Gendering the practice turn in diplomacy
| Date | 01 September 2020 |
| DOI | 10.1177/1354066120940351 |
| Author | Catriona Standfield |
| Published date | 01 September 2020 |
| Subject Matter | 25th Anniversary Special Issue |
E
JR
I
https://doi.org/10.1177/1354066120940351
European Journal of
International Relations
2020, Vol. 26(S1) 140 –165
© The Author(s) 2020
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DOI: 10.1177/1354066120940351
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Gendering the practice
turn in diplomacy
Catriona Standfield
Worcester State University, USA
Abstract
International Relations has developed an exciting new research agenda on diplomatic
practice, drawing largely on the theories of Pierre Bourdieu. However, it largely ignores
Bourdieu’s theory of patriarchy, as well as extensive feminist Bourdieusian analysis. These
are analytical tools that can be used to understand how diplomacy reproduces itself as a
masculinized field. They are ‘practice theory’ as well and should be incorporated into our
research on diplomatic practice. My aims here are to recover feminist practice theory
for a diplomatic studies audience and to indicate how we can develop an interdisciplinary
research agenda on gender and diplomacy. The first part of the article provides an
overview of practice theory in diplomatic studies and discusses Bourdieu’s overlooked
contributions regarding gender. I then use Bourdieu’s ‘thinking tools’ of field, habitus and
practice to examine diplomacy and gender using examples drawn from the literature,
as well as from some primary sources. Throughout, I show how feminist sociologists
have developed his ideas to create sophisticated approaches to studying the persistence
of patriarchy. This does not capture all the ways in which diplomacy is gendered, but
these tools reveal the limitations in our current understanding of diplomatic practices. I
conclude with suggestions for future interdisciplinary research that takes gender seriously.
Keywords
Diplomacy, feminism, practice theory, Pierre Bourdieu, gender, interdisciplinarity
Introduction
In 1986, Cynthia Enloe urged us to pay attention to the quiet yet important work of dip-
lomatic wives (Enloe, 2014). Recent research underscores that diplomacy probably
Corresponding author:
Catriona Standfield, Department of History and Political Science, Worcester State University, 486 Chandler
Street, Worcester, Massachusetts, 01602, USA, USA.
Email: cstandfield@worcester.edu
940351EJT0010.1177/1354066120940351European Journal of International RelationsStandfield
research-article2020
25th Anniversary Special Issue
Standfield 141
could not function without the often invisible labour of women across cultures and his-
torical periods (Aggestam and Towns, 2018a; Cassidy, 2017; Sluga and James, 2016).
Women are support staff, wives, activists, ambassadors and more. Yet, men remain over-
represented in decision-making roles, particularly at senior levels (Aggestam and
Svensson, 2018), and women are less likely than men to be posted to high status ambas-
sadorships (Towns and Niklasson, 2017). Moreover, diplomats embody different mascu-
linities and femininities, which affect whether they are able to advance their careers
(Neumann, 2008). Increasingly, feminist scholars are interested in how ‘the (re-)consti-
tution of diplomacy is intimately linked to gender and the practices of inclusion and
exclusion of men, women, non-binary and transgender individuals over time’ (Aggestam
and Towns, 2018b: 22–23). Feminist scholars across disciplines wonder why diplomacy
is a male-dominated field, how it got that way, and how it is changing (Aggestam and
Towns, 2018b). However, there is a striking lack of curiosity about this in the practice
turn in diplomatic studies. Recent agenda-setting pieces on diplomatic practice say noth-
ing about gender, or even simply the role of women (Pouliot and Cornut, 2015; Sending
et al., 2011). Erlandsson (2019) notes this gap between the two streams of research, argu-
ing that it skews our understanding of diplomacy and foreign policy.
I argue that gender is central to understanding change and continuity in diplomatic
practices. Applying feminist practice theory to diplomacy can help us understand how
the constitutive practices of diplomacy have changed over time in response to societal
shifts in gender relations. In turn, the stability of gendered practices in diplomacy can be
explained in part by analyzing how diplomatic practices reproduce patriarchal social
structures. However, the partial interdisciplinarity of the practice turn in diplomatic stud-
ies has erased feminist practice theory that would help us understand these phenomena,
thereby reinscribing the gendered disciplinary boundaries of International Relations (IR)
and impoverishing the literature (Tickner, 1997; Weber, 1994). Like Van Milders and
Toros (this issue), I am concerned with the problem of how we can identify and mitigate,
if not avoid, the epistemic violence that (inter-)disciplinarity in IR reproduces.
As the introduction to this special issue notes, interdisciplinarity in IR has to over-
come the urge to ‘domesticate’ insights from other fields. Like Martin-Mazé, I take issue
with how the practice turn ‘blunts the critical edge of the concepts it borrows’ (2017:
204). Throughout, I critique how the domestication of Pierre Bourdieu’s work – a theo-
retical cornerstone of the practice turn (Adler and Pouliot, 2011; Bueger and Gadinger,
2014) – into diplomatic studies has largely overlooked his 2001 volume, Masculine
Domination, an entire book devoted to understanding the persistence of patriarchy.
Bourdieu revisits the problems of power and domination repeatedly by examining gen-
dered practices like spatial use, kinship and marriage (Bourdieu, 1977, 1990). Yet this
critical perspective is largely lost in the practice turn. Just as important are the many
feminist sociologists who have extensively developed Bourdieu’s work to analyze gen-
dered practices. This is a practice theory as well and should be incorporated into our
research agenda. Moreover, the patchy interdisciplinarity of the practice turn in diplo-
macy is at odds with Bourdieu’s own commitments to reflexivity in social science.
Before proceeding, it is important to provide a working definition of diplomacy and
review some of the major issues at stake in the literature on diplomatic practices. Broadly
construed, diplomacy is ‘the mediation of estrangement’ between polities or communi-
ties (Der Derian, 1987). That is, ‘any actor and any encounter with otherness can be
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