Parsing the Practice Turn: Practice, Practical Knowledge, Practices

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).

Transnational Law as Unseen Law

“…34 Simply put, legal scholarship seems to have sidestepped the detailed methodological debates that have marked the "practice turns" in other disciplines such as international relations or history. 35 The consequence is that legal practice tends to be invoked as some non-contentious and non-political body of common knowledge without being subjected to the usual questions of legitimacy given to sources of law, and sources of knowledge about law. Practice, in such a way, acquires an assumed, rather than an up-for-debate, rationality.…”

Transnational Climate Law

“…Simply put, legal scholarship seems to have sidestepped the detailed methodological debates that have marked the "practice turns" in other disciplines such as international relations or history. 106 The consequence is that legal practice tends to be invoked as some non-contentious and non-political body of common knowledge without being subjected to the usual questions of legitimacy given to sources of law, and sources of knowledge about law. In this fashion, practice acquires an assumed rationality, rather than an up-for-debate one.…”

The Sociology of Knowledge as Postphilosophical Epistemology: Out of IR’s “Socially Constructed” Idealism

“…Keeping in mind the various ways that praxis and practice(s) are conceptualized (Bueger and Gadinger 2014;Kustermans 2016), this section outlines core tenets of the praxeological approach that are directly relevant to the problem at hand and that open up a different space for the practice turn. While some pioneers of this turn in IR explicitly envisage it as a move away from epistemology to practice (Bueger 2012)-thereby enabling the sociological turn as the saboteur of the sociological revolution-my argument is that praxeology is actually a means for redefining epistemology sociologically and that it is the most efficient (and potentially the only) means for doing so in an empirically conclusive manner.…”