Relative Meanings or Relative Truths?
2004; Oxford University Press; Volume: 6; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1111/j.1079-1760.2004.00377.x
ISSN1521-9488
Autores Tópico(s)International Relations and Foreign Policy
ResumoMeaning and International Relations. Edited by Peter Mandaville, Andrew Williams. London: Routledge, 2003. 192 pp., $80.00 (ISBN: 0-415-2812-X). The dozen essays collected in Peter Mandaville and Andrew Williams's Meaning and International Relations each support a central, unifying contention: that variations in meaning merit special attention in international studies. At first, this proposition seems eminently uncontroversial. Even the most orthodox behavioralists recognize that meanings vary. They consequently devote much attention to defining terms and to assessing how faithfully their operational measures mirror the concepts those terms represent. But the interpretivist and self-consciously heterodox contributors to Meaning and International Relations propose that we go farther by treating contested meanings as an object of inquiry. As Mandaville summarizes in his concluding essay, these contributors ask us to treat international relations as a crucible within which competing meanings and accounts commingle as they vie for acceptance. Moreover, Mandaville notes, they ask us to approach the subject hermeneutically. That is, they ask us to understand this activity to be directed toward the fusion of interpretive horizons among persons whose vastly different experiences engender different understandings of world events. For example, Christopher Coker in “Surfing the Zeitgeist ” juxtaposes historical Western understandings with local Asian understandings of political events to show how naturally and unconsciously Westerners misconstrued Asian political reality by imposing their alien interpretive frameworks on it. He can succeed, of course, only because contemporary Western understandings also diverge from historical Western understandings. New meanings have been fashioned in the crucible. Likewise, in “When Meaning Travels,” Mandaville recounts the effects of Muslim experiences as minorities in Western communities on their understandings of Islam, its traditions, and …
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