Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-gbm5v Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-17T16:09:31.209Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Stigma Management in International Relations: Transgressive Identities, Norms, and Order in International Society

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 January 2014

Rebecca Adler-Nissen
Rebecca Adler-Nissen*
Affiliation:
Department of Political Science, University of Copenhagen. E-mail: ran@ifs.ku.dk
Get access

Abstract

This article develops a theoretical approach to stigma in international relations and resituates conventional approaches to the study of norms and international order. Correcting the general understanding that common values and norms are the building blocks of social order, this article claims that international society is in part constructed through the stigmatization of “transgressive” and norm-violating states and their ways of coping with stigma. Drawing on Erving Goffman, this article shows that states are not passive objects of socialization, but active agents. Stigmatized states cope strategically with their stigma and may, in some cases, challenge and even transform a dominant moral discourse. A typology of stigma management strategies is presented: stigma recognition (illustrated by Germany); stigma rejection (illustrated by Austria); and finally counter-stigmatization (illustrated by Cuba). Because of the lack of agreement on what constitutes normal state behavior, attempts to impose stigma may even have the opposite effect—the stigmatizers become the transgressive. A focus on stigma opens up new avenues for research on norms, identities, and international order.

Type
Research Article
Information
International Organization , Volume 68 , Issue 1 , January 2014 , pp. 143 - 176
Copyright
Copyright © The IO Foundation 2014 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Acharya, Amitav. 2004. How Ideas Spread: Whose Norms Matter? Norm Localization and Institutional Change in Asian Regionalism. International Organization 58 (2):239–75.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Acharya, Amitav. 2012. Ideas, Norms and Regional Orders. In International Relations Theory and Regional Transformation, edited by Paul, T.V., 183–209. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Adler, Emanuel. 2005. Barry Buzan's Use of Constructivism to Reconstruct the English School: “Not All the Way Down.” Millennium: Journal of International Studies 34 (1):171–82.Google Scholar
Adler, Emanuel, and Pouliot, Vincent. 2011. International Practices. International Theory 3 (1):1–36.Google Scholar
Adler-Nissen, Rebecca. 2008. The Diplomacy of Opting Out: A Bourdiendian Approach to National Integration Strategies. Journal of Common Market Studies 46 (3):663–84.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ahtisaari, Martti, Frowein, Jochen, and Oreja, Marelino. 2000. Report by Martti Ahtisaari, Jochen Frowein, and Marelino Oreja, 8 September. Paris. Available at ⟨http://www2.ohchr.org/english/bodies/hrc/docs/ngos/HOSI-1.pdf⟩. Accessed 26 August 2013.Google Scholar
Art, David. 2006. The Politics of the Nazi Past in Germany and Austria. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Azicri, Max. 2009. The Castro-Chávez Alliance. Latin American Perspectives 36 (1):99–110.Google Scholar
Barnett, Michael N. 1998. Dialogues in Arab Politics: Negotiations in Regional Order. New York: Columbia University Press.Google Scholar
Bellamy, Alex J., ed. 2004. International Society and Its Critics. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Berger, Thomas U. 1997. The Past in the Present: Historical Memory and German National Security Policy. German Politics 6 (1):39–59.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Berridge, Geoff R. 1994. Talking to the Enemy—How States Without “Diplomatic Relations” Communicate. London: St. Martin's Press.Google Scholar
Biddiscombe, Perry. 2001. Dangerous Liaisons: The Anti-Fraternization Movement in the US Occupation Zones of Germany and Austria, 1945–1948. Journal of Social History 34 (3):611–47.Google Scholar
Bischof, Günter J., and Gehler, Michael. 2006. Austrian Foreign Policy After World War II. In Austrian Foreign Policy in Historical Context, edited by Pelinka, Anton and Gehler, Michael, 1–24. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction.Google Scholar
Bolton, John R. 2002. “Beyond the Axis of Evil: Additional Threats from Weapons of Mass Destruction.” Speech to the Heritage Foundation, Washington, DC, 6 May. Google Scholar
Bozo, Frédéric. 2007. Mitterrand's France, the End of the Cold War, and German Unification: A Reappraisal. Cold War History 7 (4):455–78.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Brandström, Annika, Bynander, Frederik, and Hart, Poul. 2004. Governing by Looking Back: Historical Analogies and Crisis Management. Public Administration 82 (1):191–210.Google Scholar
Brenner, Philip, Haney, Patrick J., and Vanderbush, Walter. 2002. The Confluence of Domestic and International Interests: US Policy Toward Cuba, 1998–2001. International Studies Perspectives 3 (2):192–208.Google Scholar
Bryant, Clifton D. 1990. Deviant People: Handling Themselves. In Deviant Behavior: Readings in the Sociology of Norm Violations, edited by Bryant, Clifton D., 315–23. New York: Hemisphere Publishing.Google Scholar
Bull, Hedley. 1977. The Anarchical Society: A Study of Order in World Politics. New York: Columbia University Press.Google Scholar
Bull, Hedley, and Watson, Adam. 1985. Introduction. In The Expansion of International Society, edited by Bull, Hedley and Watson, Adam, 1–7. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Buruma, Ian. 1994. The Wages of Guilt: Memories of War in Germany and Japan. London: Jonathan Cape.Google Scholar
Buzan, Barry. 1993. From International System to International Society: Structural Realism and Regime Theory Meet the English School. International Organization 47 (3):327–52.Google Scholar
Buzan, Barry. 2006. An English School Perspective on “What Kind of World Order?” Cooperation and Conflict 41 (4):364–69.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Buzan, Barry, and Little, Richard. 2010. The Historical Expansion of International Society. In The International Studies Encyclopedia, edited by Denemark, Robert Allen. Chichester, UK: Wiley-Blackwell.Google Scholar
Campbell, David. 1998. Writing Security: United States Foreign Policy and the Politics of Identity. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.Google Scholar
Campbell, Kurt M. 2001. Power Houses. The National Interest 64 (Summer):115–20.Google Scholar
Checkel, Jeffrey T. 2012. Norm Entrepreneurship: Theoretical and Methodological Challenges. Unpublished manuscript, Simon Fraser University, Vancouver, BC. Google Scholar
Coombes, Annie E. 2003. History After Apartheid: Visual Culture and Public Memory in a Democratic South Africa. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.Google Scholar
Cortell, Andrew P., and Davis, James W.. 2005. When Norms Clash: International Norms, Domestic Practices, and Japan's Internalisation of the GATT/WTO. Review of International Studies 31 (1):3–25.Google Scholar
Crocker, Jennifer, and Major, Brenda. 1989. Social Stigma and Self-Esteem: The Self-Protective Properties of Stigma. Psychological Review 96 (4):608–30.Google Scholar
Dunne, Tim. 2001. Sociological Investigations: Instrumental, Legitimist and Coercive Interpretations of International Society. Millennium: Journal of International Studies 30 (1):67–91.Google Scholar
Dunne, Tim. 2010. The English School. In International Relations Theory: Discipline and Diversity, edited by Dunne, Tim, Kurki, Milja, and Smith, Steve, 135–56. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Durkheim, Emile. 1982. The Rules of Sociological Method. Edited, with an Introduction by Lukes, Steven. New York: Free Press.Google Scholar
Epstein, Charlotte. 2012a. Stop Telling Us How to Behave: Socialization or Infantilization? International Studies Perspectives 13 (2):135–45.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Epstein, Charlotte. 2012b. Symposium: Interrogating the Use of Norms in International Relations: An Introduction. International Studies Perspectives 13 (2):121–22.Google Scholar
Erikson, Kai T. 1962. Notes on the Sociology of Deviance. Social Problems 9 (4):307–14.Google Scholar
Falkner, Gerda. 2001. The Europeanisation of Austria: Misfit, Adaptation and Controversies. European Integration Online Papers 5 (13):1–23.Google Scholar
Finnemore, Martha, and Sikkink, Kathryn. 1998. International Norm Dynamics and Political Change. International Organization 52 (4):887–917.Google Scholar
Fisk, Daniel W. 2001. Cuba: The End of an Era. Washington Quarterly 24 (1):93–107.Google Scholar
Gheciu, Alexandra. 2005. Security Institutions as Agents of Socialization? NATO and the “New Europe.” International Organization 59 (4):973–1012.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Goffman, Erving. 1963. Stigma: Notes on the Management of Spoiled Identity. New York: Prentice Hall.Google Scholar
Gong, Gerrit. 1984. The Standard of “Civilization” in International Society. Oxford: Clarendon.Google Scholar
Green, Simon, Hough, Dan, and Miskimmon, Alister. 2012. The Politics of the New Germany. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Hacking, Ian. 2002. Historical Ontology. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Happold, Matthew. 2000. Fourteen Against One: The EU Member States' Response to Freedom Party Participation in the Austrian Government. International and Comparative Law Quarterly 49 (4):953–63.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Herb, G.H. 2004. Double Vision: Territorial Strategies in the Construction of National Identities in Germany, 1949–1979. Annals of the Association of American Geographers 94 (1):140–64.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hoffmann, Matthew J. 2010. Norms and Social Constructivism in International Relations. In The International Studies Encyclopedia, edited by Denemark, Robert Allen. Chichester, UK: Wiley-Blackwell.Google Scholar
Howard, Marc M. 2000. Can Populism Be Suppressed in a Democracy? Austria, Germany, and the European Union. East European Politics and Societies 14 (2):18–32.Google Scholar
Jackson, Patrick Thaddeus. 2006. Civilizing the Enemy: German Reconstruction and the Invention of the West. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.Google Scholar
Jervis, Robert. 1976. Perception and Misperception in International Politics. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Johnston, Alastair Iain. 2001. Treating International Institutions as Social Environments. International Studies Quarterly 45 (4):487–515.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Johnston, Alastair Iain. 2007. Social States: China in International Institutions, 1980–2000. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Jones, Branwen G. 2008. The Global Political Economy of Social Crisis: Towards a Critique of the “Failed State” Ideology. Review of International Political Economy 15 (2):180–205.Google Scholar
Jones, C.P. 1987. Stigma: Tattooing and Branding in Graeco-Roman Antiquity. Journal of Roman Studies 77:139–55.Google Scholar
Katz, M.N. 1983. The Soviet-Cuban Connection. International Security 8 (1):88–112.Google Scholar
Klotz, Audie. 1999. Norms in International Relations: The Struggle Against Apartheid. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kusow, Abdi M. 2004. Contesting Stigma: On Goffman's Assumptions of Normative Order. Symbolic Interaction 27 (2):179–97.Google Scholar
Laffey, Mark, and Weldes, Jutta. 2008. Decolonizing the Cuban Missile Crisis. International Studies Quarterly 52 (3):555–77.Google Scholar
Lancaster, Thomas, and Montinola, Gabriella. 1997. Toward a Methodology for the Comparative Study of Political Corruption. Crime, Law and Social Change 27 (3):185–206.Google Scholar
Laslett, Barbara, and Warren, Carol A.B.. 1975. Losing Weight: The Organizational Promotion of Behavior Change. Social Problems 23 (1):69–80.Google Scholar
Leconte, Cecile. 2005. The Fragility of the EU as a “Community of Values”: Lessons From the Haider Affair. West European Politics 28 (3):620–49.Google Scholar
Lind, Jennifer. 2008. Sorry States: Apologies in International Politics. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.Google Scholar
Linden, Ronald H. 1993. Analogies and the Loss of Community: Cuba and East Europe in the 1990s. In Cuba After the Cold War, edited by Lago, Carmelo Mesa, 17–58. Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press.Google Scholar
Link, Bruce G., and Phelan, Jo C.. 2001. Conceptualizing Stigma. Annual Review of Sociology 27 (1):363–85.Google Scholar
MacKenzie, Megan, and Sesay, Mohamed. 2012. No Amnesty from/for the International: The Production and Promotion of TRCs as an International Norm in Sierra Leone. International Studies Perspectives 13 (2):146–63.Google Scholar
Maier, Charles S. 1988. The Unmasterable Past: History, Holocaust, and German National Identity. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Mattern, Janice Bially. n.d. Illicit Sovereigns: Transnational Crime and Abject Rage. Unpublished manuscript, National University of Singapore. Google Scholar
Misztal, Barbara A. 2001. Normality and Trust in Goffman's Theory of Interaction Order. Sociological Theory 19 (3):312–24.Google Scholar
Mitzen, Jennifer. 2006. Ontological Security in World Politics: State Identity and the Security Dilemma. European Journal of International Relations 12 (3):341–70.Google Scholar
Mor, Ben. 2009. Accounts and Impression Management in Public Diplomacy: Israeli Justification of Force During the 2006 Lebanon War. Global Change, Peace and Security 21 (2):219–39.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Morley, Morris H. 1984. The United States and the Global Economic Blockade of Cuba: A Study in Political Pressures on America's Allies. Canadian Journal of Political Science 17 (1):25–48.Google Scholar
Moses, A. Dirk. 2007. Stigma and Sacrifice in the Federal Republic of Germany. History and Memory 19 (2):139–80.Google Scholar
Musner, Lutz. 2000. Memory and Globalization: Austria's Recycling of the Nazi Past and Its European Echoes. New German Critique 80 (Spring–Summer):77–91.Google Scholar
Neumann, Iver B. 1999. Uses of the Other: “The East” in European Identity Formation. Manchester, UK: Manchester University Press.Google Scholar
Neumann, Iver B., and Welsh, Jennifer M.. 1991. The Other in European Self-Definition: An Addendum to the Literature on International Society. Review of International Studies 17 (4):327–48.Google Scholar
Ogilvie-White, Tanya. 2007. International Responses to Iranian Nuclear Defiance: The Non-Aligned Movement and the Issue of Non-Compliance. European Journal of International Law 18 (3):453–76.Google Scholar
Perez-Lopez, Jorge F. 1991. Swimming Against the Tide: Implications for Cuba of Soviet and Eastern European Reforms in Foreign Economic Relations. Journal of Interamerican Studies and World Affairs 33 (2):81–139.Google Scholar
Reus-Smit, Christian. 1999. The Moral Purpose of the State: Culture, Social Identity, and Institutional Rationality in International Relations. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Reus-Smit, Christian. 2002. Imagining Society: Constructivism and the English School. British Journal of Politics and International Relations 4 (3):487–509.Google Scholar
Roy, Joaquín. 2000. Cuba, the United States, and the Helms-Burton Doctrine: International Reactions. Gainesville: University Press of Florida.Google Scholar
Sanchez, Omar. 2002. The Sanctions Malaise: The Case of Cuba. International Journal 58 (2):347–472.Google Scholar
Schimmelfennig, Frank. 2002. Goffman Meets IR: Dramaturgical Action in International Community. International Review of Sociology 12 (3):417–37.Google Scholar
Suppan, Arnold. 2000. The Current Political Crisis in Austria and the International Response. Paper presented at the European Forum, Institute for International Studies, Stanford University, 24 February, Stanford, CA. Google Scholar
Suzuki, Shogo. 2009. Civilization and Empire: China and Japan's Encounter with European International Society. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Takeyh, Ray. 2004. Iran Builds the Bomb. Survival 46 (4):51–63.Google Scholar
Tannenwald, Nina. 2005. Stigmatizing the Bomb: Origins of the Nuclear Taboo. International Security 29 (4):5–49.Google Scholar
Towns, Ann. 2010. Women and States: Norms and Hierarchies in International Society. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
U.S. Congress. 1996. The Cuban Liberty and Democratic Solidarity (Libertad) Act of 1996. Title 22, Secs. 6021–91 of US Code, 104th Cong., 3 January. Google Scholar
Weldes, Jutta, and Saco, Diana. 1996. Making State Action Possible: The United States and the Discursive Construction of “The Cuban Problem,” 1960–1994. Millennium: Journal of International Studies 25 (2):361–95.Google Scholar
Wendt, Alexander. 1999. Social Theory of International Politics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wenger, Etienne. 1998. Communities of Practice: Learning, Meaning and Identity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Whitworth, Sandra. 2004. Men, Militarism, and UN Peacekeeping: A Gendered Analysis. Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner.Google Scholar
Widmaier, Wesley, and Park, Susan. 2012. Differences Beyond Theory: Structural, Strategic, and Sentimental Approaches to Normative Change. International Studies Perspectives 13 (2):123–34.Google Scholar
Wiener, Antje. 2004. Contested Compliance: Interventions on the Normative Structure of World Politics. European Journal of International Relations 10 (2):189–234.Google Scholar
Wiener, Antje. 2007. Contested Meanings of Norms: A Research Framework. Comparative European Politics 5:1–17.Google Scholar
Wiener, Antje. 2009. Enacting Meaning-in-Use: Qualitative Research on Norms and International Relations. Review of International Studies 35 (1):175–93.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wiener, Antje, and Puetter, Uwe. 2009. The Quality of Norms Is What Actors Make of It: Critical Constructivist Research on Norms. Journal of International Law and International Relations 5 (1):1–16.Google Scholar
Witte, Bruno de, and Toggenburg, Gabriel N.. 2004. Human Rights and Membership of the European Union. In The European Union Charter of Fundamental Rights, edited by Peers, Steve and Ward, Angela, 59–82. Oxford, UK: Hart.Google Scholar
Wodak, Ruth. 1991. Turning the Tables: Antisemitic Discourse in Post-War Austria. Discourse and Society 2 (1):65–83.Google Scholar
Wolff, Stefan. 2003. The German Question Since 1919: An Analysis with Key Documents. Westport, CT: Greenwood.Google Scholar
Zarakol, Ayse. 2011. After Defeat: How the East Learned to Live with the West. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Zürn, Michael, and Checkel, Jeffrey T.. 2005. Getting Socialized to Build Bridges: Constructivism and Rationalism, Europe and the Nation-State. International Organization 59 (4):1045–79.Google Scholar