1. Ideas
   1. Based around ideas
   2. Institutions
   3. Sociological way of understanding world politics
   4. War is a social practice
   5. social practices are institutionally embedded
   6. The way identities change is constructivism
2. Money
   1. Is a set of ideas
   2. Reflects a symbolic order
      1. Trade
   3. needs a shared knowledge about how system works
   4. Meaningful in a cultural context
   5. Stop believing in Money then becomes worthless
3. Key Points
   1. Concerned with Human consciousness
      1. Treat ideas as structural factors
      2. consider relationship btw ideas and material forces
      3. Interested in how agents produce forces and how forces produce agents
   2. Knowledge shapes
      1. interpret and construct social reality
   3. Normative Structures
      1. Shapes interests and identity of actors
   4. Soverignty & human rights
      1. exist due to human agreement
   5. Social Rules
      1. Regulative
   6. Social Construction
      1. denaturalises what is taken for granted
      2. asks about origins of accepted pathways & considers alternatives
   7. Power
      1. ability of one actor to get another to do something
      2. production of identities & interests to limit ability to control fate
   8. Constructivism & rational choice at odds
      1. can combine to deepen understanding of Global politics
4. Understand Causes of conflicts construction of identities
   1. fight for values - not territory
   2. Wars of Choice vs wars of necessity
      1. credibility is key
   3. just wars on humanitarian grounds a change
   4. new intervention can looklike imperialism
      1. China in Africa
   5. Political Imaging & context the threat
      1. all about decision makers
         1. not the hardware but the social context in which it sits
5. Issues
   1. No explain for good parts of Sy (NATO)
   2. Wants to describe patterns of mistrust
   3. Describe how enemies are created & policies that should follow
   4. Looks at how threats are made rather than born
      1. AQ as much a creation of Pol behaviour than born
      2. must understand social process of how war is created