The Introduction first highlights the value added of practice approaches to international relations, and demonstrates how a practice perspective differs from other IR theoretical approaches. The chapter then offers a contextualization of practice theories in IR through a historical discussion that highlights the foundations of practice theoretical thought, its connections to, and shared assumptions with preceding IR scholarship, but also the ways in which it fundamentally differs from other theoretical approaches. With this narrative we respond to some allegations and misunderstandings within the discipline that the practice talk is plainly a reinvigoration of old ideas, that there is little new about practice approaches, or that they present us with a new version of constructivism. Third, we proceed in discussing the scope and contours of practice-driven research by discussing how the practice debate might be ordered. Arguing against pitching discrete practice approaches against each other, we draw attention to a number of fault lines that run through the practice debate, such as stability and change. We then showcase how each chapter in this volume engages with broader IR scholarship, and how it provides a new practice-driven vista on relevant IR questions.

Taking such a stance inevitably shifts the analysis towards production or some soteriological notion of knowledge. Instead, I point to the relevant issues of practical choices: situations (which are not just exhausted by known distributions or unreflected habits or routines but which require constant attention to surprises) to the temporality of choice in which present, past, and future interact that explode the intentional paradigm of action) and the issues of judgement (Kant’s Urteilskraft), which is a critical ability but does not coincide with algorithms or of testing theoretical propositions but which can be acquired only by acting within the social world, or as Hume had it is acquired by ‘commerce and conversation’ rather than by observation from an ideal standpoint.

Introduction

What do we mean by theory and how is it related to practice? The question has been one of the recurrent themes for negotiating the identity of the discipline of International Relations (IR). Debates concern what kind of knowledge scholars should produce and value, what should count as ‘theory’ and ‘empirics’, but also what status is granted to those that ‘make’ theory and those that focus on ‘practice’. While these debates run through the history of the discipline, three recent developments have given them impetus.

A landmark debate in the European Journal of International Relations in 2013 explored whether the age of theory in IR had ended. Scholars asked whether they had witnessed a ‘retreat from theory’ (Dunne et al, 2013: 406), mourned the end of unifying grand theory that would order the discipline (Mearsheimer and Walt, 2013), and were worried about the proliferation of theories and naive hypothesis testing (Guzzini, 2013; Jackson and Nexon, 2013). The discovery of non-Western IR and theory from the Global South brought another source of discomfort to the discipline. The potential of postcolonial forms of knowledge cast new doubt on the extent and limitations of Western epistemology and its concepts of theory (see Acharya and Buzan, 2010; Shilliam, 2010; Seth, 2011). Yet the emergence of a movement of scholars associated with ‘international practice theory’ also called for new thinking on theory and for grounding it in practice (Adler and Pouliot, 2011; Bueger and Gadinger, 2018). In declaring ‘practice’ as the foundational unit of theoretical thought, they re-raised the tension between theory and practice in new ways.

The triple uncertainty over theory opens a new moment to rethink the making of theory in IR. Taking insights from these three debates into account, this chapter asks whether and how practice theories lead to new, innovative thoughts on ‘theory’ and the relation to practice. The mere label of ‘practice theory’ is interesting: it brings together two terms which are often seen as dichotomous or at least are keenly kept apart. How does practice theory open the space for rethinking the relation?