ABSTRACT
As I will begin to show in this chapter by concentrating on historical studies in the first instance, the constructionist methodological strategies described in the last chapter have their own internal limits and generate conceptual problems of their own. A general goal of constructionist studies of the state is to open up the analytical room needed to inspect the form, substance, origins and subsequent aetiology of the very idea of the state and the claims made about ‘it’ – in terms of the loosely woven complexes of social and political practices they are connected to and anchored in – at different moments in time and space. The purpose of this chapter is to turn a critical eye to the ways in which particular constructionist studies effect their problematisation of the state. In a context where the investigator cannot employ formal means of designating their phenomena in advance – in this case, because definitions of the state are held to be problematic – the examples they use come to take on a particularly important role. Rather than trying to define – in the sense of ‘writing-out’ or ‘telling’ us – what their phenomena are, these studies attempt to show their phenomena – to exhibit or display how they were recovered in and through their analyses. Although no single, unified set of ‘state phenomena’ can be specified, the implication is that the phenomena these studies describe – these things and other things like them – exemplify what we should be looking for when we address the problem of the state. The success of the demonstrations thus hinges on the adequacy of the examples. This chapter argues there are several reasons for questioning their adequacy on these grounds. Based on five cases drawn from historical research, from Foucault, Corrigan and Sayer, Scott, Miller and O’Leary and Rose and Miller respectively, I show that the use of examples in constructionist research generates a range of internal methodological difficulties, problems and paradoxes. These in turn are argued to be indicative of a deeper homology with the constitutionalist position.
