The Practice Turn in International Relations Theory

15 December 2015, 1242 EST

Thanks to PTJ, ISQ Online is running a debate about the scope and nature of the ‘practice turn’ in the study of world politics. The symposium centers around a recent International Studies Quarterly article by Christian Bueger and Frank Gadinger, “The Play of International Practice.”*

From PTJ’s introduction:

The challenge, then, is to develop an adequate conceptual vocabulary for practice-sensiblity scholarship. Christian Bueger and Frank Gadinger’s ISQ article suggests that International Relations scholarship in a practice mode would be enhanced by a broader examination of the philosophical and social-theoretical roots of practice accounts, particularly by an expansion of our conceptual vocabulary beyond the admittedly useful language provided by Pierre Bourdieu. The participants in this Symposium take up the challenge of providing that more adequate conceptual vocabulary by exploring the relationship between the various strains and threads of the “practice turn,” proposing alternatives that nonetheless remain within the “family” of practice approaches.

Indeed, practice-turn theorizing is quickly emerging as one of the ‘hot tickets’ in social-constructionist approaches to international relations, so even those put off by the conceptually vocabulary ought to take a look.

Participants include Emanuel Adler and Vincent Pouliot and Rebecca Adler-Nissen. Ole Jacob Sending’s contribution appears tomorrow. Bueger’s and Gadinger’s response is coming on December 17th.

*The article is ungated, so you just need to click on the “Full Text PDF” box to acquire it.

Dan Nexon

Daniel H. Nexon is a Professor at Georgetown University, with a joint appointment in the Department of Government and the School of Foreign Service. His academic work focuses on international-relations theory, power politics, empires and hegemony, and international order. He has also written on the relationship between popular culture and world politics.

He has held fellowships at Stanford University's Center for International Security and Cooperation and at the Ohio State University's Mershon Center for International Studies. During 2009-2010 he worked in the U.S. Department of Defense as a Council on Foreign Relations International Affairs Fellow. He was the lead editor of International Studies Quarterly from 2014-2018.

He is the author of The Struggle for Power in Early Modern Europe: Religious Conflict, Dynastic Empires, and International Change (Princeton University Press, 2009), which won the International Security Studies Section (ISSS) Best Book Award for 2010, and co-author of Exit from Hegemony: The Unraveling of the American Global Order (Oxford University Press, 2020). His articles have appeared in a lot of places. He is the founder of the The Duck of Minerva, and also blogs at Lawyers, Guns and Money.