consisting inordering principles, differentiation principles and the distributions ofcapabilities.111 For Wendt, the definition of structure provided by Waltz is

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unfortunate, since it can predict neither the action, nor the process of anarchy.Thus, Wendt’s aim is to develop a proper ‘structure of identity and interest’ bydrawing on symbolic interactionist and structurationist insights. He reversesthe view of identity and interest as independent variables and develops a socialapproach in which interaction and process are independent variables. If thisis true, then self help is not exogenously given by the anarchic permissive struc-ture of the system.112 Self help is not therefore structural but processual, forstructures gain causal force only through processes which instil meaning intoactions. The same assertion enables us to understand that any social structureis what agents make of it. Self help and power politics are not essential featuresof international politics, but contingent consequences of agents’ interactions,thus, ‘anarchy is what states make of it’.113 The second remark, expressed inthe form of a quotation is directed against postmodernist constructivists,though Wendt recognizes what he owes to them.114 Nevertheless, it is import-ant to note that Wendt holds fast to his attachment to the main rationalistassumptions in an endeavour to keep the rationalist–constructivist divide ascomplementary, rather than as a ‘theoretical war’ conceived of in zero-sumterms.115 I set this issue aside not because it is not important (it is), but becausemy main point is to recast Wendt’s thought on self help, anarchy and collec-tive identity formation through symbolic interactionism.

No difficulty lies in pointing these out, rather in setting the tone of myargument in assessing Wendt’s symbolic international theory—a task I haveshelved so far. Instead of taking the conventional linear and archaeological wayof exegesis, I choose a more transversal and integrated process, and as aconsequence, I proceed in three steps encapsulated by a structuring assump-tion. In this reckoning, my aim is to substantiate Wendt’s constructivism as (1)a ‘degenerative’ social (international) theory which promotes (2) anti-essentialism and(3) a relational politics within neorealism.116

Anti-essentialism

From the outset, Wendt’s constructivism suggests a strong commitment toremove the ‘given’ in International Relations (sovereignty, interests andidentity) and to socialize world politics. As such, Wendt is broadly contentedto sustain an anti-essentialist position in matters bearing on the internationalscene. This concern seems to owe very much to Peter Berger and ThomasLuckmann’s insights into the social production of reality by individuals’ prac-tices through the threefold process of externalization, objectivation andinternalization.117 It serves no purpose in detailing this threefold process,suffice it to say that the outcome of creating social world(s) is institutional, andthat the main risk run by institutions is reification. Berger and Luckmannexplain reification in the following terms

[It is the] apprehension of human phenomena as if they were things[. . .]. Another way of saying this is that reification is the apprehensionof the products of human activity as if they were something other thanhuman products—such as facts of nature, results of cosmic laws, ormanifestation of divine will. Reification implies that man is capable offorgetting his own authorship of the human world, and, further, thatthe dialectic between man, the producer, and his products is lost to



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consciousness. The reified world [. . .] is experienced by man as astrange facticity, an opus alienatum over which he has no control ratherthan as the opus proprium of his own productive activity.118

In this reckoning, Wendt’s project is to treat self help as actors’ opus proprium(own work). Two lessons can be drawn from this standpoint. Firstly, Wendtopens a breach in the systemic international action commitment in the ratio-nalist ‘two-step’ model, wherein, on the one hand, the formation of interest isexogenous to interaction and, on the other hand, interaction only affectsactors’ behaviour.119 Secondly, Wendt tries to give a reliable account of collec-tive identity formation by departing from the behavioural conception ofprocess and institution which comply with a simple learning120 schema thatexplain change in terms of the modification of prizes not tastes.121 As far as itgoes, Wendt’s stance is relevant inasmuch as his international symbolic inter-actionism provides us with new explanations of world politics ranging fromidentities and interests formation at one end, to anarchy’s meaning and theprospect of change, at the other.

Opus Alienatum Versus Opus Proprium

The study of international interactions deals with important identity questions,which symbolic interactionism can help one to theorize. Peter Berger formu-lates the issue in the following way: ‘Identity, with its appropriate attachments ofpsychological reality, is always identity within a specific, socially constructed world.’122

As used in Wendt’s works, identity can have two different senses, corporate andsocial. These two conceptions parallel Mead’s distinction between I and me. Inthe first sense, (corporate) identities are the inner qualities of the actor, itsconstituents, what makes it what it is. Let me state it in a different manner. Astate’s corporate identity is made up of individuals and natural resources. Avail-ing himself of Jonathan Turner’s basic needs theory,123 Wendt assumes thatcorporate identities convey four elemental interests: physical security, onto-logical security, recognition and development, that is, ‘meeting the humanaspiration for a better life, for which states are repositories at the collectivelevel’.124 In the second sense, (social) identities are ‘relatively stable, role-specific understandings and expectations about self’,125 or an ensemble ofmeanings that ‘an actor attributes to itself while taking the perspective ofothers, that is, as a social object’.126 This yields to an obvious yet strong con-tention. It is wrong to view social identity as monolithic. Actors are best under-stood as holders of various identities, hierarchically organized, with subsequentsets of interests, mobilized in particular situations and valued according tospecific roles. We can even push further. If there is no role, there is a risk ofeither misidentification or blurred identification leading to intersubjectiveunsureness. Social identities with their individual and structural propertiesunveil the way agents are linked to structures and to other actors. They arechannels for self–other relations—whether conflictual or cooperative. Socialidentities stem from situated intersubjective encounters between self andother, which enable actors to infer meaning from others’ actions.

In the beginning is the ego’s gesture, which may consist, for example,of an advance, a retreat, a brandishing of arms, a laying down of arms,

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or an attack. For ego, this gesture represents the basis on which it isprepared to respond to alter. This basis is unknown to alter, however,and so it must make an inference or ‘attribution’ about ego’s intentionsand, in particular, given that this is anarchy, about whether ego is athreat. The content of this inference will largely depend on two con-siderations. The first is the gesture’s and ego’s physical qualities, whichare in part contrived by ego and which include the direction of move-ment, noise, numbers, and immediate consequences of the gesture.The second consideration concerns what alter would intend by suchqualities were it to make such gesture itself. Alter may make an attri-butional ‘error’ in its inference about ego’s intent, but there is also noreason for it to assume a priori—before the gesture—that ego is threat-ening, since it is only through a process of signaling and interpretingthat the costs and probabilities of being wrong can be determined.Social threats are constructed not natural. [The] process of signaling,interpreting, and responding completes a ‘social act’ and begins theprocess of creating intersubjective meaning.127

This somewhat lengthy quotation unfolds at least three critical points inWendt’s social theoretical position. The first hints at the notion of ‘anarchy’ asan opus proprium, rather than an opus alienatum as neorealism holds. The secondfollows directly from the first and is related to learning and socialization as wellas to the creation of meanings amongst actors. Finally, the third is the requi-site for the two previous points and it raises two linked ideas, ‘first contact’ and‘perception’. I propose to unwrap the quotation without binding myself to theabove structure. The learning process conveyed by neorealism unmasks thefirst type of socialization whereby actors learn and evolve according to a givenand a persistent image of the state as a self help entity. In this logic, the struc-ture created by these actors influences their action through socialization andcompetition. This first form of socialization is behavioural not cognitive unlikethe constructivist treatment of socialization of socialization where anarchy onlyholds a permissive role. This drives us indirectly to the core principles ofWendtian constructivism. I isolate three of them: (1) states are the principalactors in international relations. (2) International structures are intersubjec-tive (social) and material. This assumption is built on two Blumerian premisesregarding symbolic internationism. (2. 1.) ‘People128 act toward objects,including others actors on the basis of the meanings that the objects have forthem.’129 (2. 2.) ‘The meanings in terms of which action is organized arise outof interaction.’130 (3) Rooted in the second assumption, interests and identi-ties are endogenous to social structures rather than exogenous.131

In a broad sense, social structures are driven by actors’ practices. Self helpand anarchy have meaning only in a society.132 Creating inter-national mean-ings is completed when the response is added to the double process of signaland interpretation (Figure 2).

Following this pattern, interactions play the role of cement. Theyreinforce133 self–other’s behaviours through socialization. This hinges onBerger and Lukmann’s ‘reciprocal typifications’.134 Unfortunately, Wendtadopts a structuralist approach to perception, just as symbolic interactionistsdo. Given the explicit anthropomorphism pervading his constructivism, I willuse the same a priori—status as individuals—as a background for my critique.



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In effect, in Wendt’s project, perception of threat is constructed on actors’sensory elements bearing some links to the object. Thus, an actor will be threat-ening if his ‘physical qualities’, ‘direction of movement’, ‘noise’, ‘gesture’simmediate consequence’ add up to a threat.135 Moreover, it can be argued inLeslie Zebrowitz’s words that states’ intentions (psychological properties)result ‘from the coordination of observable “proximal” appearance and behav-ior cues to “distal” traits or intentions’.136 That brings me to a sub-point. Themodel of learning endorsed by Wendt is anything but constructivist. Quite thecontrary, since for constructivists, an actor is not a friend nor an enemy nor arival just according to the sum of sensations. In their view, sensations are sub-jective and holistic. Sensations are the products of mind actively piecingtogether multiple sensations. Actors’ behaviour (observable cues) are activelyascribed an holistic structure by the perceiver. Finally, ‘rather than investi-gating properties of external stimuli, this approach investigates the perceiver’sinternal, mental structures, often called “schemas” ’.137 This leads nowhere. Ithink that the best perception of a threat or other behavioural cue lies inneither structuralism nor constructivism. Maybe international constructivismshould adopt an ecological approach, rather than carrying the symbolic inter-actionist burden of structural perception into international theory. This hasthe relevant advantage of avoiding structuralist and constructivist reduction-ism. In addition, the ecological model bridges the structuralist–constructivistperception gap. Indeed, although it focuses on the holistic constructivist sideof perception, it adds a third component which can be understood in thefollowing sense:

Information in the external stimulus is itself structured rather thancomposed of individual elements; and that this structure is detected bythe perceiver rather than being created by the perceiver. [Actors]differ in the reality that they detect [rather than the reality that theyconstruct].138

I turn now to socialization and to a cognate element, ‘first contact’. I startwith Waltz because it is not uncommon in the discipline to elucidate a sharpdistinction between his theory and Wendt’s constructivism. This is often trans-lated into the proposition that Waltz dwells on brute material structures andunderscores meanings, whereas Wendt grapples with social structures andintersubjective meanings. I take a less clear-cut view. Here, consideration isgiven to the enormous role played by Waltz in paving the way, unintentionally,for constructivism. The aforesaid is justified by the fact that both Waltz andWendt draw, though at variance, on symbolic interactionists, the former onSimmel and sometimes on Mead,139 and the latter as we now know, on Meadand Blumer. Therefore, the terms of the discussion will be explored in theirmost diverse and flexible forms.

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Figure 2. The creation of intersubjective meanings.


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Waltz argues that structures do not act as actors do, but can affect states’behaviour through the dual process of competition and socialization. Waltzdescribes, two decades before Wendt, how actors can create via their inter-actions a structure which at the end acquires a binding force and begins to‘motivate and shape their behavior’.140 On this score, Waltz is a social behav-iourist. To gauge the extent of this potentially controversial affirmation, I willquote Waltz in the first instance and then his appropriation of Watzlawick etal.’s reading of Edward Albee’s play, Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? Waltz putsit this way:

Consider the process of socialization in the simplest case of a pair ofpersons, or for that matter of firms or of states. A influences B. B is madedifferent by A’s influence, influences A. [. . .] B’s attributes and actionsare affected by A, and vice versa. Each is not just influencing the other,both are being influenced by the situation their interaction creates. [. . .] We donot cease to be ourselves when situations strongly affect us, we become our-selves and something else. We become different.141

He then adds: ‘The behavior of the pair cannot, moreover, be resolved intoa set of two-way relations because each element of behavior that contributes tothe interaction is itself shaped by their being a pair.’142 Quoting Watzlawick etal., Waltz continues:

That which is George or Martha, individually, does not explain what iscompounded between them, or how. To break this whole into indi-vidual personality traits . . . is essentially to separate them from eachother, to deny that their behaviors have special meaning in the context oftheir interaction—that in fact the pattern of the interaction perpetuatesthese.143

One may ask what does this entail? Waltz’s answer is disheartening. For him,socialization has the effect of reducing variety—making states like units.144

Obviously, socialization is not restricted to the surface of interactions—’limiting and molding behavior’.145 I think, as Wendt does, that socializationbrings more. Waltz himself talked about ‘meaning’ and the fact that ‘social-ization brings members of a group into conformity with its norms’.146 Inaddition, according to Waltz, ‘actors are made different’ in the process of inter-action. But does not being made different entail having other beliefs, interestsand identities? The opposite would be minimalist and would stand in contra-diction with the ideas of ‘contextual meaning’ and ‘becoming different’. Thisis even worse when it comes to ‘understanding other’s behavior’.147 Is under-standing others’ actions a mere behavioural process? It is certainly not. It is acognitive dynamic as well, but this is not articulated by Waltz, it can just beinferred.

The same logic can be found in the effects of competition, which alsoreduces variety amongst actors and fosters ‘similarities of attributes and ofbehavior’.148 According to Waltz, competition compels the actors to accommo-date to the group’s norms. In this rationale, ‘those who survive share certaincharacteristics (rationality in achieving successful practices—doing better thanothers)’.149 Competition instantiates a peculiar type of order within which



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actors share certain characteristics, meaningful in an interactively structuralsetting.150 The notions of meaning, understanding, difference and variety arenot, as it is usually and mistakenly thought, the preserve of constructivism.However, this promising project is deflated in two ways. The first is located inWaltz’ stubborn attachment to a behavioural socialization. The second hintson Waltz’s explanation of cooperation amongst competitive units in Man, theState and War.151

Assume that five men who acquired a rudimentary ability to speak andto understand each other happen to come together at a time when allof them suffer from hunger. The hunger of any one of them will besatisfied by the fifth part of a stag, so they ‘agree’ to cooperate in aproject to trap one. But also the hunger of any one of them will besatisfied by a hare, so, as a hare comes within reach, one of them grabsit. The defector obtains the means of satisfying his hunger but by doingso permits the stag hunt to escape. His immediate interest prevails overconsideration for his fellows.152

The question in this story is, where is the socialization hinted at by Waltz?Some may assume that this is an anachronistic question since Waltz developshis theory of socialization as one of the consequences of structural pressure inTheory of International Politics written long after Man, the State, and War. Still,such an accusation will be ‘too quick’. I stress too quick because the same ideacan be found in the later opus, though in a less poetic description.

When faced with the possibility of cooperating for mutual gain, states thatfeel insecure must ask how the gain (stag) will be divided. They are compelledto ask not ‘will both of us gain?’ but ‘who will gain more?’ [. . .] Even in theprospect of large absolute gains for both parties (the five men above) does notelicit their cooperation so long as each fears how the other will use its increasedcapabilities.153

This raises an interesting question: do the five men find themselves caughtin the antisocial state of nature before any interaction? Waltz says next tonothing about the socialization process made possible by the creation of struc-ture through interaction (of the five men). The contradictory results of Waltz’sapproach leave us with a choice: either throw our weight behind the given anti-social (Hobbesian) state of nature or build an alternative theory which pro-vides a better tale of the social state of nature.154 Wendt addresses himself tosuch a concern by wiping out the a priori determination of the situation’srationality. He tackles the issue of the state of nature not in antisocial terms,but in pre-interactional terms, the first encounter, with two variants betweenalter and ego at one side, and between ‘we’ and an alien civilization at theother. I have highlighted the drawbacks of this view as far as the concept of‘perception’ is concerned. Inayatullah and Blaney have argued that whetherin Waltz’s asocial or Wendt’s presocial world, the motivation of actors remainsexogenously given and anterior to contact. They propose to solve this problemby answering the question ‘why actors come to meet each other?’ Of course,this question is useful, but it does not need attention here. On the contrary, Iam interested in making the assumptions of the antisocial–presocial state ofnature more explicit. I think the deeper premises at the base of these given‘social’ worlds, wherein actors find themselves with given motivations can be

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traced back to symbolic interactionism. As far as this issue is concerned, I maketwo claims. The first lies in the social determinism of symbolic interactionismin which ‘the whole (society) is prior to the part (individual), not the part tothe whole’.155 That puts neorealism and constructivism in the same basket. Thesecond is related to Symbolic interactionist social behaviourism, wherein theanalysis of behaviour proceeds from outside to inside rather than the other wayaround. Again, Wendt’s constructivism is close to Waltz’s neorealism sinceeach starts with an observable cue (for instance, a gesture) from the other. Theconclusion of these claims is stronger. Neorealism and constructivism are col-lectivist and behaviouristic in the above senses. I do not reject the idea of cogni-tive socialization, nor that of the complex learning so dear to constructivists.As a minimum, I had two aims in mind although not deductively related in atheoretical framework. The first was to mention that ‘cognitivism’ and‘complex learning’ are extensions from pragmatist roots, not inherent postu-lates of symbolic interactionism itself. My second objective was to confront thisapproach (constructivism) with its roots and show how it is pulled back to sharesome common implicit—symbolic interactionist—grounds with neorealism.However, this picture could be misleading if it were to conflate constructivismwith neorealism. In effect, constructivism severs its links with a pure behav-iourist approach to socialization and with the idea of a given threat prior tointeraction. In addition it lays emphasis on the productive role of interactionswhereas neorealism is caught in the circularity of interactions whereby actorsreact to each other in according to a stimulus–response pattern.156 Finally, forconstructivism the world of material threat ‘becomes known to human beingsonly in the form in which it is perceived by human beings’.157

Security and Relational Politics

The purpose of symbolic interactionism, in terms of theory and practice, is togive an account of the impact of meaningful interactions in the constructionof society. This is the primary reason that assures its maverick status incontemporary International theory. Placed in the framework of this section,symbolic interactionism is a relational theory of social agents.158 Two con-siderations bear on this contention. First, symbolic interactionism is not aimedat defusing aggressive or hegemonic behaviour within society, but at portray-ing ‘incorporative metaphors’159 in human activity, either cooperative or con-flictual.160 The second consideration stems from the first. The symbolicinteractionist approach is diffused, that is, it spreads through all forms ofrelationships (economical, social, political, micro/macro). For the inter-actionist heritage, identity is the result of interaction between self and other,and self and society. One can assume that society influences the self. Inresponse to this, one can argue that the self has the potentiality to internalizethis influence and mediate it. This is the second reason that assures the symbolicinteractionist’s maverick place in International theory. The association of rela-tional politics and the question of identity yields to the issue of the location ofself and otherness in international relations. Tzvetan Todorov situates thisquestion at three levels: axiological, praxeological and epistemic.

First of all, there is a value judgment (an axiological level): the otheris good or bad [. . .]. Secondly, there is the action of rapprochement,



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of distancing in relation to the other (a praxeological level): I embracethe other’s values, I identity myself with him; or else I identity the otherwith myself, I impose my own image upon him; between submission tothe other and the other’s submission, there is also a third term, whichis neutrality, or indifference. Thirdly, I know or am ignorant of theother identity (this would be the epistemic level).161

We find the same reasoning in Wendt’s continuum of security in which therelative variation in the perception of otherness leads to one of the followingattitudes: competition (the other is bad), individualistic (the other isunknown) and cooperative (the other is good).162 The self ’s location ofotherness in its ‘cognitive template’ ranges from a negative (competition) toa positive identification with others’ fate (the basis of collective action).163 Onthat score, it is worth noticing that Wendt has two positions, a moderate anda radical one. The former is expressed in his ‘Anarchy’ paper, and the later iscaptured in ‘Collective Identity Formation’. The moderate delineates a three-fold security continuum: competitive, individualistic and cooperative. Theradical version is two-sided, either the other is an anathema for the self, or thelatter identifies with the other within a collective identity system.164 I take therisk of assuming that the anathema position stands for a competitive systemwhereas the collective identity system denotes a collective security system. Itshould become clearer by developing these ideas.

The competitive security system is that of Hobbes, wherein states seeksecurity against others. In this negative identification, states’ interests areplanned without taking into account the fate of others within a self help world.The other’s fate can only be integrated in self ’s cognitive schema in so far asit serves its own purposes. Neorealism’s reliance on actor’s privileging relativegains and foreclosing collective action is much in tune with this point of thecontinuum’s axis. The second, or individualistic security system is character-ized by a relative indifference between self and others’ security. Wendt relatesthis to the neoliberal world wherein actors are concerned with absolute gainsand therefore more open to cooperative actions, though still vulnerable tofree-riding behaviour, since states remain egoist entities. These two systems arenot so different. Indeed, within both competitive and individualistic securitysystems, states are living in mutual distrust, trying to manipulate others andthe context at hand in order to fulfil their selfish interests. The third systemcontrasts with the first two above. The cooperative system is the ambit of collec-tive responsibility. It is less prone to a free-riding attitude given the fact thatself ’s interests are identified with those of the international community. Thissystem is theoretically crucial for two main reasons. Firstly, it is crucial becauseit reveals the terminus ad quem of collective identity formation. In fact, in acooperative system, self and other are on the same wavelength. Indeed,relations are ‘empathetic rather than instrumental’.165 Secondly, collectiveidentity formation resolves the problem of collective action—the neo-utilitarianis’ burden—as long as it induces a reconsideration of identities andinterests as dependent and endogenous variables to self–other interactions.166

Wendt’s mapping of the security continuum can be represented as shown inFigure 3.

The formation of a collective security system can also be prompted by theaction of a predator state.167 According to Wendt, the disposition toward

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predation can have two sources, unit level or systemic. In the first case, preda-tion works as an essential feature of the system (domestic source). In thesecond case, the predative behaviour originates from historical interactions,and is a response to past socializations (systemic source).168 This latter figureis more prone to change if appropriate interactions are taken. The emergenceof such an aggressor can push actors to create collective security in twodifferent ways. If the predation occurs at the first contact, then the other willadopt a defensive and competitive attitude whether in isolation or in a groupthrough a collective (defensive) security system, the coherence of which willdepend on the level of integration of interests within it, and the relativestrength of the predator. Alternatively, if predation occurs when collectivesecurity is already formed in the system, its success will depend on the level ofcollective identity attained in the system. I summarize the different outcomesof predation in Figure 4.

This is just one possible source for the formation of collective securityidentity. It means that we still have the whole matter ahead. For Wendt, theinitiation of collective action as conceived of in neorealism and neoliberalismis constrained by Mancur Olson’s ideas169 situated in the rationalist ‘two-step’logic. As such, it is poor at explaining how identities and interests are changedthrough interactions at the systemic level. In other words, neo–neo ‘stripes’


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Figure 4. Predation and security imageries.


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cannot explain structural change. Three causal factors are offered by Wendtin order to lay down the internal process of collective identity formationamongst states: structural contexts, systemic processes, and strategic prac-tice.170 To cope with these issues, Wendt leans toward the dialogic—not dialec-tical171—relation between self and other that is so central to the symbolicinteractionist school.

(1) Structural contexts. Interaction dynamics are the basis of the constructionof intersubjective structure in international relations. For constructivists, sys-temic structures are built from common social knowledge and shared under-standings. Moreover, the nature of anarchy is determined by the nature of theintersubjective structure that actors build. As a specific form of ‘anchoredrelations’,172 there can be an anarchy of enemies (Hobbes), of rivals (Locke),and even of friends (Kant).173 Collective identity created by these intersubjec-tive understandings can either be exclusive in the sense that self and otherabandon old social structures and create completely new ones, or inclusive,when a powerful state coerces weaker powers to adopt its identity. In this case,actors find themselves in a collective hegemonic identity à la Gramsci.174

(2) Systemic processes. Wendt defines systemic processes as ‘dynamic in theexternal context of state action’.175 He isolates two central systemic processes:interdependence and the transnational convergence of domestic values. Thefirst can take two forms, the ‘dilemma of common interest’ created by anincrease in the ‘dynamic density’ and the ‘dilemma of common aversion’ pro-duced by the emergence of a threatening ‘common other’—personified orabstract. Whatever the form taken by the interdependence, it helps reduce theappetite for unilateral action and increases the sensitivity as well as the ‘theincentive to identify with others’.176 Dependency is shaped by interactions andas such, it can transform endogenously the identities and interests of actors.The second systemic process highlighted by Wendt is called societal or trans-national convergence. It has at least two different sources, interdependenceand demonstration effects (diffusion and ‘lesson drawing’). The core conse-quence of the transnational convergence of domestic values (cultural, econ-omical, political, etc.) is to lessen the heterogeneity amongst selves whogradually develop the consciousness that others are neither so different, norso threatening as they might be.

(3) Strategic practice. This refers to a form of interaction in which ‘others areassumed to be purposive agents with whom one is interdependent’.177 Here,Wendt tries to free cooperation from rationalist propositions. It is necessary tooutline the rationalist stance for the sake of the argument. According torationalists, strategic interactions proceed on behavioural terms, that is, iden-tities and interests remain fixed during the encounter between actors. This, ofcourse, blurs the very possibility of cooperation, since actors will change theirbehaviour for the interdependence of utilities, not outcomes. In order to avoidthe model of exogenous preference formation, Wendt proposes to draw adistinction between behavioural and rhetorical interaction. The first brings intoplay Robert Axelrod’s Evolution of Cooperation.178 Axelrod’s ‘TIT for TAT’ strat-egy can lead to cooperative behaviour via reciprocity. In fairness to Axelrod,Wendt distinguishes two models of preference formation in the Evolution of

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Cooperation. In the primary model, Axelrod hangs on to the idea that actors aretimelessly egoistic. In this regard, he is very close to Mancur Olson’s positionwherein actors have no sufficient incentives for becoming subjects to them-selves and to others. However, there is a second ‘Axelrod’ in the same book.That one is the Axelrod of ‘endogenous formation of preferences’ which hasbeen overlooked in International Relations. The endogenous formation ofpreference has far-reaching consequences. It can prompt the emergence of agenuine community through cooperative interactions. Consequently, coopera-tive interactions enable actors to present themselves in a new light while inter-nalizing completely new beliefs about others and selves. This is a propitiousway of both ‘reflected appraisal’ and ‘taking the place of others’.179 One kindof behavioural practice is that of ‘altercasting’ which Wendt defines as:

A technique of interactor control in which ego uses tactics of self-presentation and stage management in an attempt to frame alter’s defi-nitions of social situations in ways that create the role which ego desiresalter to play. In effect, in altercasting ego tries to induce alter to takeon a new identity (and thereby enlist alter in ego’s effort to changeitself) by treating alter as if it already had that identity. The logic of thisfollows directly from the mirror theory of identity-formation, in whichalter’s identity is a reflection of ego’s practices [. . .].180

In the second sense, interactions are rhetorical. What does this mean?Rhetorical practices are conscious symbolic practices discursively mediated,contrived to alter the image and the conception of the self within a strategicenvironment. They can take the form of multilateral dialogue, pedagogicaltrips, symbolic actions, and so forth. Rhetorical practices are instrumentswhich aim to achieve solidarity within a particular context. None the less,rhetorical practices and behavioural ones are very close. For instance, alter-casting can be implemented through discursive mediations or symbolic works.This is best illustrated by various trips made by Colin Powell in mid-2001 acrossEurope, which aimed at changing the perception and the attitude of NATOmembers towards the National Missile Defence project.


Table 1. The vocabulary of collective identity formation

Causal factors Forms Sources Effects

Strategic practices Behavioural • Self-presentation Change the image of• Altercasting the self and the other

Rhetorical within a strategic • Discursive symbols environment

Systemic processes Interdependence • Density of interaction Reduce the egoistic• Common other attitude

Societal convergence • Interdependence Reduce the• Demonstration heterogeneity

Intersubjective effort, diffusion, amongst actorsstructures lesson drawing

Structural context • Social knowledge Gives meaning to• Shared meanings material structures

and expectations


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As Wendt holds, the content of interaction (the essence of what actors dotogether) is as important as their rhetorical practices. In Steve Duck’s words,understanding interactions is best achieved in ‘terms of the qualities of theinteractions that occur. We can assess these qualities by examining the inten-sity and the style of interactions, the non-verbal signals exchanged [. . .].’181

Collective action depends on the outcome of social identities, that is,whether they ‘generate self-interest or collective interest’.182 In Wendt’sapproach, the distribution of identities and interests takes over from the distri-bution of capabilities. The structure of the state system will be anarchic if thedistribution of identities amongst them makes it so. As Wendt puts it, ‘self-interest and collective interest [are] effects of the extent to which and themanner in which social identities involve an identification with the fate of theother’.183 The cohesion of collective identity rests on the frequency and thedensity of interaction,184 the existence of like interests and identities, the pres-ence of an authority who can preserve the systems from free riders and punishdeviant actors. However, there remains a problem. The so aforementionedcollective identity system, say a security community, can be exclusively theexpression of an external compliance. By this I mean an actor may become‘part’ of such a ‘structure’ for various reasons other than mere identificationwith the fate of the other. For instance, an actor can join the structure becauseof the fear of isolation or because the structure is a tremendous source ofinformation. Structural integration is not structural identification.185 In KarlMannheim’s phrase, ‘The integration of attitudes [. . .]is performed on thebasis of direct identification. This implies that we identify ourselves with othermembers of a community as such.’186 For instance, Russia might want tobecome a member of NATO without identifying itself with NATO’s fate andpurpose. Accordingly, there is always a leap between norms that regulate inter-actions and those that affect actors’ attitudes and beliefs. I conclude thatanarchy is not just what states make of it, but also, and perhaps more import-antly, the way states make it (and what they believe they have made of it).

Conclusion

Neorealism and its variants can be identified with the old-fashioned sociologywhereby societal organizations (such as states) are treated as systems in searchof equilibrium (for instance, balance of power). Indeed, it can be inferred thatin neorealism states are not selves, rather ‘organisms’ or ‘units’187 living undervarious force pressures like social systems, rules, norms, status positions, insti-tutions and values. In this vein, a systemic theory of international politics

Can describe the range of likely outcomes of the actions and the inter-action of states within a given system and show how the range of expec-tations varies as systems change. It can tell us what pressures are exertedand what possibilities are posed by systems of different structure, but itcannot tell us just how, and how effectively, the units of a system willrespond to those pressures and possibilities.188

Correlatively, the action is not constructed, but imposed upon individuals;interpretation is not the mediation lens via which actors build up their deeds,but a ‘product of other factors (such as motives) which precede the acts and

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accordingly disappears as a factor of its own sight’.189 In tune with this, theclassical procedure of international theory is to identify the international scenein terms of a given form—the anarchy of sovereign units, sort out some factorsof change which influence the international system as a whole or a part, andidentify the new form (structure) of the international system ‘following uponthe play of the factors of change’.190 This practice sums up the neorealistposition that disregards the interpretative capacity of acting units in any situ-ation, or still worse, considers this interpretative ability as merely twisted by theelements of change.

Wendt’s constructivism is best understood as an attempt to transfer symbolicinteractionism into International Relations. Symbolic interactionism is at acrossroads. It strives to conciliate an interpretative and a subjective study ofself–other activity with an objective analysis of human experience (Wendt’sbridge stems from here) in accordance with the methodological premises ofnatural sciences. The emphasis on action and experience displays the constantinteractionist seesaw between the two poles, underpinned by a more pervasiveand powerful one, a shallow attempt to set up a naturalistic objectivist method-ology that could encapsulate subjectivist yet interactional features of humanexperience. In symbolic interactionism, action takes place in the actor’s innersubjectivity and between actors through mediated symbols. By the same token,change springs from acting units within a constructed system. Selves ‘play’towards others’ interpreted deeds, subsequent factors such as culture, socialstructures, rules and norms, ‘set conditions for their actions but do not deter-mine [it]’.191 Table 2 displays a simple pattern of comparison between neo-realism and constructivism. At this stage, I do not assume that constructivismis a substantive theory of International Politics. I just want to highlight the mainpoints of contention between the two ‘theoretical tools’.

The above scores have two implications. The first is that a proper systemictheory of International Politics, which usually brackets out the second image,cannot readily fit a symbolic interactionist concern with both the internaldisposition of the actors and the intrinsic dynamic of the system structures theybuilt up. My criticism here places Waltz and Wendt, at least partially, in thesame theoretical house whereby states are unitary actors given prior to inter-action, whether in an antisocial context—Waltz—or in a presocial state of


Table 2. A pattern of comparison between constructivism and neorealism

Identity and Sovereignty Anarchy Structures Actors’interest behaviour

Constructivism Intersubjectively Social Historically Intersubjective Cognitivelyconstituted identity contingent and material driven

feature of (sociological international structuralism)politics(Institution)

Neorealism Constituted by Intrinsic Inherent Mainly Conditionedthe system feature of feature of material by the

state international (micro- systemagency politics economic

(Essential) structuralism)


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nature—Wendt.192 Second, and paradoxically, neither Wendt and Waltz, norSymbolic interactionist theoreticians, favour structural determinism. In Waltz’sparlance, completely endorsed by Wendt,

structure, however, does not explain everything. I say this againbecause the charge of structural determinism is easy to make. Toexplain outcome one must look at the capabilities, the actions, andthe interactions of the states, as well as at the structures of theirsystems.193

The recognition of the social dimension of structures does not compel us torelinquish rationalist epistemology. However, it does oblige us as Fearon andWendt stress, to recognize some ontological consequences. These need not beeither exaggerated or downplayed. It calls for much more sensitivity to thesocial relational dimension of international politics.

None the less, I have a reservation. It should be borne in mind that neo-realism and constructivism view the consequences of established structures ina rather different manner. In effect, the constructivist standpoint of complexsocial learning inherited from neoliberalism holds against neorealist pro-ponents that whatever the degree of reification of a self help system, andhowever strong the institutionalized psychological and systemic hurdles, actorscan still engage in a process of changing their preferences through practice.This pulls us back to a common milieu. As suggested, the fact that socialstructures are developed through historical dynamics and that internationalsociety is ‘indexically constructed’ are, in my view, mere truisms. The mostimportant virtue of Wendt’s project is to expose certain previously taken-for-granted aspects of International Relations (sovereignty, self help and anarchy)as problematic. Indeed, Wendt’s modernist, thin, soft or rationalist con-structivism points up the complexity of identity formation and the constitutionof shared meanings which cannot be reduced to simplistic microeconomicanalogies, to systemic determinants or even to political strategies for power.That is not to say that power has no place in Wendt’s constructivism. Nor I amarguing that there is not any causal force to systemic structures in Wendt’sapproach. Rather, I would like to emphasize the fact that what Wendt grappleswith is the idea that the conceptual apparatus of International Politics, which,after all rose in the cold war context and hence tended to reify conceptions ofstructure and self help as binding frameworks, and ‘thereby unified intosimplistically unidirectional models of [world political] development’,194 is ill-suited to deal with emergent challenges. And while a neoliberal researchagenda must continue, alone it is not enough. It is insufficient in part becauseits ontology and epistemology are symbiotic (with neorealism). At the sametime, as symbolic interactionist thought is placed into orbit, as it starts to in-sinuate itself into the way we describe and interpret world politics, so it requiresnew patterns of relationship analysis. In certain respects these patterns repre-sent dislocating potentialities for a tradition of almost 50 years’ duration. Suchinquiry brings us to the frontier of new ways of thinking about identity, inter-est, structures, security, and so on. It is precisely on this new path that the maincontributions of constructivism lie. To be sure, International constructivismharbours enormous transformative alternatives. In the exploration of thisalternative, Wendt moves from a neoliberal symbiotic attitude to a symbolic

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interactionist posture, and from a given logic—security against the other—toa culture of anarchy endowed with its own momentum.

AcknowledgementsI am grateful to the British Council, the Cambridge European Trust, the Isaac Newton Euro-pean Research Scholarship and the Fonds Spéciaux de Recherches (Université Catholique deLouvain) for their financial support. I must also mention very specific debts this work hasincurred. First of all, I thank Duncan Bell who has read the whole manuscript and worked onthe language and Hun-Jin Choi who has helped me design certain figures. Special thanks aredue to Charles Jones for making detailed written remarks on the whole manuscript and for hiscontinual encouragement.

Notes1. ‘Indexicality means that all items raised for discussion are inherently equivocal parts from

the accounting procedures through which they are assembled as particular features of anethnographic context. This discussion is composed of items indexed during the previouscourse of discussion. Hence the accounts produced by “members” are reflexively tied tothe socially-organized occasion where they are generated.’ Harold Garfinkel, Studies inEthnomethodology, H. Martineau (trans.) (London, Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1893).

2. For thorough accounts of the interactionist story, see, for instance: Ken Plumer, ‘Symbolicinteractionism in the twentieth century’, in Brian S. Turner (ed.), The Blackwell Companionto Social Theory (Oxford, Blackwell, 2000), pp. 193–222; Symbolic Interaction: Special Issueon the 25th Anniversary of the Society for the Study of Symbolic Interaction, Vol. 21, No.1, 1997; Norman K. Denzin, Symbolic Interactionism and Cultural Studies: the Politics of Interpre-tation (Oxford, Blackwell, 1992); Ken Plumer (ed.), Symbolic Interactionism, Vols I and II:Classic and Contemporary Issues (Hants, Edward Elgar, 1991); Fine G. Allan, ‘Symbolic inter-actionism in the post-Blumerian age’, in George Ritzer (ed.), Frontiers of Social Theory (NewYork, Columbia University Press, 1990), pp. 117–157; L. T. Reynold, Interactionism: Exposi-tion and Critique (New York, General Hall, 1990); Lyman Stanford and Arthur J. Vidich,Social Order and Public Philosophy: the Analysis and Interpretation of the Work of Herbert Blumer(Fayetteville, University of Arkansas Press, 1988); Hans Joas, ‘Symbolic interactionism’, R.Meyer and P. Alto (trans.), in A. Giddens and J. H. Turner (eds), Social Theory Today (Stan-ford, Stanford University Press, 1987), pp. 82–115; Sheldon Stryker, Symbolic Interactionism(Menlo Park, Benjamin/Cummings, 1980); Paul Rock, The Making of Symbolic Interaction-ism (London, Macmillan, 1979); Berenice M. Fisher and Anselm Strauss, ‘Interactionism’,in T. Bottomore and R. Nisbet (eds), A History of Sociological Analysis (New York, BasicBooks, 1978), pp. 457–498; Jerome G. Manis and Bernard N. Meltzer (eds), Symbolic Inter-action: a Reader in Social Psychology (Boston, Allyn & Bacon, 1972); Herbert Blumer, Sym-bolic Interactionism: Perspective and Method (Englewood Cliffs, NJ, Prentice-Hall, 1969).

3. Following Nicholas Onuf, I use capitals to refer to the discipline. See Nicholas G. Onuf,World of Our Making. Rules and Rule in Social Theory and International Relations (Columbia,SC, University of South Carolina Press, 1989).

4. Most scholars only give some clues to their sources. To name but a few of them, AlexanderWendt, Jeffrey Chekel and Emmanuel Adler don’t really provide a thorough account ofthe intellectual tradition on which they rely. One noticeable exception is John G. Ruggie,‘What makes the world hang together? Neo-utilitarianism and the social constructivistchallenge’, International Organization, Vol. 52, No. 4, 1998, pp. 855–885. The paper wasreprinted in John G. Ruggie, Constructing the World Polity: Essays on International Insti-tutionalization (London, Routledge, 1998), pp. 1–39.

5. Wendt dwells mainly on Kenneth N. Waltz, Theory of International Politics (Reading, MA,Addison-Wesley, 1979); and Barry Buzan, Charles Jones and Richard Little, The Logic ofAnarchy: Neorealism to Structural Realism (New York, Columbia University Press, 1993).

6. ‘Multiplex’ interactions are different from the ‘uniplex’ ones. The former designate theinteractions as limited in scope. The latter point towards interactions that are various inform and content. Steve Duck, Relating to Others (Milton Keynes, Open University Press,1988), p. 43.



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7. I draw on the following works by Alexander E. Wendt: (1) ‘Anarchy is what states make ofit: the social construction of power politics’, International Organization, Vol. 46, No. 2, 1992,pp. 391–425; (2) ‘Collective identity formation and the international state’, AmericanPolitical Science Review, Vol. 88, No. 2, 1994, pp. 384–396; (3) ‘Constructing internationalpolitics’, International Security, Vol. 20, No. 1, 1995, pp. 71–81; (4) a revised version of (2),‘Identity and structural change in international politics’, in Y. Lapid and F. Kratochwil,The Return of Culture and Identity in IR Theory (London, Lynne Rienner, 1996), pp. 47–64;(5) Social Theory of International Politics (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1999).

8. Vivien Burr, An Introduction to Social Constructionism (London, Routledge, 1995), p. 19.9. ‘[A] generative theory [is] an account of world that challenge the taken-for-granted con-

ventions of understanding, and simultaneously invites into new world of meaning andaction.’ According to Kenneth Gergen, the most innovative way of thinking is to proceedvia a phenomenological suspension—epochê—of the dualities (good/bad, inside/outside,positive/negative, weak/strong) that shape thought and action. In fairness to Wendt, Ithink he has succeeded in challenging some taken-for-granted elements of InternationalRelations (sovereignty, identity and interest, materiality). However, he has failed to reallybreak his ties with rationalism and with the state as a unitary and given actor ofinternational politics. Moreover, he situated himself in realism and rationalism. On‘generative theory’, see Kenneth J. Gergen, An Invitation to Social Theory (London, Sage,1999), pp. 115–141. On ‘degenerative’ problem, see Imre Lakatos, ‘Falsification and themethodology of scientific research program’, in I. Lakatos and A. Musgave (eds), Criticismand the Growth of Knowledge (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1970), pp. 91–196.

10. For a start, see Alexander Wendt, ‘Constructing international politics’, pp. 72–75. Thisconcern is also dealt with in James Fearon and Alexander Wendt, ‘Rationalism v. con-structivism: a skeptical view’, in W. Carlmaes, T. Risse and B. A. Simmons (eds), Handbookof International Relations (London, Sage, 2002), pp. 52–72.

11. See, Anselm Strauss and Bernard Fisher, ‘Interactionism’; Hans Joas, ‘Symbolic inter-actionism’.

12. Steve Shott, ‘Society, self, and mind in moral philosophy: the Scottish moralists as pre-cursors of symbolic interactionism’, Journal of Behavioural Sciences, Vol. 12, 1976, pp. 39–46.A central figure is missing in this picture, William James who developed two importantsymbolic interactionist concepts: the ‘I’ (the self as subject) and the ‘me’ (the self asobject). See William James, Principles of Psychology (New York, Holt, 1890), Vols I and II.James prepared the route for seeing the self as multifaceted and derivative of interactionswith others: ‘Properly speaking, a man has as many social selves as there are individualswho recognize him and carry an image of him in their mind. [. . .] But as the individualswho carry the images fall naturally into classes, we may practically say that he has as manydifferent social selves as there are distinct groups of persons about whose opinions hecares.’ Ibid., Vol. II, p. 294.

13. Herbert Blumer, ‘Social psychology’, in E. P. Schmidt (ed.), Man and Society (EnglewoodCliffs, NJ, Prentice-Hall, 1937). In addition, Blumer is the one who collected and editedMead’s Mind, Self, and Society in 1934, after the latter’s death. On an opposite point of view,see Clark McPhail and Cynthia Rexroat, ‘Mead vs. Blumer: the divergent methodologicalperspectives of social behaviorism and symbolic interactionism’, American SociologicalReview, Vol. 44, 1979, pp. 449–467.

14. Although the link between pragmatism and symbolic interactionism has not always beenacknowledged. See, Hans Joas, ‘The inspiration of pragmatism: some personal remarks’,in M. Dickstein (ed.), The Revival of Pragmatism: New Essays on Social Thought, Law andCulture (Durham, Duke University Press, 1988), pp. 190–198.

15. Ken Plumer, ‘Symbolic interactionism in the twentieth century’, p. 199.16. Georg Simmel, Sociologie et épistémologie, L. Gasparini (trans.) (Paris, Presses Universitaires

de France, 1917); Larry Ray, Formal Sociology: The Sociology of Georg Simmel (Aldershot, Elgar,1991).

17. It would be a gross mistake to oppose this Simmelian interactionist view to a Weberianactionist one. In fact, although in Weber’s sociology there is a perceptible emphasis onthe actor and on the meaning he ascribes to its action, it is worth noting that, in Weber’sview, the actor (self) integrates others’ aspirations in the course of its movement. Other-wise, actor as well as its action, would be solipsist, but not, as Weber strives to make it,deeply social. See, Max Weber, Economy and Society: an Outline of Interpretive Sociology (Berke-ley, CA, University of California Press, 1978).

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18. Ken Plumer, ‘Symbolic interactionism in the twentieth century’, p. 199. Plumer adds:some of the forms highlighted in Simmelian works are of interest for symbolic inter-actionism: group alignment (isolated person, dyads, triads . . .); group relations (conflict,competition, coalition . . .); identity and role.

19. Mini-sensitizing concepts differ from definitive concepts. The former provide some prescrip-tions of what to see whereas the latter suggest the direction along which to look. On this,see, Herbert Blumer, ‘What is wrong with social theory’, American Sociological Review, Vol.19, 1954, pp. 3–10; Bernard N. Meltzer and John W. Petras, ‘The Chicago and the Iowaschools of symbolic interactionism’, in J. G. Manis and B. N. Meltzer (eds), Symbolic Inter-actionism, pp. 43–56.

20. Symbolic interactionist literature is littered with such mini-sensitizing-concepts: ‘significantother’, ‘self ’, ‘I’, ‘Me’, ‘labeling’, ‘stigma’, ‘deviant career’, and so forth.

21. In effect, truth is no longer viewed according to the ‘metaphor copy’, that is, as the accu-rate representation of reality in mind. In this new sense, truth is the capacity to conductoneself in relation to a constructed environment. See, Shalim Dmitri, ‘Pragmatism andsocial interactionism’, American Sociological Review, Vol. 51, 1986, pp. 9–29.

22. See, Richard Rorty, Consequences of Pragmatism (Minneapolis, MN, University of MinnesotaPress, 1982).

23. Anselm Strauss, Continual Permutations of Action (New York, Aldine de Gruyter, 1993).24. Hans Joas, ‘Symbolic interactionism’, p. 86.25. Ibid., p. 88. For another useful treatment of this, see, Hans Joas, Pragmatism and Social

Theory (Chicago, IL, University of Chicago Press, 1993).26. John Dewey, ‘The reflex arc concept in psychology’, in The Early Works, Vol. 5 (Carbon-

dale, IL, University of Illinois Press, 1896), pp. 96–109.27. A more brilliant account of the ‘reflex arc model’ in psychology is to be found in George

H. Mead’s ‘The definition of the psychical’, in Decennial Publications of the University ofChicago, First Series, Vol. 3 (Chicago, IL, University of Chicago Press, 1903), pp. 77–112.

28. Hans Joas, ‘Symbolic interactionism’, p. 88.29. Ibid., p. 90.30. Marshall J. Cohen, Charles Horton Cooley and the Social Self in American Thought (New York,

Garland, 1982).31. But as Glynis Breackwell has noticed, ‘even twins are not born simultaneously’. Glynis

Breackwell, Coping with Threatened Identities (London, Methuen, 1986), p. 13.32. Ibid., p. 14.33. Glynis Breackwell, Coping with Threatened Identities, p. 14.34. On Charles Cooley, see George H. Mead, ‘Cooley’s contribution to American sociological

thought’, American Journal of Sociology, Vol. 35, No. 5, 1930, pp. 693–706.35. Hans Joas, ‘Symbolic interactionism’, p. 90.36. These are but a few works on Mead’s thought: Peter Hamilton (ed.), George Herbert Mead:

Critical Assessments (London, Routledge, 1992); Bernard Meltzer, ‘Mead’s social psychol-ogy’, in J. G. Manis and B. N. Meltzer (eds), Symbolic Interactionism: a Reader in Social Psy-chology (Boston, Allyn & Bacon, 1972), pp. 4–22; Andrew J. Reck (ed.), Selected Writings:George Herbert Mead (Indianapolis, The Bobbs-Merril Co., Inc., 1964); Anselm Strauss (ed.),George Herbert Mead on Social Psychology (Chicago, IL, University of Chicago Press, 1964);Paul E. Pfueltze, The Social Self (New York, Bookman Associates, 1954); Grace Chin Lee,George Herbert Mead (New York, Crown Press, 1945).

37. Harold Garfinkel has developed the same idea by asserting that members of a society holdcommon expectations about the implications of their respective actions. The existing stan-dards of expectation are sustained by these members within the course of their practices.See Harold Garfinkel, Studies in Ethnomethodology, H. Martineau (trans.), 2 vols (London,Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1893).

38. Bernard Meltzer, ‘Mead’s social psychology’, p. 6.39. See Herbert Blumer, ‘Society as symbolic interactionism’.40. This is at least tangentially relevant to Weber’s definition of the action. ‘In “action” is

included all human behavior when and in so far as the acting individual attaches a sub-jective meaning to it.’ Max Weber, Max Weber: the Theory of Social and Economic Organization,M. Henderson and T. Parsons (trans.) (Glencoe, The Free Press, 1947), p. 88.

41. Bernard Meltzer, ‘Mead’s social psychology’, p. 7.42. Herbert Blumer, ‘Society as symbolic interactionism’, p. 150.43. In Pasic’s words. See Sujata C. Pasic, ‘Culturing international relations theory: a call for



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extension’, in Y. Lapid and F. Kratochwil (eds), The Return of Culture and Identity in IRTheory, pp. 85–104.

44. Kenneth Gergen, An Invitation to Social Theory, p. 124.45. Bernard Meltzer, ‘Mead’s social psychology’, p. 9.46. Mike O’Donnell and Bernard Meltzer’s opinions are opposed on this point. Following

Mead, the former gives two stages: the play and the game stages. The latter adds thepreparatory stage in which the self ‘is incipiently taking the role of those around it’. See,Bernard Meltzer, ‘Mead’s social psychology’, p. 9; Mike O’Donnell, Classical and Contem-porary Sociology: Theory and Issues (London, Holder & Stoughton, 2000), pp. 47–48. My ownthinking on this score is that O’Donnell’s interpretation of Mead’s stages of the self ismore orthodox in terms of literal reading whereas Meltzer’s opinion is more creative sinceit unveils an implicit stage in Mead’s work on the self.

47. George H. Mead, Mind, Self, and Society: From the Standpoint of a Social Behaviorist (Chicago,IL, University of Chicago Press, 1934), p. 158.

48. George H. Mead, Mind, Self, and Society, pp. 141, 158.49. Bernard Meltzer, ‘Mead’s social psychology’, p. 10.50. Mike O’Donnell, Classical and Contemporary Sociology, p. 47. The ‘me’ is regarded as a

‘censor’. See George H. Mead, Mind, Self, and Society, p. 210.51. Bernard Meltzer, ‘Mead’s social psychology’, p. 12.52. Ibid., p. 13.53. Mead lists four types of act: the automatic, the incomplete, the blocked and the retro-

spective acts. ‘An act is an impulse that maintains the life-process by the selection of certainsorts of stimuli needs.’ George H. Mead, Mind, Self, and Society, p. 6.

54. John Dewey, Human Nature and Conduct, p. 30.55. Herbert Blumer, ‘Society as symbolic interactionism’, p. 145.56. George H. Mead, Mind, Self, and Society, p. 178. Emphases are added in order to stress my

point of view, for they denote a sense of imprecise meaning and use of the concepts of ‘I’and ‘me’.

57. See Arlie R. Hochschild, ‘Emotion work, feeling rules, and social structure’, AmericanJournal of Sociology, Vol. 85, No. 3, 1979, pp. 551–575; Susan Shott, ‘Emotion and social life:a symbolic interactionist analysis’, American Journal of Sociology, Vol. 84, No. 6, 1976,pp. 1317–1334.

58. But such an assertion is not endorsed by all interactionist theorists. See Cynthia Rexroat,‘Mead vs. Blumer: the divergent methodological perspectives of social behaviorism andsymbolic interactionism’, p. 449.

59. See Howard S. Becker, ‘Herbert Blumer’s conceptual impact’, Symbolic Interaction, Vol. 11,No. 1, 1988, pp. 13–21.

60. Hans Joas, ‘Symbolic interactionism’, p. 97. See also, Robert Prus, Symbolic Interactionismand Ethnographic Research: Intersubjectivity and the Study of Human Lived Experience (Albany,NY, State University of New York, 1996).

61. William I. Thomas, Source Book for Social Origins: Ethnological Materials, Psychological Stand-points, Classified and Annoted Bibliographies for the Interpretation of Savage Society (Chicago, IL,Chicago University Press, 1909), p. 20.

62. Hans Joas, ‘Symbolic interactionism’, p. 97. (The emphasis is mine.)63. Ibid. Conversely, Durkheim and his epigoni, assert that social facts are at best explained

by other social facts. See Emile Durkheim, Rules of Sociological Method, S. Solovay and J. H.Mueller (trans.), G. E. G. Catlin (ed.) (Chicago, IL, The Free Press of Glencoe, 1938),p. 146ff.

64. William I. Thomas and Florian Znaniecky, The Polish Peasant in Europe and America, 2 vols(New York, The University of Illinois Press, 1926).

65. Hans Joas, ‘Symbolic interactionism’, p. 98. (Emphasis added.)66. Ibid.67. Ibid.68. Sheldon Stryker, Symbolic Interactionism, p. 31.69. Hans Joas, ‘Symbolic interactionism’, p. 99.70. Herbert Blumer, Symbolic Interactionism: Perspective and Method, p. 2.71. Norman K. Denzin, Symbolic Interactionism and Cultural Studies, p. 28.72. William I. Thomas, The Primitive Behavior (New York, McGraw-Hill, 1937), p. 8ff.73. See John Baldwin, George Herbert Mead (London, Sage, 1986), p. 6ff.74. On this, see, Anselm Strauss, Continual Permutation of Action.

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75. Ken Plumer, ‘Symbolic interactionism in the twentieth century’, pp. 208–209.76. George H. Mead, Mind, Self, and Society, p. 153.77. Ibid. For other accounts of stabilizations and reshuffles in ‘social worlds’, see Robert S.

Perinbanayagam, Significant Acts: Structure and Meanings in Everyday Life (Cambridge, PolityPress, 1985); Norbert Wiley, The Semiotic Self (Cambridge, Polity Press, 1994).

78. Bernard N. Meltzer and John W. Petras, ‘The Chicago and the Iowa schools of symbolicinteractionism’, p. 50.

79. Mandford Kuhn, ‘Lecture on the self ’, mimeographed, n.d., p. 6.80. Herbert Blumer, ‘Sociological implications of the thought of George Herbert Mead’,

American Journal of Sociology, Vol. LXXI, 1966, p. 536.81. Herbert Blumer, ‘Psychological impact of the human group’, in M. Sherif and M. O.

Wilson (eds), Group Relations at the Crossroads (New York, Harper & Row, 1953), p. 193.82. See Kenneth Baugh, The Methology of Herbert Blumer: Critical Interpretation and Repair (Cam-

bridge, Cambridge University Press, 1990).83. The emphasis is mine.84. Ken Plumer, ‘Symbolic interactionism’, p. 210. See also Robert Prus, Subcultural Mosaics

and Intersubjective Realities (New York, State University of New York Press, 1997).85. The astructural bias refers to ‘the absence and the underdevelopement of a coherent set

of definitions and propositions describing, and accounting for the interdependence ofthe units of analysis beyond the person-to-person interaction’. Christopher Prendergastand John D. Knotternus, ‘The astructural bias and presuppositional reform in symbolicinteractionism: a noninteractionist evaluation of the new studies in social organization’,in L. T. Reynolds (ed.), Interactionism: Exposition and Critique (Dix Hill, General Hall, 1990),p. 165.

86. Mike O’Donnell, Classical and Contemporary Sociology, p. 53ff.87. Ibid., p. 53.88. Norman Denzin, Symbolic Interaction and Cultural Studies, p. 63.89. See, Roland Barthes, Mythologies (New York, Hill and Wang, 1957/72).90. See, James W. Carey, Communication as Culture (Boston, Unwin Hyman, 1989).91. See, Carl J. Couch, ‘Mass communications and state structures’, Social Sciences Journal, Vol.

27, 1990, pp. 111–128.92. Norman K. Denzin, Symbolic Interactionism and Cultural Studies, p. 27.93. Ken Plumer, ‘Symbolic interactionism in the twentieth century’, pp. 194–195.94. Jonathan Turner, The Structure of Sociological Theory (Homewood, Dorsey, 1978),

pp. 329–330. See also Jonathan Turner, A Theory of Social Interaction (Stanford, StanfordUniversity Press, 1988).

95. On this, a very good treatment can be found in: Gregory P. Stone, ‘Appearance and theself ’, in A. M. Rose (ed.), Human Behavior and Social Processes (Boston, Houghton Mifflin,1962), pp. 86–118. A revised version was published by G. P. Stone, A. Harvey, C. Couchaet al., Studies in Symbolic Interaction: the Iowa School, Part A and B (Greenwich, CT, JAI Press,1986).

96. Michael Oakeshott, On Human Conduct (Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1990), p. 5ff. Somehave considered this ‘unstable’ feature of identity formation as close to the postmodern-ist position. Moreover, various authors have highlighted the span of common themesshared by symbolic interactionists and postmodernists, signs and symbols, ‘the immanentdeconstructive turn through the manifest focus on “social construction,” the self-reflex-ive turn in methodology’. Ken Plumer, ‘Symbolic interactionism in the twentieth century’,p. 211. Dmitri Shalin has found other common characteristics between the twoapproaches in their rejection of subject–object distinction, and in the fact they both herald‘the marginal, local, everyday, heterogeneous and indeterminate [. . .] socially con-structed, emergent and plural’. Dmitri Shalin, ‘Modernity, postmodernism, and pragma-tist inquiry: an introduction’, Symbolic Interaction, Vol. 16, No. 4, 1993, p. 304. However, itis worth noticing that in symbolic interactionism, the emphasis is much more on con-sciousness, the subject and the power of agency. See Mike O’Donnell, Classical and Con-temporary Sociology, p. 53ff.

97. Erving Goffman, Stigma: Notes on the Management of Spoiled Identity (Harmondsworth,Penguin, 1968), p. 12ff. Goffman distinguishes two sub-categories of social identity: thecommunity identity and the collective identity. The first pertains to a sense of sharedidentity with subsequent cluster of belonging (beliefs, emotions, place, web ofrelationships); the second is more a matter of choice. It is an endeavor to become a



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member of a particular group or organization and to identify oneself to that group ororganization.

98. Hans Joas, ‘Symbolic interactionism’, p. 84.99. Michael Oakeshott, On Human Conduct, p. 5.

100. On the process of ‘epiphany’ and its implications, see Anselm Strauss, Negotiation (SanFrancisco, CA, Jossey-Bass, 1978); idem, Mirrors and Masks (New York, Free Press, 1959).

101. An interesting example of research and theory in this domain is to be found in: QuentinSkinner, The Return of Grand Theory in the Human Sciences (Cambridge, Cambridge Uni-versity Press, 1985).

102. The classic discussion of this issue is that of Howard Becker, Doing Things Together(Evanston, Northwestern University Press, 1986).

103. Herbert Blumer, Symbolic Interactionism, p. 47.104. Hans Joas, ‘Symbolic interactionism’, p. 110.105. I will be less categorical in the next section.106. With great trepidation, I oppose ‘the culture’ of anarchy (Wendt) to the ‘the logic’ of

anarchy (Waltz). The rationale behind this distinction is that the ‘culture’ is a constructedfeature of agency, whereas the term ‘logic’ points towards an inherent feature. The‘culture’ of anarchy designates the synchronic and the diachronic instantiation of a struc-ture of beliefs, understandings, identities and perceptions. In contrast, the ‘logic’represents a stock of materialist and reified structures taken as given. However, whilereified, a ‘culture’ may become a ‘logic’ with its own momentum. In matter bearing closelyto agency, ‘logic’ does not preclude ‘culture’, it presupposes it. The term ‘logic of anarchy’ isderived from the book of Barry Buzan, Charles Jones and Richard Little, The Logic ofAnarchy. Neorealism to Structural Realism (New York, Columbia University Press, 1993),whereas the idea of ‘culture of anarchy’ stems from Ronald L. Jepperson, AlexanderWendt and Peter J. Katzenstein, ‘Norms, identity, and culture in national security’, inPeter J. Katzenstein (ed.), The Culture of National Security. Norms and Identity in World Politics(New York, Columbia University Press, 1996), pp. 31–75.

107. The qualification is from Wendt. It is also referred as an ‘idea-ism’. See Alexander Wendt,‘Collective identity formation and the international state’, American Political Science Review,Vol. 88, No. 2, June 1994, p. 385; idem, ‘Identity and structural change in internationalpolitics’, in Y. Lapid and F. Kratochwil (eds), The Return of Culture and Identity in IR Theory(London, Lynne Rienner, 1996), p. 48; idem, Social Theory of International Politics (Cam-bridge, Cambridge University Press, 1999), p. 1.

108. Alexander Wendt, ‘Anarchy is what states make of it’, p. 394.109. Ibid., p. 397, fn. 23. Strikingly, he does not mention Blumer here, but when it comes to

elaborating constructivist premises, Wendt mainly draws on Blumer. See ibid., p. 397,fn. 21 and p. 403, fn. 45.

110. Alexander Wendt, ‘Anarchy is what states make of it’, p. 394, fn. 12.111. Kenneth N. Waltz, Theory of International Politics, pp. 79–101.112. See Kenneth N. Waltz, Man, the State, and War (New York, Columbia University Press,

1959).113. Alexander Wendt, ‘Anarchy is what states make of it’, p. 395.114. Modernists and postmodernists share the same concern of the constitution of subjects

through practices and a ‘cognitive intersubjective conception of process in which identi-ties and interests are endogenous to interactions, rather than a rationalist-behavioral onein which they are exogenous’. Ibid., p. 394.

115. See James Fearon and Alexander Wendt, ‘Rationalism versus constructivism: a skepticalview’.

116. Even though (2) and (3) may vary according to the constructivist strand considered,whether modernist or postmodernist.

117. See Peter L. Berger and Thomas Luckmann, The Social Construction of Reality: a Treatise inthe Sociology of Knowledge (London, Penguin, 1967).

118. Ibid., p. 106.119. On this, see Jeffrey Legro, ‘Culture and preferences in the international cooperation two-

step’, American Political Science Review, Vol. 90, 1996, pp. 118–137. For Wendt’s adaptationsof this idea, see, for instance, ‘Anarchy is what states make of it’; ‘Collective identity for-mation’; ‘Constructing international politics’; Social Theory of International Politics; a morerecent account is to be found in: James Fearon and Alexander Wendt, ‘Constructivism v.rationalism: a skeptical view’, in Handbook of International Relations, pp. 52–72.

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120. On complex and simple learning, see Joseph Nye, ‘Nuclear learning and U.S.–Sovietsecurity regimes’, International Organization, Vol. 41, 1987, pp. 371–402.

121. George Stigler and Gary Becker, ‘De Gustibus Non Est Disputantum’, American EconomicReview, Vol. 67, No. 2, 1977, pp. 76–90.

122. Original emphasis. Peter Berger, ‘Identity as a problem in the sociology of knowledge’,European Journal of Sociology, Vol. 7, No. 1, 1966, p. 111.

123. See Jonathan Turner, A Theory of Social Interaction, pp. 23–69.124. Alexander Wendt, ‘Collective identity formation and the international state’, p. 385.125. Alexander Wendt, ‘Anarchy is what states make of it’, p. 397. (The emphasis is mine.) For

a similar position, see Bruce Cronin who defines ‘social identity (as) an intersubjectiveconcept that is manifested in group conscious, rather than a material entity’. BruceCronin, Community Under Anarchy: Transnational Identity and the Evolution of Cooperation(New York, Columbia University Press, 1999), p. 15.

126. Alexander Wendt, ‘Collective identity formation and the international state’, p. 385.127. Alexander Wendt, ‘Anarchy is what states make of it’, pp. 404–405.128. The problem of anthropomorphization is at the heart of theorizing about social identity

formation. Wendt does not really solve it, but justifies it by relying on two loose assump-tions: (1) anthropomorphism is an actual practice in International Relations. (2) Statesare clusters of individuals with intersubjective practices (identities, interests, emotions),just like individuals. In fairness to him, he casts some doubt on the analogy between indi-viduals and states. One could find the same attitude in Iver B. Neumann, ‘Self and otherin international relations’, European Journal of International Relations, Vol. 2, No. 2, 1996,pp. 139–174.

129. Alexander Wendt, ‘Anarchy is what states make of it’, pp. 396–397. Herbert Blumer, Sym-bolic Interactionism, p. 2.

130. Alexander Wendt, ‘Anarchy is what states make of it’, p. 403. Herbert Blumer, SymbolicInteractionism, pp. 2–4.

131. Alexander Wendt, ‘Collective identity formation and the international states’, p. 385.132. Ibid., p. 401.133. ‘A reinforcer is a stimulus event which, if it occurs in the proper temporal relation with a

response, tend to maintain or to increase the strength of a response or ofstimulus–response connection . . .’ James Deese and Stewart H. Hulse, The Psychology ofLearning (New York, McGraw-Hill, 1958), p. 25.

134. Peter L. Berger and Thomas Luckmann, The Social Construction of Reality, pp. 54–58.135. Alexander Wendt, ‘Anarchy is what states makes of it’, p. 405.136. Leslie A. Zebrowitz, Social Perception (Buckingham, Open University Press, 1990), pp. 4–5.137. Leslie A. Zebrowitz, Social Perception, pp. 4–5.138. Ibid., p. 5. Emphases added.139. For instance, the following sentence can be said to owe very much to Mead’s work: ‘In

spontaneous and informal ways, societies establish norms of behavior. A group’s opinioncontrols its members. Heroes and Leaders emerge and are emulated. Praise for behaviorthat conforms to group norms reinforces them.’ Kenneth N. Waltz, Theory of InternationalPolitics, p. 75.

140. Kenneth N. Waltz, Theory of International Politics, p. 75.141. Ibid., pp. 75, 74. (Italics are mine.)142. Kenneth N. Waltz, Theory of International Politics, p. 75.143. Paul Watzlawick, Janet Helmick and Don D. Jackson, Pragmatism of Human Communication

(New York, Norton, 1967), p. 156 in Kenneth N. Waltz, Theory of International Politics, p. 75.(Emphasis added.)

144. Kenneth N. Waltz, Theory of International Politics, p. 76.145. Ibid.146. Ibid., pp. 76–77.147. Ibid., p. 136. On this point, Waltz relies on Simmel. See Georg Simmel, ‘The number of

members as determining the social form of the group’, Journal of Sociology, Vol. 8, 1902.148. Ibid., p. 76.149. Ibid., pp. 76, 77.150. Ibid., p. 70.151. Kenneth N. Waltz, Man, the State, and War (New York, Columbia University Press, 1959).152. Ibid., pp. 167–168.153. Kenneth N. Waltz, Theory of International Politics, p. 105.



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154. The point of view adopted in this paragraph is much influenced by the work of NaeemInayatullah and David L. Blaney, ‘Knowing encounters: beyond parochialism in inter-national relations theory’, pp. 65–84.

155. George H. Mead, Mind, Self, and Society, p. 7.156. Kenneth N. Waltz, Theory of International Politics, p. 75.157. Herbert Blumer, ‘Mead and Blumer: the convergent methodological perspectives of social

behaviorism and symbolic interactionism’, American Sociological Review, Vol. 45, 1980,pp. 409–419.

158. On relational politics, see Kenneth J. Gergen, Social Construction in Context (London, Sage,2001), p. 180ff.

159. The words are Goldberd’s. See David T. Goldberd, Racist Culture (Oxford, Blackwell,1993).

160. In other words, cultures of war and culture of peace are both considered. See James D.Hunter, Culture of Wars (New York, Basic Books, 1991).

161. Tzvetan Todorov, The Conquest of America: the Question of the Other (New York, Harper Peren-nial, 1992).

162. Alexander Wendt, ‘Anarchy is what states make of it’.163. Alexander Wendt, ‘Collective identity formation and the international state’.164. In Wendt’s words, ‘Identification is a continuum from negative to positive—from

conceiving the other as anathema to the self to conceiving it as an extension of the self.’Alexander Wendt, ‘Collective identity formation and the international state’, p. 386.

165. Ibid., p. 386.166. See Alexander Wendt, ‘Anarchy is what states make of it’; and ibid., Social Theory of Inter-

national Politics.167. Alexander Wendt, ‘Anarchy is what states make of it’, pp. 408–409.168. The potential sources of predation and those of self help are the same.169. See Mancur Olson, The Logic of Collective Action (Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press,

1965).170. See Alexander Wendt, ‘Anarchy is what states make of it’, pp. 410–422; ibid., ‘Collective

identity formation and the international state’, pp. 388–391; ibid., Social Theory of Inter-national Politics, pp. 313–369.

171. I favor the term ‘dialogic’ to the Hegelian concept of ‘dialectic’ which includes a thirdterm and a relation of domination between the master and the slave. The third term—aufhebung—which is a ‘synthesis’ of self and other, supersedes them as well. In contrast,in a dialogic relationship, self and other are equal, they are not synthesized in a third com-ponent.

172. See Erving Goffman, Relations in Public: Microstudies of the Public Order (New York, BasicBooks, 1971), p. 190.

173. Alexander Wendt, Social Theory of International Politics, pp. 246–312.174. Alexander Wendt, ‘Collective identity formation and the international state’, p. 389.175. Ibid.176. Ibid.177. Alexander Wendt, ‘Collective identity formation and the international state’, p. 390.178. See Robert Axelrod, The Evolution of Cooperation (New York, Basic Books, 1984).179. See Peter L. Berger and Thomas Luckmann, The Social Construction of Reality; George H.

Mead, Mind, Self, and Society; Erving Goffman, The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life.180. Alexander Wendt, ‘Anarchy is what states make of it’, p. 421; ibid., Social Theory of Inter-

national Politics, p. 346.181. Steve Duck, Relating to Others (Milton Keynes, Open University Press, 1988), p. 43.182. Alexander Wendt, ‘Collective identity formation and the international state’, p. 386.183. Ibid.184. Drawing on Emile Durkheim, John G. Ruggie defines the ‘Dynamic density’ as ‘the aggre-

gate quantity, velocity, and diversity of transactions that go on within society’. See John G.Ruggie, Constructing World Polity, pp. 137–154. This (dynamic density) is also known as ahigher level of interaction. It is ‘the volume, speed, range, [. . .] of interaction [which can]override the deep structural effects of anarchy’. Barry Buzan, Charles Jones and RichardLittle, The Logic of Anarchy, p. 78.

185. In other words, the integration of behaviours does not always entail the integration ofinterests and/or identities.

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186. Karl Mannheim, Systemic Sociology: an Introduction to the Study of Society, J. J. Erös and W. A.C. Stewart (eds) (London, Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1957).

187. For instance, Waltz considers states as ‘units whose interactions form the structure of inter-national–political systems’. Kenneth N. Waltz, Theory of International Politics, p. 95.

188. Kenneth N. Waltz, Theory of International Politics, p. 71.189. Hebert Blumer, ‘Society as symbolic interactionism’, p. 149.190. Ibid., p. 153.191. Herbert Blumer, ‘Society as symbolic interactionism’, p. 153.192. See Naaem Inayatullah and David L. Blaney, ‘Knowing encounters: beyond parochialism

in international relations theory’, in Y. Lapid and F. Kratochwil (eds), The Return of Cultureand Identity in IR Theory, pp. 65–84.

193. Kenneth N. Waltz, Theory of International Politics, p. 174.194. Burkhart Holzner, ‘The construction of social actors: an essay on social identities’, in

Thomas Luckmann (ed.), Phenomenology and Sociology (New York, Penguin, 1978), p. 292.

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Documents

Security, identity, and symbolic interactionism