Description: This book brings together the key scholars in the international practice debate to demonstrate its strengths as an innovative research perspective. The contributions show the benefit of practice theories in the study of phenomena in international security, international political economy and international organisation, by directing attention to concrete and observable everyday practices that shape international outcomes. The chapters exemplify the cross-overs and relations to other theoretical approaches, and thereby establish practice theories as a distinct IR perspective. Each chapter investigates a key concept that plays an important role in international relations theory, such as power, norms, knowledge, change or cognition. Taken together, the authors make a strong case that practice theories allow to ask new questions, direct attention to uncommon empirical material, and reach different conclusions about international relations phenomena. The book is a must read for anyone interested in recent international relations theory and the actual practices of doing global politics.
Brief description: Ted Hopf is a Research Fellow at the Helsinki Collegium of Advanced Studies. His main fields of interest are international relations theory, qualitative research methods, and identity. His article, "Change in International Practices," published in the European Journal of International Relations, received the European International Studies Association Award for Best Article in EJIR, in 2017.
Review Quotes: 'This marvelous collection well charts the variety of practice theories drawn on in contemporary international relations research, thereby revealing what makes practice theory coherent as a distinct general approach in the field. Insightfully exploring new understandings that theories of practices provide of familiar IR concepts such as knowledge, norms, power, and change, the book also examines new concepts such as repetition and visibility that they offer to the field. Of undoubtedly great value to IR scholars, the volume is also recommended to scholars outside the field who are interested in the concepts that it explores.' Ted Schatzki, Professor of Geography, Philosophy, and Sociology, University of Kentucky