New Horizon Of Constructivism:Research On Geo-culture And Its Mechanism Of Construction

Under the horizon of International Relations, this dissertation makes an analysis of the great significance of "geo-culture" to modern research on the theory of international relations, taking Went’s constructivism theory of "structural conceptualism" and its defects as the supporting&starting point.This dissertation does research mainly in two aspects:on the one hand, it conducts an initial discussion of the fundamental theories such as the concept, attribute, feature, mechanism of construction, category, function and influence of "geo-culture", and puts forward an innovative idea that "geo-culture" is formed by the dual construction of "geo-construction" and "social construction", as well as the innovative views like "’political sensitivity’ and ’constractability’ are the essential characteristics of geo-culture"; on the other hand, starting with the theory of "structural conceptualism", it focuses its research on the mechanism of "social construction" of "geo-culture".Through research, it is discovered in this dissertation that there exist omissions and defects in Went’ theory of "structural conceptualism". As a kind of structural theory, it merely pays attention to how the "shared beliefs" at the level of transnational international system structure influence the top-down construction at state level, while ignoring state, the major behaviour body in international system, as well as the social construction of cultures at state&international system levels by the "shared beliefs" within some units (geographical bodies in this dissertation) that are important supplements to the behaviour bodies of international system.Went’s three patterns of construction of "Hobbes Style","Locke Style" and "Kant Style" for international system culture are simply the structural systems based on the top-down conceptualism. Yet the structure of international system culture should not only include such unidirectional construction, but also concern the contents of the top-down social construction which come from the interior part of international system behaviours, as well as the cultural factors of the three "Styles" that are contained in the social construction of the geo-culture within the behaviour bodies.These social factors, which are constructed by the cultural traditions and the social structures like nationality and religion formed in the long-term development of social history, will in turn have guiding constructive effects on the state (or other geo-bodies) which are anterior to the "shared ideas" of international system culture.It is observed and analysed in this dissertation the different ways of construction at national level and supranational level from the two dimensions of nationality and religion which perform an important social construction function on the geo-culture of Indo-ChinaPeninsula, and further discussed the influences of the former two on the mechanism of social construction of the latter culture. It is believed that the shared beliefs like "ethnic group identity","religious identity" and "national identity" and the relational schema between them will produce constructive actions on the cultural patterns of international system. Therefore, the constructive pattern of "structural conceptualism" of international system culture should be "bidirectional&mutual-constructive"."Geo-culture" and the research on its construction will become a new horizon of constructivism theory of International Relations.