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Role theory, which is based on the symbolic interactionism of George H.Mead, is increasingly used in foreign policy analysis. The goal of this paperis twofold. Firstly, the text expands the conceptual framework of role theoryby incorporating the arguments of Mead’s theory of time. We argue thatnational roles have not only the relational dimension (the constitution ofroles vis-a-vis others), but also the temporal dimension. Based on thetheory of time, we conceptualize this temporal dimension by introducingthe concepts of historical self and historical other. Secondly, the articleattempts to incorporate in role theory the arguments of poststructuralismconcerning the meaning of otherness and the defining of one another forthe formation of identity. In this view, the symbolic-interactionist process of“taking the role of the other” and poststructuralist “negative othering” canbe perceived as two extremes on the continuum of modalities of theconstitutive relationship between self and the other.
Vít Beneš (Fri,) studied this question.