The concept of constructivism approach

The way how constructivism approach was way too focused on how norms, knowledge, culture and ideas work within the society. As what other theorist says, constructivism is basically a social constructed one because the shared beliefs construct the identities of the actors—which are us, the individuals, who are inside and included in this approach. Constructivism does believe that each individual who act upon inside the society were shaped by its environment. In other words, it is all about how the society raised a certain individual due to its culture that is revolving around the society and not the nature of how a man or a woman behaves naturally and accordingly.

Constructivism approach is way too far idealist compared to first two theories that we tackled; realism and liberalism. Constructivism for me is a not that independent theory that can tackle anything about how the world politics work in its field and also in international relations. It does not produce any specific and scientific approach on politics and other aspects of international relations unlike the first two approaches that were stated. As for me, it cannot be viewed or can be seen as one of the crucial rivals of realism and liberalism because the two theories that were stated and were tackled in the last meetings presented a real and a clearer view of how it approaches the world politics and in the international relations itself. Plus, both realism and liberalism offers a proven and tested approach that really leads to practices and applications of the said theories over the years. Realism and Liberalism approaches were applied in the real happening in the world. A one good example of this happening will be of course, the war.

Constructivism is not something that any scholar could easily adopt if they are trying to relate a certain event in the field of international relations that happens a few milestones back. Because of constructivism being too normative and idealistic, it may lead to changes overtime. Like what the saying goes, change is the only constant thing in the world so that basically means constructivism is not really that reliable because of its characteristics that don’t have a standard ideal of how the society of international relations should really work. Constructivism being a society of change can either trigger or arise some issues that were already inside the society as time passes by. Since the ideas and norms of a society in a constructivism approach drastically changes overtime I can see that this changes that occurs inside the society, it will come to a point that it will be one of the reasons of why constructivism will fall in the future. But on the other hand, a good side of it since constructivism is a socially constructed approach it does help to bind the individuals together in a certain society. It attracts the similar thoughts, ideas, and knowledge of the actors which in the end shares a good energy because at some point it prevents collisions of interest and clashing of ideas that may lead to wars.

Constructivism may also relate on how cultural relativism view things. Because in cultural relativism, you are preventing to judge someone else’s culture base on your own perspective. It’s all about the society’s own standard of right and wrong and vice versa. Go back to the second example cited in the first paragraph that is about martial law. Come to think of it, there are different views and perception about martial law and a good example of it are how the experiences of the people of Luzon viewed martial as a sin and the experiences of the people in Mindanao that viewed martial law as a helping tool to gain discipline among its land. In this case, we cannot take sides whether it in the side of the Luzon people or Mindanao people because like how cultural relativism approach, we should try to understand one another without any biases.

In conclusion, even though constructivism may not end up as a rival theory of realism, liberalism or any other theories out there it will surely does help big time at some point in time when it comes to the world of politics and international relations or also maybe not in both. One thing is for sure, constructivism is making its own way to be uniquely known for its qualities and characteristics.