Practice Theory and International Relations

de Silviya Lechner, Mervyn Frost

"Are social practices actions, or institutional frameworks of interaction structured by common rules? How do social practices such as signing a cheque differ from international practices such as signing a peace treaty? Traversing the fields of International Relations (IR) and philosophy, this book defends an institutionalist conception of practices as part of a general practice theory indebted to Oakeshott, Wittgenstein and Hegel. The proposed practice theory has two core aspects: practice internalism and normative descriptivism. In developing a philosophical analysis of social practices that has a special relevance for international relations, Silviya Lechner and Mervyn Frost depart from Pierre Bourdieu's sociology of practice that dominates the current 'practice turn' in IR. The authors show that the contemporary global realm is constituted by two distinct macro practices- the practice of sovereign states and that of global rights"-- "This book aims to provide a general analysis of social practices in order to advance our understanding of contemporary practices in international relations. Recently, the discipline of International Relations (IR) has experienced a 'turn' to practice, associated with Emanuel Adler and Vincent Pouliot and inspired by social theorists such as Theodore Schatzki and especially French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu. A central premise underlying such sociological investigations is that practices represent doing or actions, including patterned actions carried out by a multitude of agents. In what follows, we do not elaborate on this sociological approach to practices but, develop an independent account, a philosophical one, that is fundamentally critical of it. While our account owes much to H.L.A. Hart and John Rawls, it is above all indebted to G. W. F. Hegel, the Hegelian philosopher Michael Oakeshott, and the late Ludwig Wittgenstein. Each of these three thinkers considered individually has been discussed within IR, but in this study we have reworked and integrated their ideas into a coherent conceptual position for making sense of practices which we call practice theory. The theory is expounded in Part One and Part Two extends it to the sphere of international practices, hence the book's title, Practice Theory and International Relations"--