Book Review: Ralph Pettman, Commonsense Constructivism or the Making of World Affairs (Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharpe, 2000, 248 pp., £19.50 pbk.)
| Date | 01 December 2000 |
| Author | Mark Laffey |
| DOI | 10.1177/03058298000290030925 |
| Published date | 01 December 2000 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
Millennium
972
Ralph Pettman, Commonsense Constructivism or the Making of World Affairs
(Armonk, NY: M .E. Sharpe, 2000, 248 pp., £19.5 0 pbk.).
Constructi vism, it seems, is everywh ere these days. Of cou rse, not all
constructiv ists are th e same. Consumers o f acad emic theory can select from among
such pop ular items as Peter Ka tzenstein’s ‘Business as Usual’, Alex Wendt ’s ‘Real
Scientific R ealism’, John Rugg ie’s ‘Be fore the Fact and Witho ut a Name’, or Nick
Onuf’s ‘Fir st, and Still the Best’. Branding and re-branding cont inues apace.
Market surveys p roliferate, contribu ting to produc t differentiation and the
identificat ion of niche markets. Discerning c onsumers pay thei r money and take
their choice. If Ralph Pettman’s new book does not confront a mature market,
constructiv ism is by most estimates only a decade or so old, it does confron t an
increasingl y sophistic ated one. It i s against this backgrou nd that he will be read and
judged, by constructivists and non-constructivists alike.
Common sense Construc tivism is the first v olume in a new series, ‘Inte rnational
Relations in a Constructed World’, edited by Kubalkova, Onuf, and Pettman
himself. Reflecti ng the diversity of construct ivisms already on the market, the
internatio nal advisory board consists of a heteroge neous set of mo stly junior
scholars, several of whom are part of the Miami group around Kubalko va and
Onuf. Pettman’s work is be st read as an Antipodean exten sion and e laboration of
the Florida const ructivist franchise.
Why commonsense constructi vism? Pettman defines his position in contrast to
what he calls c onservative an d social theory forms of this latest ac ademic
commodity. Bo th are distinguished from commo nsense constructivism by their
continui ng commitment to rationalism, by which Pettman means ‘the commitment
to reason, th e willingness to follow the use of the reasoning mind wherever it might
lead’ (p. 4); in short, the elevation of the use of re ason as the core cultural ideal of
an e ntire civilisat ion, that of the We st (p. 73). Ration alism thus u nderstood
dominates contemporary world a ffairs (Pettman’s preferred te rm for international
relations or world politics). Con servative and social th eory forms of con structivism
contribute to the reproduction of that domination. Conservative constructivists like
Ruggie, Katzenstein, and Wendt, who is neither mentioned or cited in the book,
want to c ontinue to do soci al science ‘strictly conce ived’, seeking ‘conclusio ns that
are cast in falsifiab le terms that they ca n empiric ally test’ (p. 18). Social theo ry
constructiv ists like Onuf, who seek to do away with world affairs as a dist inct
object of analysis, also remain committed to the rat ionalist use of reason and social
science, albeit in a less strict and methodolo gically more di verse form.
Commonsen se co nstructivism emerges from the con structivist ruck bearing the
colours of Berg er and Luckmann and champio ning non-rationalist ways of kno wing
the commonse nse of ordinary people.
We need to concern o urselves with what ord inary people know a s their reality i n
their everyday lives, says Pettman, if we want to understand world affairs
‘accurately and comp rehensively’ (p. 21). He rec ommends that we follow
anthropology and sociology in undertaking ethnographic fieldwork, and actively
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