TY - CHAP

T1 - Practices

AU - Adler-Nissen, Rebecca

PY - 2023

Y1 - 2023

N2 - This chapter situates the practice turn in the broader IR landscape, presents its keycontributions, addresses key challenges against it and suggests future research agendas. The practice turn aims to help us grasp how social practices co-produce, negotiate and unravel social orders. Practice approaches study people, materials and intersubjective, socially meaningful patterns of actions, understanding power as contextual and embedded. Theoretically, the practice turn rejects the idea that people are generally reflexive and articulate about their everyday actions and turns to logics of practicality. Methodologically, it champions empirical sensitivity by studying international politics as lived practices. This chapter distinguishes between scholarship on the maintenance of social order and scholarship more interested in acts of resistance and improvisation. Finally, critiques of the practice turn are addressed in relation to structural power and inequalities. I also address critiques from feminist and queer IR scholars, reiterating practice theory’s commitment to exposing power in non-reflexive social orders. The chapter calls for future research to continue to scrutinize hidden social orders as well as marginalized and non-Western experiences and practices more effectively. It also encourages practice-oriented explorations of bodies, emotions, materials, and technologies.

AB - This chapter situates the practice turn in the broader IR landscape, presents its keycontributions, addresses key challenges against it and suggests future research agendas. The practice turn aims to help us grasp how social practices co-produce, negotiate and unravel social orders. Practice approaches study people, materials and intersubjective, socially meaningful patterns of actions, understanding power as contextual and embedded. Theoretically, the practice turn rejects the idea that people are generally reflexive and articulate about their everyday actions and turns to logics of practicality. Methodologically, it champions empirical sensitivity by studying international politics as lived practices. This chapter distinguishes between scholarship on the maintenance of social order and scholarship more interested in acts of resistance and improvisation. Finally, critiques of the practice turn are addressed in relation to structural power and inequalities. I also address critiques from feminist and queer IR scholars, reiterating practice theory’s commitment to exposing power in non-reflexive social orders. The chapter calls for future research to continue to scrutinize hidden social orders as well as marginalized and non-Western experiences and practices more effectively. It also encourages practice-oriented explorations of bodies, emotions, materials, and technologies.

KW - Faculty of Social Sciences

KW - International Relations

KW - power

KW - practice theory

KW - reflexivity

KW - disordering

KW - ordering

KW - Performativity

M3 - Book chapter

BT - Oxford Handbook of International Political Sociology

A2 - Sending, Ole Jacob

A2 - Goddard, Stacie

A2 - Lawson, George

PB - Oxford University Press

ER -