In the discipline of International Relations, Constructivism is often defined by the epistemological implications that unfold from taking language as the medium through which we relate to the world. Insofar as it assumes that we know about and act upon the world through language or meaning, Constructivism attributes an important role to ideas, which constitute social reality (e.g., Wendt 1987; Onuf 1989). On the other side, constructivists often use basic ontological assumptions and concepts as tools that enable a more systematic form of interpretation and research (e.g., Giddens 1979; Wendt 1987; Klotz and Lynch 2007; Onuf 2013). Notions such as co-constitution, rule, structure, agent, norm and resource appear as concepts that guide interpretation processes by fixing the nature of meanings. They concentrate constructivist lenses on particular practices while also limiting the complexity of meaning.
As the two parts of a single approach, these dimensions, namely epistemology and ontology, create a tension (Doty 1997, 370). On one side, interpreters attribute different degrees of stability, independence or ‘reality’ to their basic ontological concepts, which appear as entities that are somehow above interpretation itself and thus above the rest of the meanings practiced in the social world (e.g., Giddens 1979; Wendt 1987). In other cases, they momentarily act ‘as if’ they were real in order to produce knowledge (Onuf 2013, 29). On the other side, the notion of a constructed social reality problematizes the interpretations realized by scholars themselves. It questions the ‘independent’ status of interpretations by reminding authors that they may be also limiting the complexity of meaning or silencing voices. Due to their own situated assumptions, their inner discursive position of “proximity” (Foucault 1972, 111), and the implications that may unfold from their interpretations (Lynch 2014, 17), they hereby appear as more equal participants of social construction as well.
While studying Indianismo1 in Bolivia, a set of discourses emerging from indigenous social movements and intellectuals struggling to resist colonialism and its different expressions, I often found myself at the heart of this tension. Because I was problematically excluding relevant meanings, the intellectual production that I followed within a particular branch of Indianismo often pushed against some of my own ontological assumptions. There was a “gap and a silence” due to some of the constructivist ontological assumptions that I was using (Doty 1997, 365). In order to engage with this branch of decolonial Indianismo, I found myself progressively prioritizing the epistemological importance of meaning, while leaving aside the stability of ontological concepts that were granted independent status. This helped me to realize that some branches of Indianismo were actually sustaining and using the very instability of meaning in order to build their political discourse.
Historically, Indianismo has been concerned with the conformation of a common indigenous platform to struggle against colonialisms and dominations. At the same time, however, much of Indianismo seeks to emphasize the importance of also respecting the differences between communities, histories, truths and experiences of oppression. This tension between a common political platform and the respect of differences is the normative heart of Indianismo. The tension is often solved in different ways by each indianista branch, but at least since the 1970s some of their discussions began thinking about decolonial possibilities that went beyond their own context and tackled broader issues of coexistence. This group of intellectuals and social movements, namely decolonial indianistas, often sustained the very tension that emerged from creating a common platform while also respecting differences (e.g., Fausto Reinaga 1971 and 1978; Ramiro Reinaga 1972; Ticona 2000 and 2011; Rivera 1999; Villalba 2013; Ari 2014). They sought to sustain this tension through every dimension of decolonial Indianismo in order to allow for a different form of knowledge, social reality, and politico-normative project. This normative tension thus created enormous epistemological and ontological questions, which have important implications for current ways to think about issues of coexistence. The very act of defining and fixing an a priori constructivist ontology would thus have foreclosed the possibility of studying these discussions. My research of this branch of decolonial Indianismo and its implications for dominant notions of international coexistence thus emphasized in Constructivism the challenge that lives within this approach and it pushed towards a more epistemologically driven form of interpretivism.
The relevance of Indianismo and the importance of studying its decolonial project are multifaceted. First, Indianismo is related to important historical experiences of struggles against colonialism and homogenization (Ticona 2013, 153), which led the movement to a deep concern for political struggle and respect for difference at the same time (Willem A. 2004, 92). Second, Indianismo is an innovative but understudied project that is already having a significant impact on domestic, regional and international politics regarding indigenous peoples. The work of several social movements, Evo Morales’ speeches in the UN and the Bolivian Constitution of 2009 are examples of this impact. Third, I focus specifically on the analysis of the potential implications of the decolonial indianista notion of coexistence for current United Nations’ ideas of diversity and Liberal order, which seek to respect difference, but foreclose the possibility of discussing its own boundaries of exclusion. Instead, Indianismo exposes the colonial leqacies of Liberal notions of coexistence while expanding the possibility of discussing dynamic and more reflexive types of relationships. It expands realms of thinkability.
In order to achieve this goal, I follow the genealogical process of emergence, struggle and development of decolonial Indianismo. From this descriptive basis, I play the potential implications of these indianista discussions off against the Liberal understanding of diversity, which often acts, within the United Nations, as the value that defines currently dominant notions of world coexistence. In order to listen to and engage with Indianismo, I thus seek to emphasize in Constructivism the possibility of a more open and contextually tactical form of interpretivism.
As Maja Zehfuss affirms, the assumption of epistemological realism in the construction of ontological concepts often leads to the unaware delimitation of meaning and the predefinition of a politics of reality (Zehfuss 2002, 250). In my research, the silences and gaps that often confronted my interpretation process led me to seek a way to value meaning while also undoing predefinitions of what meaning ’is’. This focus pushed my interpretation of Constructivism towards the more poststructuralist side of the “spectrum” (Klotz and Lynch 2007, 4).
In order to achieve this level of openness in the interpretation of meaning, I followed Michael Foucault’s definition of practice and discourse. Foucault asserts that his field of enquiry proceeds from the “fact of discourse” (Foucault 1972, 22) and not from the secret or hidden structure that causally shapes meaning independently or ‘as if’ it were reality itself. In a sense, then, Foucault locates the idea of an empirical fact of potentially shared meaning as a starting basis (i.e., condition of possibility). This basis is not a solid or even intelligible foundation. To the contrary, Foucault does not seek to fix or explain the previous structure, foundation, or basis of meaning. “We must be ready to receive every moment of discourse in its sudden irruption; in its punctuality in which it appears, and in that temporal dispersion that enables it to be repeated, known, forgotten, transformed, utterly erased, and hidden, far from all view, in the dust of books” (Foucault 1972, 25).
This condition of possibility, namely the “fact of discourse”, entails a tension between two different sides. On one side, it acts as an assumption that grants value and social relevance to the meanings grasped by an interpreter. Foucault accomplishes this by acknowledging that the fact of discourse includes a momentarily fixed meaning that is not individually arbitrary. In this sense, Foucault asserts that the basic unit of discourse is the statement, which is “a function of existence that properly belongs to signs and on the basis of which one may then decide, through analysis or intuition, whether or not they make sense” (86, italic by author). This “sense” cannot be individually arbitrary if it is to be regarded as valid knowledge in some sort of way (29). This is why Foucault uses the assumption of the “archive” in order to say that there may be something unintelligibly connecting what the interpreter grasps and what others may understand. This assumption makes enunciability possible (129), endows discourse with the possibility of a basis of social validity or sharedness, and is what allows Foucault to say that a discourse can be “repeated” or shared (25). On the other side of this tension, however, Foucault renounces the actual explanation of this basis for meaning, namely the archive (25). He asserts that the exhaustive and ahistorical definition of the archive is an impossible task (130). Foucault thus avoids fixing the ontology of meaning and the explanation of how we know it, but he also acknowledges the potential non-arbitrariness of meaning and still enables the openness I needed in order to study the tension from which decolonial Indianismo proceeds.
This unstable condition of possibility unsettles both the epistemological and ontological realms of knowledges because it includes them as equal dimensions located amongst every other meaning. This is how I find a more open possibility to study the discursive heart of decolonial Indianismo. By assuming that meaning can be grasped in potentially non-arbitrary ways, while also acknowledging that the ontological explanation of meaning, as well as the epistemological description of how we know it, remain a void, Foucault enables the study of meaning in a much more unstable sense. He makes the field of interpretation broader by locating epistemology and ontology also within the realms of social construction. By proceeding from this interpretivist perspective, Foucault renounces the theory of “truth correspondence” (Lynch 2014, 16) not only in terms of a direct connection between language and reality out there, but also in the sense that discourse itself is detached from any sort of fixed notion of intersubjectivity, linguistic structuralism, foundation, or causally previous definition of meaning. He makes foundations important parts of our areas of interpretation.
As a consequence of this notion of the fact of discourse, interpretation focuses on the unexplained, but still important, moment of signification called practice. It focuses on the moment at which meaning and power are momentarily fixed through practices or the “doing” of discourse (Foucault 1972, 28). In other words, when discourse happens, interpreters can grasp a momentary functioning that makes sense of the group of signs settled in a practice (87). This perspective “untames” practices and unleashes a broad field of possibilities in relationship to meaning (Doty 1997, 376). Practice is thus understood as the moment of signification and the focal center or datum of interpretation. Here, focusing on practices allows the interpreter to account for a deeper level of differences in the ways that meanings construct social realities. It enables the very examination of other epistemologies and ontologies.
This focus on the instability and complexity of meaning leads Constructivism away from other definitions of practice, which often use this concept as a starting point from which meaning can be re-fixed. In this sense, Emanuel Adler asserts that his framework proceeds from practices in order to build the structures that conform security communities such as NATO (2008, 197). Here, practices are understood as the gateway from which interpreters can actually access the intersubjectivity that causally shapes agents and practices. Since Adler assumes this cognitive possibility of accessing the causally previous workings of meanings and he forgets that his interpretations emerge only from practices, he grants his own ontology a structural status that re-solidifies particular meanings. Then, he forecloses the possibility of analyzing other dimensions of the complexity of meaning.
Instead, through a more open notion of practices, I was able to use an interpretivist approach that allowed me to understand how a particular branch of decolonial Indianismo was often using the epistemological and ontological idea of the instability of meaning, as well as tension, in order to struggle against totalizing forms of colonialism. In order to achieve this goal, this form of Indianismo proceeds from a “cosmo-vitalist” notion of “language in life” (Ramiro Reinaga 1972, 76), which does not pretend to know the foundational definition of how we access truths, but acknowledges that meaning is still communally shared. It uses, so to speak, “the fact of community” as a condition of possibility for decoloniality within a tension. On one side, this notion allows Indianismo to create the possibility of defining bounded commonalities that are separated from colonialisms and based on particular moments of community sharednesses. It enables it to create the condition of possibility for political struggle. On the other side, Indianismo is often confronted by the silences that its own basis of commonality might create against particular experiences of oppression or voices of struggle. Because it proceeds from the very acknowledgment of communal forms of truths, however, Indianismo can still deconstruct its boundaries and re-open the possibility of defining a new commonality to separate it from colonialism again. That is, Indianismo can momentarily constrain the degree of difference that ought to be respected within the boundary of equality, but when it excludes communal experiences of oppression, history, truths, identity, etc., Indianismo can also reflexively deconstruct its own notion of decolonial coexistence and re-discuss its context-dependent boundaries in order to re-shape its own political platform. This is how decolonial Indianismo expands the possibility of discussing a different form of coexistence based on a normative struggle for equality without homogenization and difference without hierarchy. It is in this sense that decolonial Indianismo led me to untame practices. Unfortunately, the complexity of Indianismo, its limitations, and its branches cannot be discussed here, but I hope that this brief illustration showed how the tactical opening of this interpretivist form of Constructivism enabled me to understand a much deeper and otherwise excluded level of analysis.
In order to select the practices that were included in my process of interpretation, I used three strategies. First, I allowed for practices themselves to begin defining the boundaries of the discourse I sought to analyze. That is, the comprehension of practices by self-nominated “indianistas” or explicitly related to “Indianismo” were used as an empirical point of departure. Hence, the study of intellectuals such as Fausto Reinaga, who is often considered as either the father of Indianismo or one of its most important intellectuals, allowed me to begin defining some of the discursive characteristics of Indianismo. From there, the disputed nature of Indianismo allowed me to interpret other activists and intellectuals from Bolivia and the region. The boundaries of the different types of Indianismos thus began emerging from a dialogue between my interpretations and the practices that I took into account.
Second, I used a particular definition of genealogical discourse analysis, which located Indianismo as a subject of an endogenous and exogenous historical process of meaning contestation (Klotz and Lynch 2007, 31). I used genealogy to understand the disputed emergence and the characteristics of Indianismos, but I also located this set of practices in a systematic dialogue against the theoretical approaches that claim to know it. In this sense, I used genealogy as a “way of playing local, discontinuous, disqualified, or nonlegitimized knowledges off against the unitary theoretical instance that claims to be able to filter them, organize them into a hierarchy, organize them in the name of a true body of knowledge, in the name of the rights of a science that is in the hands of the few” (Foucault 1997, 9).
Because genealogy is consistent with the previously defined idea of practices (28), this field of inquiry has the advantage of enabling the possibility of interpreting voices beyond commonly accepted ontological and epistemological assumptions, which tend to organize as well as unify discourses under ideas of, for example, progress or succession (Foucault 1970, 149). The genealogical concern for “desubjugation” thus emphasizes the interpretation of practices of separation and difference (Foucault 1997, 10). In order to achieve this goal, I analyzed the intellectual production of a variety of Indianismos, focused primarily on how they created their own boundaries of separation, and examined their notions of coexistence. Once this was defined, it became possible to begin discussing the potential implications of Indianismo for other theoretical approaches of International Relations. That is, once the difference practiced by Indianismo was historically delineated, it was possible to emphasize the ways in which it confronted the unifying and universalizing boundaries pre-reflexively assumed in some perspectives of International Relations.
Additionally, genealogy focuses on the relationship between “life” and knowledges (Foucault 1997, 7). This is very important in my research because Indianismo takes different shapes depending on its relationships with the government of Bolivia, its universities, and the intellectual activists of more radical social movements. Here, genealogy helped me to show a tense relationship between different branches of Indianismo, which understood the possibility of coexistence and the definition of the previously mentioned tension in different ways. The government sought to normalize Indianismo while some of the more revolutionary branches attached the notion of decoloniality to structural ideas of class and race. To the contrary, decolonial Indianismo sought to sustain this tension and thus constructed a different form of discourse that had an enormous potential to expand International Relations theory. This separation between the branches of Indianismo was seldom described by some of the intellectuals who studied this discourse, for example, in the United States (e.g., Escobar 2010; Mignolo 2012).
Through the genealogical lenses defined above, I was also able to select particular practices by emphasizing the relevance of Indianismo in relationship to the possibility of exposing the boundaries of the notion of diversity. I thus concentrated on the historical process of transformation and struggle surrounding Indianismo in Bolivia since the dictatorship of Hugo Banzer in 1971. Since this decade, many indianista activists entered the halls of Bolivian universities (Rivera 1999, 153), increased the size of their social movement, began thinking about the international dimensions of colonialism, and engaged the intellectual productions of Fausto Reinaga, which pushed Indianismo to define itself in epistemological and ontological dimensions. This historical process of struggle showed the decolonial possibility that was forged by Indianismo and its potential for International Relations theory.
In order to find the material that I interpreted and further define some of the concepts that guided my research, I also used archival research. Throughout much of this process, I understood this method as consistently connected to the previous notion of practices. Thus, I viewed my own practices of interpretation as directly shaping the definition of the focus on particular discursive manifestations and archives (Gaillet 2012, 36). In this sense, I understood archival research also as a definitional exercise, which needed to be explicitly tackled in order to expose potential assumptions and limitations. As the topic of this chapter is not the actual discussion of the concepts that I used in order to focus my process of archival research, however, I only hope to use these definitions as a way to illustrate how the notions of untamed practices, genealogy and archival research coherently open the scope of research possibilities while also enabling a more flexible way to select practices.
Because institutions play active roles shaping historic narratives and power relations, which silence particular voices and make others more visible (Trouillot 1995, 48), I first had to tackle the question of what counts as an archive. Here, the critical understanding of archival research consistently encouraged more openness vis-à-vis the intellectual productions I took into account, the archives I visited and the ways in which I perused those archives. In this sense, I not only accounted for formal, official, or “sanctioned” collections, but I also included private compilations owned by the relatives of intellectuals, small foundations, internet blogs, neighborhood bookstores and other smaller archives. These places were extremely important to be able to understand the different branches of Indianismo and their implications. In order to find many of these archives, I also used meetings with intellectuals and family members. Additionally, this method allowed me to focus on politico-intellectual practices found in different kinds of materials such as books, essays, political pamphlets, video interviews and political magazines (Gaillet 2012, 39). It also helped me to understand the relevance of the Internet as one of the biggest archives ever constructed. This was particularly important for the interpretation of indianista blogs, which often published relevant essays, digital magazines, and video interviews.
In my particular case, another important definitional aspect shaping my archival research was related to the notion of “intellectual practices”. Since I was interested in the epistemic condition of possibility that acted as the starting point of an unstable ontology oriented toward the respect of differences as well as the deployment of a common political struggle, the definition of “intellectuality” played a very important role in the selection of practices. Here, “intellectuality” was not understood as an official activity that took place within the halls of universities or research institutions only. To the contrary, I focused more generally on how practices served in the definitions of particular types of Indianismos.
In the process of interpreting Indianismo, I also used a definition of the problem of difference to focus the selection of intellectual practices in the genealogical analysis of Indianismo and its relationship to theories of International Relations. Despite the specificity of indianista discussions about this topic and its contributions, some authors have previously discussed why the problem of difference has been relevant in international and colonial relationships (e.g., Todorov 1982; Tully 1995; Zegeye and Vambe 2006). From their work and a preliminary interpretation of indianista practices, I defined in theoretical terms what this problem entailed. This definition formed a basis of concepts that I then utilized, without fully fixing, to select particular practice.
Finally, I was able to close the process of recollection of material based on interpretation itself. At this point, I first used a strategy commonly deployed within interpretivist work. I interpreted indianista intellectual practices until the moment of saturation (Hopf 2002). Second, I focused on the possibility of achieving the main goal of genealogy, which seeks to play off alternative voices against the limiting effects of official discourses.
Consistently following the untaming of practices has important implications for constructivist research. As I mentioned above, the study of the instability of meaning and the importance of understanding differences in a more radical sense led my research towards a form of interpretation that needed to account for the possibility of knowledge beyond individual arbitrariness while also sustaining the unintelligibility of the source of this non-arbitrariness. My process of interpretation thus focused on practices in order to undo the independent, external or ‘real’ status of constructivist ontologies. The result was a much more unsettled and tactical usage of concepts, which sought to cope with higher levels of meaning complexity demanded by a particular set of practices and historical context.
As Roxanne Doty asserts, however, this focus on practices not only allows interpreters to find more radical differences in practiced meanings, but it also problematizes the separation of agency and structure (1997, 372). It tends to undo the possibility of considering interpreted meanings as external entities that are independent in some sort of previous or posterior causal sense (373). In a strict sense, then, what interpreters know are practices.
On one side, the focus on practices problematizes the claim to know what lies beneath the meanings interpreted or how interpretations shape posterior practices. The structural side of co-constitution is thus not located above or underneath the meanings grasped only in the very moments of discursive irruption. Instead, structures hereby appear as yet another construction based on the patterns grasped by an interpreter from a particular set of practices. We can assume our interpretations as causal mechanisms due to the regularity of practices with similar ‘senses’. Despite this assumption, the constructions of ‘structures’ result from the interpretation that emerges by analyzing a set of patterns found only in particular practices. In this sense, the focus on practices makes the causal connections with structures unintelligible. Instead, the idea of the fact of discourse concentrates on the moment that the ‘sense’ irrupts and it pushes the interpreter to renounce the comprehension of how this sense is caused or how it affects its own structures. It does not describe structures, their effects upon practices, or the consequences that return from practices onto structures. Strictly speaking, the usage of a condition of possibility constructed from the tension between the idea of sharedness and the void of its explanation leads to a field of knowledge that stays at the level of practices.
Unlike what some authors seem to believe (e.g., Bourdieu 1997; Habermas 1992), this implication does not lead to a radical destruction of knowledge. It does not view meaning or ‘senses’ as powerless. Instead, it assumes ‘senses’ as potentially beyond individual arbitrariness and it also connects practices to a non-structuralist definition of power. Here, Foucault asserts that power ought to be studied in the very moment at which it is fixed and creates “real” effects (Foucault 1997, 28). Strictly speaking, Foucault does not seek to know the very structure of power as if it were an asset or an object that exogenously affected social worlds. Instead, he understands power in its “circularity” and he focuses on the moment in which our worlds are constituted. In this sense, the process of constitution of bodies, states, institutions, political collective groups, etc. becomes intrinsically related to practices or moments of signification. They are grasped only in the sudden irruption of discourse, which does not expose the totality or the structure of power, but displays one of its momentary ‘effects’. Practices are thus sensical, potentially non-arbitrary, and powerful, but they do not represent previous or posterior structures.
On the other side of co-constitution, this approach also leads to a very similar implication in the study of the agent. The focus on practices enables a field of knowledge that stays within the possibility of interpreting how meaning is grasped successfully in particular irruptions. Accordingly, subjects and identities are also totalities of meanings interpreted in practices (Foucault 1972, 55). Here, our own constructivist processes of interpretation do not reach the foundation of an identity, the essence of an agent, the psychology of an actor, or the independent identity of someone. Instead, we construct subjects based on the patterns or dynamics that we may grasp from the practices we analyze. In this sense, the agent is also an ontological construction that results from our own practices of interpretation. Strictly speaking, then, the objective root of an identity is unintelligible and the effects that practices may have are unpredictable.
Despite the possibility of opening the scope of constructivist research to other dimensions of difference, then, the untaming of practices also creates a humbling effect. It prevents interpreters from considering their research and ontological constructions as structural or beyond the ephemerality of practices. In this sense, our own constructions appear as more limited because they are viewed as more strictly related to a particular set of practices and they are not assumed as corresponding to some kind of continuing structure or agent out there. To the contrary, the assumption of epistemological realism (e.g., Giddens 1979) tends to view interpretations as more stable or continuing beyond the practices taken into account. Because it views its interpretations as corresponding to structures of intersubjectivity, epistemological realism grants itself a higher degree of generalizability, which can lead interpreters to ignore the analysis of their own boundaries or the ways in which they artificially limit the complexity of meaning. It can also potentially silence other voices, the emergence of new actors, and the exploration of new possibilities to expand what appears as thinkable.
In this sense, the centrality of practice emphasizes the role of reflexivity, which is the capacity to turn the analysis upon our own limitations and assumptions. In other words, interpreters are hereby viewed as within the construction of social reality. Because they are creating their interpretation through the very medium that everyone else uses when settling meanings and fixing social reality, they can grasp meanings and find the regularities of ‘senses’. They participate in the unintelligible archive and create knowledge thanks to their “proximity” (Foucault 1972, 111). Hence, interpreters do not appear as reaching what lies beneath or in the aftermath of practices. They are also not viewed as constructing an independent ontology. The untaming of practice further undoes the separation between a subject and an object (Doty 1997, 370), which creates a deeper possibility to turn the magnifying glass upon interpretation itself.
As I mentioned above, this does not make knowledge less relevant or less valid. It simply creates more space to question what may be excluded or what may have changed since particular practices were analyzed. As such, the focus on practices allows for constructivist interpreters to expand their research tactically whenever new salient identities emerge, new social movements influence the international arena, different normative projects struggle against particular injustices, other voices problematize particular epistemologies, alternative practices define social reality based on different ontologies, etc. On the other side, however, the tactical possibility of taking into account the more radical differences emerging from particular contexts of practices leads interpreters away from parsimonious and more systematically pre-defined processes of interpretation. This drawback puts more pressure on interpreters to familiarize themselves with the contexts that they take into account, which can lead towards research methodologies that require resources sometimes unavailable (e.g., on-site ethnographic research, extended periods of on-site archival research, participatory observation, etc.).
Overall, engaging with indianista decolonial voices led me to be concerned with deeper levels of differences previously excluded. Each group within Indianismo solved the tension between equality and difference in particular ways, but the decolonial branch achieved this goal by actually staying within this tension and analyzing its implications for international politics. This voice brings with it a different way to see the world and a deeper discussion about global possibilities of coexistence and decoloniality. It also has profound implications for the way in which we think about knowledge production and International Relations. With the help of Roxanne Doty, Maja Zehfuss and Michel Foucault, I sought to untame practice and unveil other dimensions of meaning, which were relevant to understand the potential expansion of the realm of thinkability that decolonial Indianismo provides.
Clearly, this discussion destroyed neither the possibility of knowledge production nor the usage of concepts of interpretation. As it is possible to see throughout this chapter, I also used several concepts to delineate my own process of interpretation and select particular manifestations of meaning (e.g., practice, genealogy, archival research, intellectual practices, problem of coexistence, etc.). However, the emphasis on the epistemological understanding of language as the medium through which people relate to the world reminds interpreters that their own productions are also constructions. It sustains the foundational void from which Foucault proceeds and it questions the possibility of over-generalizing particular constructions.
This concentration on practices thus creates an “unfinished project” that enables a broader field of interpretation (Doty 1997, 387). As many could point out, the importance of meaning openness may vary with the topics or issues that scholars seek to study. In my case, the deep levels of differences that confronted my assumptions whenever I interpreted some of the dimensions of the indianista discourse increased the relevance of following meaning beyond ontological and epistemological predefinitions. It led to a form of Constructivism that needed to continue moving because it avoided foreclosing discussions and interpretations. It located practices at the center of knowledge production while unsettling meaning. This contextualization of interpretation, together with the possibility of opening to a broader engagement with the potential complexity of meaning, makes Constructivism more tactical. It focuses on the analysis of the different ways in which the world is constructed without actually pre-answering its own question. Only then will Constructivism be able to interpret more radically different ways to construct international social realities. Only then will it be able to cope tactically with the complexity of meaning while also adapting conceptually for particular interpretive purposes.
Adler, Emanuel (2008) The Spread of Security Communities: Communities of Practice, Self-Restraint, and NATO’s post-Cold War Transformation. European Journal of International Relations 14: 195–230.
Ari, Waskar (2014) Earth Politics. Religion, Decolonization, and Bolivia’s Indigenous Intellectuals. Durham, S.C.: Duke University Press.
Assies, Willem (2004) Bolivia: A Gasified Democracy. European Review of Latin American and Caribbean Studies 76: 25–43.
———(2009) Pueblos Indígenas y sus Demandas en los Sistemas Políticos. Revista CIBOB d’Afers Internacionals 85: 89–107.
Bourdieu, Pierre (1997) Pascalian Meditations. Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press.
Doty, Roxanne Lynn (1997) Aporia: a Critical Exploration of the Agent-Structure Problematique in International Relations Theory. European Journal of International Relations 3: 365–392.
Escobar, Arturo (2010) Latin America at Crossroads, Alternative modernizations, post-liberalism, or post-development? Cultural Studies 24: 1–65.
Foucault, Michel (1970) The Order of Things, An Archaeology of Human Sciences. New York: Vintage Books.
———(1972) The Archaeology of Knowledge, and The Discourse on Language. New York: Vintage Books.
———(1997) Society Must Be Defended, Lectures At The Collège De France, 1975–1976. New York: Picador.
Gaillet, Lynée Lewis (2012) Forming Archival Research Methodologies. College Composition and Communication 64: 35–58.
Giddens, Anthony (1979) Central Problems in Social Theory, Action, Structure and Contradiction in Social Analysis. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press.
Habermas, Jürgen (1992) Postmetaphysical Thinking: Philosophical Essays. Cambridge, Mass.: The MIT Press.
Hopf, Ted (2002) Social Construction of International Politics, Identities and Foreign Policies, Moscow, 1995 and 1999. Ithaca, N.Y. and London: Cornell University Press.
Klotz, Audie and Cecilia Lynch (2007) Strategies for Research in Constructivist International Relations. New York: M.E. Sharpe.
Lynch, Cecelia (2014) Interpreting International Politics. New York: Routledge.
Mignolo, Walter (2012) “Decolonizing Western Epistemology/Building Decolonial Epistemologies” in Ada María Isasi-Díaz and Eduardo Mendieta (eds.) Decolonizing Epistemologies, Latina/o Theology and Philosophy, 19–44. New York: Fordham University Press.
Onuf, Nicholas (1989) World of Our Making: Rules and Rule in Social Theory and International Relations. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press.
———(2013) Making Sense, Making Worlds. Constructivism in Social Theory and International Relations. London: Routledge.
Reinaga, Fausto (1971) Tesis India. La Paz: PIB.
———(1978) La Razón y el Indio. La Paz: Litografías e Imprentas Unidas.
Reinaga, Ramiro Burgoa (1972) Ideología y Raza en América Latina. La Paz: Ediciones Futuro Bolivia.
Rivera, Silvia (1999) Sendas y Senderos de la Ciencia Social Andina. Dispositio, Crítica Cultural en Latinoamérica: Paradigmas Globales y Enunciaciones Locales 24: 149–169.
Ticona, Alejo Esteban (2000) Organización y Liderazgo Aymara, la Experiencia Indígena en la Política Boliviana, 1979-1996. Cochabamba: AGRUCO, Agroecología Universidad Cochabamba, Universidad de la Cordillera.
———(2011) Bolivia en el Inicio del Pachakuti: La larga lucha anticolonial de los pueblos Aimara y Quechua. La Paz: Akal Ediciones S.A.
———(2013) “El Indianismo de Fausto Reinaga: Orígenes, Desarrollo y experiencia en Qullasuyu-Bolivia.” Ph.D. diss., Universiad Andina Simón Bolívar, Sede Ecuador.
Todorov, Tzvetan (1982) The Conquest of America, The Question of the Other. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press.
Trouillot, Michel-Rolph (1995) Silencing the Past. Power and the Production of History. Boston: Beacon Press.
Tully, James (1995) Strange Multiplicity, Constitutionalism in an Age of Diversity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Villalba, Unai (2013) Buen Vivir vs Development: a paradigm shift in the Andes? Third World Quarterly 34 (8): 1427–1442.
Wendt, Alexander E. (1987) The Agent ̶ Structure Problem in International Relations Theory. International Organization 43: 335–370.
Zegeye, Abebe and Maurice Vambe (2006) African Indigenous Knowledge Systems. Review (Fernand Braudel Center) 29: 329–358.
Zehfuss, Maja (2002) Constructivism in International Relations: The Politics of Reality. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.