Substantive #6

Get Yourself a Superpower 

Power determines social order; there’s no question about it. In order to have a constructivist society, power needs to be equal among all actors in order to truly feel comfortable about reflecting and learning from each other. But, it is idealistic to assume that today’s complex societies can exist without any type of hierarchy that fluctuates the social dynamics of a group so that some people can impose/lead certain social orders upon others. This leading and following is easy to observe through the diffusion of international policies. For example, “The Global Diffusion of Law: Transnational Crime and the Case of Human Trafficking” spoke about how one human trafficking legislation influences another.

In her post, Annie Austin states that the different norms between American University and Saint Ignatius College Prep are proof of how different social interactions lead to different norms being developed. However, the cause of the different social interactions is the different power dynamics between the actors. In American University’s dorms, a power structure does not exist, which means that students are on a level playing field with each other which is why social interactions can happen nonchalantly. In Saint Ignatius College Prep, the threat of the JUG punishment creates a power structure that then prevents the students from interacting with each other in that same nonchalant way. Basically, the ease of social interactions is determined by the existence of a power structure.

However, movements have been made to decrease the influence of power on social interactions through recognizing how civil society, the private sector, governments, etc. are all stakeholders in a certain topic and thus any legislation made on the topic should have input from all of those actors. Thus, all the actors are on the same playing field. This idea—multistakeholderism—is quite popular in the internet and environmental fields which makes sense since the internet and environment are very, very global topics. Forums like the IGF and organizations like ICANN exemplify how multistakeholderism can be used for governance. But, Maybe one day we’ll see such a holistic approach being taken in international relations.

I believe in order for me to best answer this weeks very challenging prompt, the first idea that needs to be addressed is whether or not humans are, by nature, optimistic. Because if we are, then that would negate the entire question. If humans are by nature naturally optimistic, then the idea could be explored that humans would think that anything could be possible, including breaking social norms. Subsequently, this would fall in line with the thinking of constructionism, which arguably could  just immediately validate that these ideas are idealistic because humans are idealistic so therefore also are their ideas. And it could be easily argued that humans are optimistic; the nature of religion is the optimistic faith that something exists, that life exists after death. If we were not optimistic at some level, would these ideas exist?