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.

In this book, it is argued that legal time is a Janus-faced phenomenon because it is based on two complement and contradictory forms of time: human and clock time. Clock time is the standardized conception of time; its uniform, precise, and predictable character makes it particularly apt for control and regulation in law. Human time, however, is always the time of someone, it is characterized by temporality (past, present, future), it is finite, irreversible, and cannot be stopped. One of the aims of this book is to show how an indeterminacy in legal time is at work; stemming from the intricate relationship between clock time and human time. The strain that I describe in legal time follows from the fact that human time is structurally different from legal time, a problem that cannot be solved in legal time. Yet, it can be acknowledged, and taking into account the peculiar character of human time in itself has normative value.

The normativity of practice remains a major research challenge in practice turn scholarship. Recent debates have nevertheless demonstrated the promise of international practice theory for a wider IR audience. Instead of focusing on the effects of norms, constructivist norm research, for instance, has turned its attention to processes, practices, and actions in world politics through which norms are negotiated, contested, and embedded. This processual perspective overcomes simple explanations built on the agency-structure dichotomy, and resembles the research objectives of practice-oriented scholars. I argue, first, that a conversation between practice theorists and norm researchers is analytically fruitful thanks to their shared interest in normativity; this includes the consideration of power and agency, a social understanding of learning, and the contestation and multiplicity of normative orders. Secondly, I argue that practice approaches provide innovative conceptual vocabulary and methodological tools. Thirdly, in contrast to norm research, however, practice-oriented scholars (following Wittgenstein) do not ontologically distinguish practices from norms and attribute theoretical and methodological primacy to practice. I present three different practice-oriented research examples that study normativity from different angles: through power relations of structuring normative orders, learning processes via active participation in communities, and disputes on political actors’ competing moral claims.

The chapter starts from a seeming contradiction in practice theory: on the one hand, change is an ever-present condition at the micro-level; on the other, homeostatic tendencies prevail at the macro-level. Indeed, taking a historical perspective suggests that practices do change, though mostly around the edges, at a slow pace, and often without a clear direction. Drawing on the evolutionary metaphor, the chapter departs from intentional and reflexive accounts of change, to instead focus on the social environment within which practice variations occur. The web of practices helps explain the differential rate of reproduction and success of particular ways of doing things, including subversive, deviant, innovative, and incompetent performances. In order to survive its context of emergence and gain a foothold in the world, a variant practice needs back-up from surrounding modes of action, whether it be through public display, relational crossover, or inscription. By implication, the evolution of (international) practices describes a socially emergent, macro-process in which the social environment provides the structural impetus for some variations to stick around while most drop out.

This chapter argues that rather than a unilinear extension of the market project from England to France, the Anglo-French contestation, and the concomitant processes of uneven and combined development during the early modern period sharpened and restructured existing sociohistorical differences, ultimately leading to the formulation of a qualitatively different regime of property and modernization in France. Jacobinism was neither absolutism nor capitalism, but combined and bypassed both based on a new form of sociality and political economy. It produced novel social, economic and geopolitical dynamics that gave modernity a radically multilinear texture.

There are several pretty constant critiques that the practice turn in IR attracts: the mis/use of social theories of practice, especially, but not exclusively of Bourdieu; the unwillingness to engage seriously with alternative explanations; the inability to provide an adequate account of non-trivial change; the unsatisfying quality of non-ethnographic methods to get at practices; and the contested ontological priority of practice. The authors in this volume address these issues, and more, in the chapters that follow.

Scholars of international practices distinguish practice-based and norm-based approaches to the questions they address. They highlight that practices have a material dimension that norms lack, and operate via a logic of practicality, not a logic of appropriateness. Yet practices, understood as ‘competent performances’, are often tied to norms: what counts as ‘competent’ is often implicitly defined by shared expectations about appropriate behaviour. The relationship between norms and practices, however, remains largely unexplored and ambiguous. We provide greater clarity by addressing two questions: How closely are norms and practices linked? Do changes in one produce changes in the other, and under what conditions? While norms and practices can be tightly coupled, we argue that disjunctures between them are also possible. In some cases, practices – and background knowledge on which they are based – tap into extant norms, frames, or discourses. In other cases, practices become disconnected from the norms to which they are attributed. A practice-based approach makes it possible to detect and explore these inconsistencies, which might otherwise pass unnoticed in the short term. Over the long term, disjunctures can lead to overt contestation and norm change. We illustrate these points by drawing on evidence from United Nations peace operations.