Parsing the Practice Turn: Practice, Practical Knowledge, Practices
| Author | Jorg Kustermans |
| Published date | 01 January 2016 |
| Date | 01 January 2016 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/0305829815613045 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
Millennium: Journal of
International Studies
2016, Vol. 44(2) 175 –196
© The Author(s) 2015
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DOI: 10.1177/0305829815613045
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1. Iver Neumann, ‘International Relations as a Social Science’, Millennium: Journal of
International Studies 43, no. 1 (2014): 334.
2. Hidemi Suganami, ‘Causal Explanation and Moral Judgement: Undividing a Division’,
Millennium: Journal of International Studies 39, no. 3 (2011): 725.
Parsing the Practice Turn:
Practice, Practical
Knowledge, Practices
Jorg Kustermans
University of Antwerp, Belgium
Abstract
A substantial body of literature centers on the concept of ‘practice’. This article parses the
practice turn in International Relations. It suggests that the meaning of ‘practice’ is a moving
target. Sometimes it means process. Sometimes it refers to a particular type of knowledge and
related action. And sometimes it is used as a quasi-synonym for institution. There are actually
three concepts animating the practice turn: ‘practice’, ‘practical knowledge’, and ‘practices’. These
concepts hail from different intellectual pastures and lead to different ways of explaining and
understanding international relations. The article introduces the three concepts, explains how
each concept entails a particular interpretation of the nature and possibility of change, as well as
affords a particular theory of peace(making).
Keywords
Practice Turn, Change, Peace
International Relations is a social science which studies the relations between more or
less bounded polities,1 which are but a sub-set of all social relations and are embedded in
what has been called the ‘human social world’.2 As a result, social theories inevitably
Corresponding author:
Jorg Kustermans, Department of Politics, University of Antwerp, St Jacobstraat 2, Antwerp, 2000, Belgium.
Email: jorg.kustermans@uantwerpen.be
613045MIL0010.1177/0305829815613045MillenniumKustermans
research-article2015
Article
176 Millennium: Journal of International Studies 44(2)
3. Cf. Erik Ringmar, ‘The Search for Dialogue as a Hindrance to Understanding: The Practice
Turn as Inter-paradigmatic Research Program’, International Theory 6, no. 1 (2014): 22.
4. Pierre Bourdieu, The Logic of Practice (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1990).
Theodore Schatzki, Karin Knorr Cetina, and Eike Von Savigny, eds., The Practice Turn in
Contemporary Theory (London: Routledge, 2001). Andreas Reckwitz, ‘Toward a Theory
of Social Practices: A Development in Culturalist Theorizing’, European Journal of Social
Theory 5, no. 2 (2002): 243–63.
5. For example, Rebecca Adler-Nissen, ed., Bourdieu in International Relations: Rethinking
Key Concepts in IR (London: Routledge, 2013).
6. Emanuel Adler and Vincent Pouliot, ‘International Practices: Introduction and Framework’,
in International Practices, eds. Emanuel Adler and Vincent Pouliot (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 2011), 14–19.
7. Iver Neumann, ‘Returning Practice to the Linguistic Turn: the Case of Diplomacy’,
Millennium: Journal of International Studies 31, no. 3 (2002): 627–51. Sebastian Schmidt,
‘Foreign Military Presence and the Changing Practice of Sovereignty: A Pragmatist
Explanation of Norm Change’, American Political Science Review 108, no. 4 (2014):
817–29. Sebastian Schindler and Tobias Wille, ‘Change In and Through Practice: Pierre
Bourdieu, Vincent Pouliot, and the End of the Cold War’, International Theory 7, no. 2
(2015): 330–59.
8. Christian Bueger, ‘Pathways to Practice: Praxiography and International Relations’,
European Political Science Review 6, no. 3 (2014): 383–406. Vincent Pouliot and Jérémie
Cornut, ‘Practice Theory and the Study of Diplomacy: A Research Agenda’, Cooperation
and Conflict 50, no. 3 (2015): 297–315.
9. Christian Bueger and Frank Gadinger, International Practice Theory: New Perspectives
(Houndmills: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014), 3.
10. Cf. Morten Andersen and Iver Neumann, ‘Practices as Models: a Methodology with an
Illustration Concerning Wampum Diplomacy’, Millennium: Journal of International
Studies 40, no. 3 (2012): 461.
11. Ibid., 470.
ground theories of international relations. The so-called practice turn stages its interven-
tion at this foundational level. It re-articulates fundamental social-theoretical concepts in
order to re-orient our understanding of the nature and dynamics of international rela-
tions.3 The practice turn in our field finds its direct origin in an earlier movement in
social theory, exemplified by such titles as Bourdieu’s The Logic of Practice, Schatzki
et al.’s The Practice Turn in Contemporary Theory, and Reckwitz’s ‘Towards a Theory
of Social Practices’.4 Part of the promise of the practice turn is to bring international
theory and research in line with these broader theoretical developments.5
Practice theory has been championed, applied, and criticised in International Relations.
It has been championed on three main grounds: (1) philosophically, because of its prom-
ise to overcome entrenched but unsustainable dualisms,6 (2) theoretically, primarily
because of its potential to account for change in world politics,7 and (3) methodologi-
cally, because it helps us observe world politics as it actually occurs,8 paying attention to
the so-called stuff of world politics, ugly though that signifier is.
Let us provisionally identify practice with ‘doings’, with ‘what actors do and say’,9
with actual human behaviours.10 The notion of ‘doings’ points towards the tangible and
observable,11 in contrast to, for instance, the more ephemeral, and forever imputed,
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