International Practice Theory

New Perspectives

C. Bueger, F. Gadinger

• Publisher: Palgrave Pivot
• Year: 2014
• Print ISBN: 9781137395528
• eBook ISBN: 9781137395535
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: International Relations
• Index: Politics & International Relations

How does the practice turn play out in international relations? This study offers a concise introduction to the core approaches, issues and methodology of International Practice Theory, examining the design, strategies and technique of practice theoretical research projects interested in global politics, and outlining issues for a future agenda.

1

Introducing International Practice Theory

Abstract: International Relations scholars increasingly are interested in practice. Following a larger turn to practices in the social sciences, a broad movement of scholars aims at studying practices. In this introduction we discuss what is fascinating about practice. International Practice Theory offers a genuine novel perspective on politics and international relations and comes along with a range of promises to analyze the world differently. We also provide an overview of the different strategies we adopt to explain what International Practice Theory is and does.

Keywords: International Relations Theory; Practice Theory; Practice Turn

Bueger, Christian and Frank Gadinger. International Practice Theory: New Perspectives. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014. DOI: 10.1057/9781137395535.0003.

Matt Sweetwood from Liberty, Missouri, USA, fell in love with a German girl he met at university. He followed her to Germany and they are happily married and live with three sons in Potsdam. Matt lived in Germany for over ten years, but Germans and their culture still remain a mystery to him. Professionally, he writes, directs, and edits documentary films. In his most recent feature, he set out to unravel the German soul. He decided that the best access to German identity is by understanding one of its best known cultural goods: beer. For his documentary, Beerland, he spent months travelling around visiting breweries, drinking clubs, and regular taverns. He finds that Germans are dead serious and silly at the same time, tradition-bound and weirdly visionary.

The idea that we might be able to understand Germans better by studying and experiencing one of their most recognizable habits and cultural goods – drinking beer – makes obvious sense. Whoever has had the opportunity to experience an evening at a German beer tavern might know what we are referring to. Yet, what appears obvious for a documentary maker, or the everyday traveler, seems not to be of much value when we seek to understand world politics. Although international relations theory is also concerned with national identities, we are nonetheless told to look elsewhere when studying International Relations (IR). Study the speeches of famous politicians! Unravel national interests! Calculate power and balancing behavior! Those are but some of the conventional guidelines with which any student of IR is certainly familiar with. But is there anything we might learn from Sweetwood’s eye-opening quest? If this is certainly not about drinking more beer, is there anything in the account that Sweetwood took that we can learn from?

When working at the Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Iver Neumann faced a problem similar to Sweetwood. How does one know what diplomats do? Hardly anyone had written on what diplomats do when they conduct diplomacy. Wasn’t it obvious that IR should be able to say something about what diplomats do? Searching for an argument that would be intelligible for IR researchers, Neumann introduced a body of thought in a 2002 article that he described as “practice theory”. He found it vital that IR started again to study the doing and sayings of those involved in world politics. Neumann was certainly not the first to highlight the importance of turning to practice; indeed earlier generations of IR scholars had already proposed that practice should be a core category in IR theory. Yet, his article sparked interest in giving center stage to the concept of practice, and rethinking how it can be theorized and empirically studied. Neumann was not on his own. A broad movement of scholars across the social sciences has started to think about practice and how the investigation of doing and sayings can provide us with a better understanding of the world. Together these scholars suggest that the attention to practice requires a turn, that is, a practice turn. The turn metaphor suggests that practice theory is not just a new theory, but involves quite substantial shifts in thinking about the world and the nature and purpose of social science.

What does it mean to study international relations through the lens of practices? Scholars focusing on practices as a core unit of analysis do not want to begin with fixed assumptions of how people are like, how they behave or what logics they follow. Nor do they start with claims about the nature of the international system or of global politics. Instead, they take an account that starts in paying attention to what actors do and say, and how these activities are embedded in larger arrangements. They ask what knowledge is required to do world politics and how actors work together to make the international. And they attempt to pay attention to all the things and technologies that are used in producing the international. To focus on practices is also an attempt to break with some traditional assumptions and distinctions of ‘level of analysis’ usually taught in introductory IR courses. Practice theorists argue that most of our traditionally learned dichotomies are more of a hindrance than a help to better understand the world. These are dichotomies such as the division between agency and structure, micro and macro, subject and object, individual and society, mind and body or the ideational and the material.

Yet how to do meaningful research if these are unproductive assumptions? Does practice theory want to throw all of the received wisdom over board? Both Matt Sweetwood and Iver Neumann, of course, started their inquiry with background knowledge on their ‘cases.’ They had clear objectives. Sweetwood wanted to understand German identity, Neumann, diplomacy. Sweetwood prepared for his movie in reading about the historical evolution of beer as a cultural good in Germany. Neumann relied on literature on diplomacy in world politics, for instance, Ernest Satow’s Guide to Diplomatic Practice, regarded as a authoritative text in the world’s foreign ministries (Neumann 2012: 1–3). Satow defines diplomacy as “the conduct of official relations between the governments of independent states” (quoted after Neumann 2012: 1). Yet, for Neumann definitional or theoretical knowledge was not sufficient to understand how diplomacy works. Sweetwood dealt with the same problem. The cultural history of Germany provided him an overview of the variety of brewing and beer-drinking traditions. But it did not lead him to a richer understanding of German culture as lived experience. It told him little about how to understand the Germans. Sweetwood and Neumann recognized that to understand their objects, books are not enough. Rather than trying to be ‘objective’ and ‘distant’ observers, they had to engage with their subject of investigation. This required not only to observe practices, but also learn and adapt and become active. Sweetwood not only learned how to drink beer, he also studied with a professional brewer in a small brewery in Bavaria. Through this experience, he starts, for instance, understanding why an established family tradition of independency is stronger than the strive for profit by contracting out to a major company. The prevalence of small independent breweries over decades was an issue which was puzzling for Sweetwood, since he was used to a monopolized beer market from the US. Neumann became a diplomat in working for the ministry. He learned, for instance, that writing a diplomatic speech is not the isolated action of an individual thinker followed by forwarding the written piece to the higher political level. Instead, writing a speech is a group action that implies talking with different people and slowly finding a common sense through bureaucratic procedures and routines. Doing practice theory is observing the practices of others, talking about practices, participating in practices, and reflecting on practices all at the same time. The aim is not to reduce and present abstract explanations of social phenomena, but to come to deeper understanding of how the world works in and through practices.

If ‘practice theory’ has only recently been introduced to IR, the concept of ‘practice’ is certainly not novel. The term practice is part of everyday language and is used colloquially in IR. Often practice is also contrasted with theory. Then we mean by practice what ‘normal’ people are doing, and by ‘theory’ abstract generalizations – or what academics are doing. The notion of ‘practice theory’ breaks down this separation, and indeed argues that practice and theory are intrinsically linked: without practice, no theory, and vice versa. Practice has, however, also been developed as a distinct concept long before the conversation on practice theory started in IR. Advanced understandings of practice began to emerge in the early 1990s with the introduction of constructivist thoughts. Many of the early constructivist works drew substantially on authors we describe today as practice theorists. For instance, in the so-called agency-structure debate of the 1990s, Anthony Giddens’ ‘structuration theory’ became influential (Wendt 1992). In this debate ‘practice’ was identified as an important intermediary of agents and structures (Doty 1997). In these earlier proposals, ‘practice’ however did not have center stage. It was primarily a supporting concept and remained only weakly conceptualized. In practice theory this is quite different. Here the concept of practice is promoted from a supporting role to the lead.

Over the last decade practice theory has become more and more prominent in IR. In this book, we describe this endeavor as the common project of International Practice Theory. We will explain and expand what we mean by this expression and what it implies for IR throughout the book. The introduction of practice theory has come along with a range of promises. This includes the promise to get closer to the actions and lifeworlds of the practitioners who do international relations, to produce knowledge which is of relevance beyond the immediate group of peers and might even address societal concerns or contribute to crafting better policies, to avoid and overcome (traditional) dualisms, such as structure and agency, to develop a perspective which is receptive to change as well as reproduction, and to more fully integrate material aspects, ranging from bodily movements, to objects and artifacts. These promises and prospects require detailed attention, and in our conclusion, we come to the question in how far International Practice Theory has already lived up to them.

Given the rise and extension of the project of International Practice Theory, we think it deserves an acronym. Throughout the book we refer to it as IPT. We are aware that not everyone will like this acronym. Some might think that there is not enough substance to grant International Practice Theory an acronym, others might just point out that IPT is already reserved for International Political Theory. We find the first critique misleading. Our discussion will reveal how thriving IPT has become. The latter concern is, of course, serious, but we hope not to confuse anyone with the acronym.

Chapter overview

To gather a better understanding of what International Practice Theory is, in the next chapter we situate the notion of ‘practice theory.’ The chapter intends to provide a first approximation of what practice theory is and what we can do with it in IR. We draw on different strategies to do so. Our first strategy is a brief detour showing how practice theory has been introduced across the social sciences. As this discussion reveals, practice theory is quite a heterogeneous set of ideas and concepts. To grasp this complexity, we introduce the metaphor of a “trading zone.” This implies to think about practice theory, not as a theory in the conventional sense, but rather as an intellectual space in which different scholars “trade” ideas on how to study practices, and cooperate to further develop the project. This gives us a basic metaphor to grasp the character of practice theory. Our next strategy is to situate practice theoretical thinking in the wider theoretical landscape. We introduce a mapping that contrasts practice theory with other theories and with different expressions of culturalist theorizing. We show how in ideal-typical form, practice theory differs from cultural theories which foreground either the mind and beliefs or discourses and structures of meaning. This also gives us a road map for understanding how IPT relates to other theoretical developments in IR. Like any other map, ours also cannot project all the details. What we, however, achieve, is a strong picture of how IPT differs from other attempts to theorize international relations. Our final strategy is to suggest that practice theory entails a number of core commitments of how to think about social sciences and what drives international politics. These commitments are, however, interpreted differently and hence a discussion of how various approaches understand them is required.

In our next chapter, we zoom in on distinct approaches of IPT. We provide a detailed discussion of five approaches, discuss their origins, their core concepts and how they can be used to study international relations. We discuss approaches which have already shown great promises to interpret international politics differently, and in consequence have attracted a broad range of scholars. Of course, this does not cover the full spectrum of IPT. These approaches are, however, the cornerstones of IPT and together they document quite well which different directions one can take. We start with the praxeology of Pierre Bourdieu. Bourdieusian research has been most directly associated with the label of practice theory. Hence his concepts are an important reference point in the debate. We continue in discussing the concept of community of practice. Also this approach, which originates in organization studies, opens productive avenues for IR. Then we elaborate on the narrative approach, which puts emphasis on narrative as the concept that bonds together practice across time and space. Actor-Network Theory is our next approach. Developed in science and technology studies, this approach foregrounds the practices of making relations as well as the importance of non-human or material aspects. Our final approach is the pragmatic sociology of Luc Boltanski which centers on the study of controversies and the justifications that actors provide.

If this chapter meant to provide an introduction to the core ideas, strength, and weakness of each of these approaches, in Chapter 4 we reflect on the relation between them. We argue that these approaches provide for a range of productive tensions. Their disagreements over questions, such as how contingent the world is, how to understand normativity, or how to conceptualize the varying scale of international practices, point us to a range of future challenges for the development of practice theory. While many of these challenges, or perhaps even puzzles, are philosophical in character, there are no straightforward intellectual answers to these. Instead, we suggest that these puzzles should be taken as starting points for empirical research. In the absence of actual practices, it makes little sense to discuss them. This leads us to a range of methodological reflections in the next chapter.

Underlining the importance of more and better empirical research, in Chapter 5, we discuss the methodology of international practice theory. The chapter starts by outlining a number of methodological guidelines that follow from practice theory and the fact that also doing social science is a practice. We introduce the notion of praxiography to speak about the methodology and methods of practice theory-driven research. The core approaches imply different research strategies which we briefly detail. The largest part of the chapter is, however, devoted to the discussion of concrete research techniques. Our argument is that praxiography implies to carefully consider how practice can be observed directly. Arguing against the conventional myth that international relations is not open to participant forms of field work, we show how different forms of field work, including participant observation, event observation, and shadowing can be adopted in an IR context. Some situations, for instance, the study of historical practices, will however still require alternative techniques and hence we point to interviews and different forms of text analysis.

Our final and concluding chapter attempts to zoom out. We ask whether IPT has so far lived up to its promises. Some of the promises are clearly on the way to be realized, others leave us with a more mixed evaluation. Indeed, the practice turn, is far from being completed. Yet, what would it imply if the practice turn is completed? What will be the status of practice theory in the future? We end in speculating about this future and outline three scenarios in which IPT will either become an ever-growing and thriving trading zone, a paradigm, or disappear in the annals of IR theory.

2

Situating Practice Theory in Social Theory and International Relations

Abstract: This chapter provides an approximation of what practice theory is and its utility in International Relations. We first provide a brief detour showing how practice theory has been introduced across the social sciences. To illustrate the complexity of practice theory we introduce the ‘trading zone’ metaphor. Unlike conventional theories, it is an intellectual space in which scholars ‘trade’ ideas on how to study practices and cooperate to further develop the project. Situating practice theory in the wider spectrum of theories, we then introduce a mapping that contrasts it with other theories and different expressions of culturalist theorizing. We end by suggesting that practice theory consists of several core commitments. These commitments are interpreted differently and hence a discussion of how various understandings is required.

Keywords: Cultural Theory; Practice Theory; Social Theory; Trading Zones

Bueger, Christian and Frank Gadinger. International Practice Theory: New Perspectives. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014. DOI: 10.1057/9781137395535.0004.

In 2001, Theodore Schatzki, Karin Knorr Cetina, and Eike von Savigny (2001) published a hallmark edited volume titled The Practice Turn in Contemporary Theory. The book became influential not only because it demonstrated the diversity of practice theoretical work that had already been produced in different branches of the social sciences. It was also a landmark piece because it coined the idea that the new focus on practices implied a ‘turn,’ that is, a shift in how we think about and do social sciences. Across the social sciences we have since seen similar attempts to argue for a practice turn. Indeed, the idea of a practice turn has attracted a growing number of scholars in various social science disciplines. Sociologists analyze organization, learning, and strategy-making through the lenses of practice (e.g. Miettinen et al. 2009; Nicolini 2013). What has become known as “Strategy-as-Practice” research is now a well-established approach in organization studies, not the least documented by a handbook published on the subject (Golsorkhi et al. 2010). In other areas of economic sociology, centrally marketing, researchers study, for instance, consumption behavior through the lenses of practice (e.g. Halkier et al. 2011). Researchers in Science and Technology Studies have been in many ways at the forefront of the practice theoretical project (e.g. Pickering 1992; Rouse 1996). Indeed, the majority of the contributors to the Practice Turn volume were from this part of the social sciences. The study of practice has also gained a strong foothold in policy studies, and scholars draw on the concept to study the formulation and implementation of policies (e.g. Hajer and Wagenaar 2003a). Across these disciplines, and others such as history, environmental studies, gender studies or cultural sociology, the number of scholars apprehending the concept of practice and demonstrating its value has been growing continually.

The metaphor of ‘turning,’ while attractive for som...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• 1  Introducing International Practice Theory
• 2  Situating Practice Theory in Social Theory and International Relations
• 3  Core Approaches in International Practice Theory
• 4  Conceptual Challenges of International Practice Theory
• 5  Towards Praxiography: Research Strategies and Techniques
• 6  After the Practice Turn In Conclusion
• References
• Index