Praxeology

 Summary of a 2 days workshop “practice of international governance”, November 2009, University of Antwerp, Belgium 

With articles published in the main journals of the discipline of international relations[1], theories of practices as a framework, approach or perspective for studying the international is gaining increasingly attraction. Theories of practice are best understood as a “family of theories” rather than a unified and coherent research program.[2] Indeed, what a practice entails, and how it relates to the other ‘stuff’ making life hanging together, remains contested. Also students of IR put different weight on the elements theories of practice foreground. That practice theories provide a rich and fruitful but also a diverse repertoire of concepts and directions and that a lot remains to be done in developing practice perspectives on international relations, was well indicated by a recent workshop hosted by the University of Antwerp. The workshop titled practices of international governance gathered early career and senior scholars together to learn and ponder about different ways of using practice theory in studying problems of international relations.

 A crucial reference point for debate was the work of Theodore Schatzki.[3] Such an ‘anchoring point’ is meaningful given Schatzki’s definition of practice as a bundle of doing and sayings – or more precise as composed of know how, rules and teleoaffective structures – has achieved quite some authority in the IR debate. Moreover, Schatzki’s fine-grained ontology of the social as bundles, meshes and nets of practice-arrangements offers one of the most prominent alternatives to Bourdieu’s vocabulary, which meanwhile makes the majority of practice-oriented writing in IR.

The second crucial anchoring point was the work of Iver Neumann, who participated in the workshop, introduced his work and opened up the debate. Neumann in many ways initiated a “practice turn” in IR by his 2002 article published in Millennium: Journal of International Studies in which he called for returning practice to the linguistic turn. Neumann opened the debate on acknowledging practice not through a reconsideration of “action” (as is the case for pragmatists, or those relying on “logics of action”) but through a reconsideration of discourse. Moreover, his work together with Ole Jacob Sending he triggered the debate of considering the international as a realm of governmentality. Neumann and Sendings understanding of governmentality – as expressed in their forthcoming book discussed at the workshop – is one of seeing governmentality essentially as expressed in and through practice.

Besides the discussion of Schatzki and Neumann’s work, four papers were discussed giving ‘practice’ quite different status and focusing on different objects. Two papers focused on international organizations (NATO, UN), one paper focused on practices of sovereignty and one pondered about whether there is a practice that can be dubbed “democratic peace practice”. Three core themes emerged during the workshop, which all are crucial challenges for practice researchers.

 1) This concerned firstly the relationship between discourse and practice. Neumann expressed some skepticism that his 2002 model, which saw the relationship between discourse and practice as mediated through narratives (which open up the space for practices, and if confirmed through practices, stabilize discourse) actually is useful. Neumman suggested that although discourse cannot survive without practice (and vice versa) the scholar has to choose whether he wants to focus on discourse or practice. He justified this claim by suggesting that he realized that sometimes you should only focus on practice. Jorg Kostermann and other participants argued that such a choice is not necessarily meaningful. At least if we follow the understanding of practice by Schatzki, part of any practice is a teleo-affective structure, which in many ways matches what other scholars understand as discourse. If a separation of discourse and practice is not meaningful in ontological terms, than the choice, Neumann suggests to be made, is rather on of which audience the scholar wants to address (the discourse theory people? The practice people?). The same concern was frequently re-raised in the two days. That the issue can be phrased differently became clear in the debate on sovereign practices. Here the question was phrased as an issue of whether one can focus on constitutional dimensions and practice simultaneously or whether a choice should be made.

2) A second concern was the question on how issues of power can be addressed within a practice-theoretical framework. That the issue was controversial was not surprising giving that the question of how to conceptualize power is one of the major dividing lines among theorists of practice. While Schatzki argues that power does not necessarily be the focus of analysis[4], theorists in the critical tradition (from Bourdieu to Focuault) tend to frame power as a play of domination and resistance, while those in the pragmatist tradition (such as Joas or Latour) understand power rather as the capacity to act (agency). Following these lines, the participants suggested that there are different possibilities to conceptualize power. Centrally the suggestion was to think along the lines of productive power – practice as bringing about sthg. – and power as a bundle of resources assembled by a practice and which are available to its participants.

3) A third major concern during the two days workshop was the issue of what “change” means from a theory of practice perspective. Often the order established by practice is interpreted as fairly stable reluctant to change, notably if the focus of a practice framework is centered on routine and tacit knowledge. Neumann introduced the case discussed in his 2007 article. As he suggests text production practice at a ministry of foreign affair is a case of a practice that is a routine operation in a way that it hinders/blocks any change. Trine Flockhart in her discussion of NATO presented a very different case and suggested that organizations are continuously changing. Her opponent argument was partially due to her wider scope (NATOs development in 60 years, Neumann focusing on the production of three speeches). Yet, both cases raise the larger issue on how stable and how delimiting we consider practices to be. As was suggested there are different ways to conceive of the change of practice. One ways is to see change as induced by the ‘outside’ of the practice (such as environmental pressures, or eventual ruptures causing the practice to fail). A second view is to consider that any practice needs to be adjusted to continuously changing situations in which it is performed, and hence is to a minor degree (let’s say 5%) continuously changing. A different view is to see the change in practice in relation to the emergence of new practices. As was suggested, new practices can emerge around new objects being invented.

While this is far from a representative summary of a rich and intense debate, these X issues are puzzles and remain to be addressed in further developing our concepts of practice in and for international relations.

 References:

Adler, Emanuel. 2008. “The Spread of Security Communities: Communities of Practice, Self-Restraint, and NATO’s Post–Cold War Transformation.” European Journal of International Relations 14(2): 195-230.

Adler-Nissen, Rebecca: Sovereignty as Practice: Post-Colonial Microstates in the Margins of Europe, workshop paper

Büger, Christian: International Organizations as Arenas of Practice: Authority, Dysfunctionality and the United Nations, workshop paper

Flockhart, Trine: NATO’s Finalité: Identity, Narratives and Practice, workshop paper

Kustermans, Jorg: Practice, Community, and Democratic Peace, workshop paper

Neumann, Iver B. 2002. “Returning Practice to the Linguistic Turn: The Case of Diplomacy.” Millennium – Journal of International Studies 31(3): 627-651.

Neumann, Iver B. 2007. “‘‘A Speech That the Entire Ministry May Stand for,’’ or: Why Diplomats Never Produce Anything New.” International Political Sociology 1(2): 183-200.

Neumann, Iver B. and Ole Jacob Sending. 2010. Governing the Global Polity: Practice, Mentality, Rationality, forthcoming ms.

Pouliot, Vincent. 2008. “The Logic of Practicality: A Theory of Practice of Security Communities.” International Organization 62(02): 257-288.

Reckwitz, Andreas. 2002. “Toward a Theory of Social Practices.” European Journal Of Social Theory 5(2): 243-263.

Schatzki, Ted. 2002. “Social Science in Society.” Inquiry 45(1): 119-138…

Schatzki, Theodore R. 1996. Social Practices. A Wittgensteinian approach to human activity and the social. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Schatzki, Theodore R. 2002. The site of the social. A philosophical account of the constitution of social life and change. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press.

Schatzki, Theodore R. 2005. “Peripheral Vision: The Sites of Organizations.” Organization Studies 26(3): 465-484.

[2] Cp. Reckwitz 2002.

[3] Centrally Schatzki 1996, but also his later works such as Schatzki 2002, Schatzki 2005.

[4] Cp. Schatzki 2002.