ABSTRACT

While looking at a superficial glance as a new intellectual movement in social sciences, and International Relations specifically, constructivism has deep roots in the history of Western thought. In fact, this innovative, rich and varied trend is deeply rooted in the great European epistemological debate since Georg W.F. Hegel, Emil Durkheim and Max Weber. According to even its most eminent scholars, this is not an International Relations “theory” in the strictest sense, but rather a vast cultural movement that groups together several approaches and touches on several disciplines.1 Constructivism, often defined as ‘reflectivism’ at that time, fits squarely within the 1980s-1990s general renewal of social theory and is comparable in this regard both with opposed intellectual movements such as positivism, utilitarianism and with partially similar cultural approaches so as post-modernism.