Week 4: IR Theory: Constructivism — blog#7

Constructivism, it’s the basis on how our world is shaped and formed by societies. The reading of “Introducing Constructivism in International Relations Theory”, was wide opening as it talks about everything that is today, it was formed under the idea that if a large group of people decided that a certain part of land was important. That piece of land would be important. This brings up the whole topic of the norms and how it affects the decisions made by society. The reading talks about three types of norms; regulative norms, constitutive norms and prescriptive norms, these norms are essentially the type of norms that are present in our society. For example, regulative norms are rules that keep order and restrict certain behaviors, constitutive norms are the rules that tells people how to act, and prescriptive norms are norms that common knowledge. A constructivist would say that society’s norms can change, as well basically anything is subject to change. The reason why I bring up how norms affect society is because, in the reading, I read how many states came together to solve the issue with climate change. Several people of power or with an authority have advocated for climate change, this led to a social norm of doing things to keep climate change at bay.

The way constructivism is related to international relations, was confusing for me as I was unable to understand how it was important to international issues. But it states that constructivism allows actors to look at things from a diverse viewpoint. Which makes sense to me, it addresses things that are neglected the mainstream for example, climate change. I don’t think I have ever heard about the importance of climate change was until Leonardo DiCaprio gave a big speech on it. Suddenly, all around the world, the idea of keeping the earth from over heating was not so crazy.

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