Multiple Identities, Interfacing Games:
Open Access
- 1 December 1996
- journal article
- research article
- Published by SAGE Publications in European Journal of International Relations
- Vol. 2 (4), 467-497
- https://doi.org/10.1177/1354066196002004003
Abstract
This article explores an alternative approach to the analysis of patterns in International Relations. These patterns are not to be found in recurring cause-effect sequences, but in shared rules, drawn from the past, by which actions are constituted. The metatheoretical approach builds on the later work of Wittgenstein, and particularly his use of `language games'. The approach is applied to a cursory analysis of the war in Bosnia-Herzegovina. The exercise is less explanatory in any complete sense than illustrative of the approach. The choice of context did, however, result from a number of questions that arose during the dramatic events of the summer of 1995. The first was how to understand the apparent inability of `the West' to act. The second was how to understand the change by the end of August 1995 towards more interventionary strategies thought originally to be unrealistic in this context.Keywords
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