POLS 2940 Lecture 6: POLS 2940 Week 6 – Social Constructivism
23 Jan 2017
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POLS 2940 Week 6 – Social Constructivism/Post-positivism
• Questions for Consideration:
• How can we understand the nature of power in the following essays?
• Consider various forms of power, including and importantly the power to decide what
counts as knowledge.
• Write professor a 1 paragraph essay exampling my first political moment
• Iraq was an international threat to security
What are the political consequences of adopting one explanation over another?
• when you see something as common sense it is a form of power
• how does power work?
o Liberals – seeing benefits, follows rules that have been put in place to make
transactions smooth
o Realist – power is in the state and in its military power, seeing to maximize
power
o Post-Structuralist – power is discursive, no objective truth (death is meaningless
unless it has political meaning)
▪ Power is located in language
▪ Discursive power- there is no truth outside out explanation of the world;
truth is about making political meaning
▪ Compete for political legitimacy (ability to make something true)
▪ There is no true and false – only competing narratives
•
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