The glib answer to the first question is that the discipline of IR is following trends found in the humanities and social sciences generally, albeit typically years behind other disciplines. So the shift in IR is simply a reflection of what occurred earlier elsewhere. Even if this is the case, what accounts for this shift in the first place? Some might say it is the (postmodern?) ungrounding of the terms social and cultural, making the first a less necessary place from which to theorize question of identity and the second a less objectionable place to begin such theorizations. Others might argue that the shift from the social to the cultural is less theoretical and more material, reflecting a recognition that contemporary global phenomena must be equally understood through notions of consumption (more often associated with cultural consumption) as well as through notions of production (more often associated with social construction).

Whatever the reasons for the shift in emphasis from the social to the cultural, the volumes by Vandersluis and Jahn offer an opportunity to address the more important second question: What difference does this shift make for our understanding of sovereign nation-states and for IR theory in general?

The Vandersluis volume consists of a series of engagements with “the question of how to understand the state and its relationship to identity” (p. 4), without caving into the tired debates about whether the state is whithering away in an era of globalization. Organized into two sections, “Constructions of the State” and “Beyond the National State,” the volume adopts a self-consciously social constructivist perspective. Its project is to undertake “an interrogation of the ways in which the state and sovereignty as intellectual categories and as historical practices are very slowly changing in response to the different demands, expectations, and constraints being placed upon them” (p. 1).

After a brief “Prologue” by James Mayall and Vandersluis, which does a nice job of offering a coherent overview of what is to follow, the first part of the book contains four essays that address primarily post–World War II understandings of the state. In “The State of International Relations,” Martin Shaw provides a synopsis of his historical sociological “globality” argument, which presents the contemporary international system not only as socially constructed in general terms but also as characterized by a Western unified state conglomerate and other centers of state power. Christopher Clapham's chapter, “Degrees of Statehood,” argues against an absolutist understanding based on his discussions of statehood and rival centers of power, such as guerrilla movements in sub-Sahara Africa.

The next two chapters in Part I examine the nation/state relationship. Dominique Jacquin-Berdal discuses Eritrean national identity and examines how the principle of “one-nation, one-state”—usually used to legitimize existing states—was in this case used to justify national separatism. Peter Shearman's chapter, “Nationalism, the State, and the Collapse of Communism,” analyzes the case of the former Soviet Union to suggest how nationalism, globalization, and democratization are connected in the contemporary world order.

In Part II, three essays take up alternatives to the nation as the only legitimate site for securing state identity. Tim Dunne, in “Colonial Encounters in International Relations: Reading Wight, Writing Australia,” reads Australia's encounter with colonialist diplomacy, law, and theories of identity to argue for a “radicalized post-colonial Rationalism [that] can contribute to the process of reconciliation” (p. 124). By focusing on Southeast Asia, Hari Singh, in “Hegemons and the Construction of Regions,” looks at how hegemons construct identifiable regions and how these regions influence domestic and international relations. Naomi Mobed's chapter, “Culturalizing Security: Narratives of Identity and the Politics of Exclusion in the Arabian Gulf,” examines how the practices and interests of the Gulf Cooperation Council are constructed at the intersections of two discourses of identity, one based on Western state forms and the other based on traditional religion.

Overall, the Vandersluis volume is accessible, clear, and varied. It may not offer many novel theoretical insights and does not risk straying as far away from the state and the nation as it might in the discussion of sovereign identity, but its contribution is to be found in its organization around key questions about state identity and some alternatives and in an array of strong empirical pieces, all of which enact a social constructivist project in one way or another. As Daniel Warner States in his illuminating “Epilogue,” “what makes these chapters interesting is that they indicate the variety of responses available to [what Warner calls the state/sovereignty/institutional] dialogue” (p. 197).

In many ways, Beate Jahn's volume is a nice companion to the Vandersluis collection. It also might be classified as social constructivist. Jahn traces the social construction of the concept of the state of nature, which she explains undergirds both realist and liberal conceptualizations of the state, back to its specific historical introduction by the Spanish in their encounter with the Amerindians. In so doing, she produces a straightfoward deconstruction of the nature/culture dichotomy and some of its uses in IR. Put simply, Jahn argues that there is nothing “natural” about what IR calls a state of nature, which is a cultural construct.

Jahn does not stop there. What distinguishes her book from the Vandersluis volume is her preoccupation with how the construction of the state of nature functions culturally. Drawing upon the Clifford Geertz notion of thick description, Jahn argues that state of nature stories function as a cultural context to IR theory generally. She positions herself as a cultural analyst (in addition to a social constructivist) and demonstrates how IR theory conceives of culture as a problem and nature as its solution, how culture and nature became opposed in the Spanish/Amerindian encounter, and therefore how the Western concept of the state of nature is rooted in this cross-cultural experience, thereby making it cultural rather than natural. When IR theorists base their theories on state of nature stories, which construct a hierarchy of cultures between so-called civilized and so-called primitive peoples, they are “justifying in the process the very policies which have produced injustice and inequality in the international sphere in the first place” (p. 155).

Jahn concludes: “Culture, then, exerts quite a considerable power in mainstream International Relations. For the concept of the state of nature contains a culturally peculiar understanding of human nature, history, and destiny” (p. 168). Jahn argues that IR theory would do well to abandon such a concept and is particularly well placed to do so. It should enquire “into the conditions of cooperation and conflict between cultures which are mutually constitutive and subject to change, rather than hope for the day when nature will eventually overcome culture” (p. 169).

Jahn's story is a powerful one. The author convincingly deconstructs one axis of the nature/culture dischotomy in IR theory and analyzes its effects. Even though Jahn often slips from theorizing culture as a context into theorizing it as an ontology, her analysis enables us to think of IR theory not only as socially constructed (which has become a euphemism for “change” in IR theory) but also as cultural practice, as what Geertz has called “an ensemble of stories we tell about ourselves” (Clifford Geertz, The Interpretation of Cultures, 1975, p. 448).

Overall, these two volumes lead us to engage not only with specific IR concepts, such as the sovereign nation-state or the state of nature, but also with IR theory itself conceived of as cultural practice. “Culture” in IR theory should not reductively be read as merely “change” but as complexity analyzed in much the same way Michel Foucault read power (Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, Critique of Postcolonial Reason, 1999). Such a cultural analysis of IR theory is indeed distinct from a social constructivist analysis, having implication for how we understand not only sovereign nation-states and states of nature but also IR theory more generally.