Nicholas Onuf

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This article or section needs to be wikified to meet Wikipedia's quality standards. Please help improve this article with relevant internal links. (May 2008)

This article or section needs sources or references that appear in reliable, third-party publications. Primary sources and sources affiliated with the subject of the article are generally not sufficient for a Wikipedia article. Please include more appropriate citations from reliable sources, or discuss the issue on the talk page. This article has been tagged since May 2008.

Nicholas Onuf is one of the primary figures among Constructivists in International Relations. His best known contribution to Constructivism is set out in World of Our Making (University of South Carolina Press, 1989). He further developed and refined the ideas set out in World in a series of chapters in edited volumes:

"A Constructivist Manifesto" in Burch & Denemark, eds., Constituting Political Economy (Lynne Rienner, 1997);
"Constructivism: A User's Manual" in Kubálková, et. al. eds., International Relations in a Constructed World (M.E. Sharpe, 1998);
"Worlds of Our Own Making: The Strange Career of Constructivism" in Puchala, ed., Visions of International Relations (University of South Carolina Press, 2002);
"Parsing Personal Identity" in Debrix, ed., Language Agency and Politics in a Constructed World (M.E. Sharpe, 2002).

In contrast to other Constructivists, Onuf places a great deal of emphasis on performative language and the role of performative language in the creation of rules.