Strategic culture as a meaning-making system: towards a social semiotic account of multimodal cultural constraints in international relations

IF 2.2 1区社会学 Q1 INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS

International Theory Pub Date : 2023-07-26 DOI:10.1017/s175297192300009x

Ivan Fomin

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Abstract

The article reconsiders the notion of strategic culture using fundamental categories of general and social semiotics, which make it possible to systematise and instrumentalise this concept while preserving its broad scope. The proposed framework suggests a relationalist reconceptualisation of strategic culture based on Charles Peirce's semiotic theory, thereby helping to transcend the existing controversy about how culture-as-ideas, culture-as-artefacts, and culture-as-behaviour are related to each other in strategic culture. The suggested approach helps to clarify the problematic aspects of the notion of strategic culture by redefining strategic culture as a logonomic system (a system of rules of meaning-making) that constrains interactions in strategic affairs. Such reconceptualisation helps to study how strategic cultures are reproduced not only through verbal discourse but also through other artefacts and actions. Semiotic categories also make it possible to account for important distinctions between various elements of strategic culture and formulate principles that can guide the studies of this phenomenon. The article provides some examples from the Russian strategic culture to demonstrate how the proposed framework can be applied.

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作为意义制造系统的战略文化：国际关系中多模式文化约束的社会符号学解释

本文运用一般符号学和社会符号学的基本范畴重新思考了战略文化的概念，这使得在保留其广泛范围的同时，将这一概念系统化和工具化成为可能。所提出的框架建议基于查尔斯·皮尔斯的符号学理论对战略文化进行相对论的重新定义，从而有助于超越关于文化作为思想、文化作为人工制品和文化作为行为在战略文化中如何相互关联的现有争议。所提出的方法有助于澄清战略文化概念的问题方面，将战略文化重新定义为一个限制战略事务中互动的符号系统（一个意义形成规则系统）。这种重新概念化有助于研究战略文化是如何不仅通过言语话语，而且通过其他人工制品和行动再现的。符号学范畴还可以解释战略文化的各种要素之间的重要区别，并制定指导这一现象研究的原则。本文提供了一些俄罗斯战略文化的例子，以说明如何应用所提出的框架。

本文章由计算机程序翻译，如有差异，请以英文原文为准。

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来源期刊

International Theory Multiple-

CiteScore

6.60

自引率

0.00%

发文量

期刊介绍： Editorial board International Theory (IT) is a peer reviewed journal which promotes theoretical scholarship about the positive, legal, and normative aspects of world politics respectively. IT is open to theory of absolutely all varieties and from all disciplines, provided it addresses problems of politics, broadly defined and pertains to the international. IT welcomes scholarship that uses evidence from the real world to advance theoretical arguments. However, IT is intended as a forum where scholars can develop theoretical arguments in depth without an expectation of extensive empirical analysis. IT’s over-arching goal is to promote communication and engagement across theoretical and disciplinary traditions. IT puts a premium on contributors’ ability to reach as broad an audience as possible, both in the questions they engage and in their accessibility to other approaches. This might be done by addressing problems that can only be understood by combining multiple disciplinary discourses, like institutional design, or practical ethics; or by addressing phenomena that have broad ramifications, like civilizing processes in world politics, or the evolution of environmental norms. IT is also open to work that remains within one scholarly tradition, although in that case authors must make clear the horizon of their arguments in relation to other theoretical approaches.