Revisiting ‘identity’ in International Relations: From identity as substance to identifications in action
| Author | Bernd Bucher,Ursula Jasper |
| DOI | 10.1177/1354066116644035 |
| Published date | 01 June 2017 |
| Date | 01 June 2017 |
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https://doi.org/10.1177/1354066116644035
European Journal of
International Relations
2017, Vol. 23(2) 391 –415
© The Author(s) 2016
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DOI: 10.1177/1354066116644035
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Revisiting ‘identity’ in
International Relations:
From identity as substance
to identifications in action
Bernd Bucher
Franklin University, Switzerland
Ursula Jasper
ETH Zurich, Switzerland
Abstract
In recent years, the concept of identity has become central to International Relations
theory. Opposing rational actor assumptions, constructivist and post-structuralist
identity scholarship has argued that preferences and interests are tied to actors’
identities, which, in turn, explain action. While we welcome the attempt to move
beyond rationalist and materialist accounts of state action, we argue that identity
scholarship conceptualizes identity in methodologically individualist and causal terms.
However, understanding identity in this way hinders us from grasping how actors are
situated and continually develop within complex networks of social interdependencies.
We suggest an approach that draws on processual-relational thinking and figurational
sociology, and that shifts analysis from searching for identity to analysing identification
processes. Contrary to the notion that identities inform action, we argue that specific
sets of identifications are temporarily and incompletely stabilized in decision-making,
and do not precede or inform action. To this end, we develop a model for empirical
research that makes agency in identification processes visible and apply it to Swiss
foreign policy decision-making. We suggest that non-foundationalist research revisit and
discuss how identity is conceptualized and used in research, lest it reproduce the pitfalls
of rationalist and materialist approaches.
Corresponding author:
Bernd Bucher, Franklin University Switzerland, Via Ponte Tresa 29, CH-6924 Sorengo (Lugano),
Switzerland.
Email: bbucher@fus.edu
644035EJT0010.1177/1354066116644035European Journal of International RelationsBucher and Jasper
research-article2016
Article
392 European Journal of International Relations 23(2)
Keywords
Enactment processes, foreign policy, identity, performativity, processual-relational
sociology, Switzerland
Introduction
In the past 25 years, the concept of identity has received wide attention from constructiv-
ist and, more broadly, non-foundationalist International Relations (IR) scholars. Identity
scholarship has successfully argued that preferences, interests and norm structures are
inseparably tied to actors’ identities, which need to be taken seriously in order to account
for state action and international security dynamics. Today, the concept of identity is
central to research agendas that seek to move beyond rationalist and materialist assump-
tions of state action. Yet, despite the attempt of identity research to leave rationalist and
materialist IR behind, it oftentimes continues to model identity in methodologically indi-
vidualist and causal terms and thereby fails to account for the performative dimension of
actors’ self-understandings within social arrangements. More concretely, this gives rise
to two interrelated problems, which we seek to address here. For one, contemporary
identity research runs the risk of treating identity as a property of the secluded individual
(see Bucholtz and Hall, 2004: 376). This is partly surprising since identities are argued
to be constructed in relation to others. However, while identity research underscores the
relationality of identity, it tends to focus on narratives of the self in domestic discourse
and does not sufficiently situate actors and their actions within their complex networks
of interdependencies (Elias, 1978; Guillaume, 2007; Onuf, 1998). Hence, by focusing
away from the historically contingent social embeddedness of actors, identity research
inadvertently stabilizes and reifies articulations of a core identity.
Taking such a perspective is, second, tied to treating identity in terms of a causal vari-
able that gives rise to, and explains, action. It seems that it is now largely considered to
be (ontologically) unproblematic to argue that state actions can be understood by linking
them to underlying notions of identity. As such, identity is treated as the functional
equivalent of independent variables in most constructivist scholarship. In practice, even
post-structuralist identity research understands the concept of identity as something that
precedes state action and that lets us grasp why states act in certain ways (e.g. Hagström,
2015; Hansen, 2006).
This substantialist way of thinking about identity leads to asking research questions
aimed at uncovering what the true or essential (even if multiple and/or fragmented) iden-
tity of something is and how it consequently gives rise to actions. In addition, and more
basically, conceptualizing identity in this way inadvertently undermines the non-founda-
tionalist starting point of constructivist and post-structuralist thinking. This effectively
draws into doubt whether contemporary identity scholarship has successfully left the
confines of rationalist and materialist approaches of IR behind.
Given these difficulties, we suggest replacing the concept of identity (multiple, frag-
mented) with a focus on ‘acts of identification’. This conceptual shift allows us to sys-
tematically study empirically observable articulations that make reference to ‘identity’
(acts of identification), without reproducing the substantialist view that social entities
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