International Studies Compendium Project

Extract

Comment on this article   While previous generations of foreign policy analysis (FPA) tended to de-emphasize or ignore the role of culture, many articles and books in the subfield since the 1990s have investigated cultural influences. In the broader field of political science, scholars have struggled for decades with definitions of this concept, and it has been used in multiple ways (see Pye [1991] for a discussion). While “culture” in a general sense is the beliefs, traditions, and orientations within society about who “we” are and what “we” do, this essay addresses the definitional challenge. In fact, there are several conceptions of culture which have become dominant in FPA in particular: culture as the organization of meaning, culture as value preferences, and culture as templates for human strategy. What follows is, first, a brief background of the “return” of culture in the study of international relations (IR) and FPA, specifying the questions about culture and foreign policy (FP) that scholars have asked. A second section describes the foundations of this area of inquiry in the area of FPA. To place in relief treatment of the concept within FPA, a third section surveys the approaches taken in a few other subfields. It delineates how FPA is different and argues the “value-added” by exploring culture at the level of FPA. Fourth, the review turns to the current landscape ... log in or subscribe to read full text