This chapter introduces the book and its context. It argues that the philosophical Pragmatist’s commitment to experimentalism and learning, and the social and political theory emerging from that, is well placed to address global security, climate and health challenges. To recognize that, International Relations and ‘new constructivism’ has to bring Pragmatism in from the margins. The chapter summarizes IR’s current relationship to Pragmatism focusing on the methodologies of analytical eclecticism, the historical accounts of the progressive foreign policy agenda that classical Pragmatism informed and the attempts to use Pragmatism as a tool of analytical and normative analysis. The chapter sets three questions, which structure the rest of the book: (1) what can classical Pragmatism bring to debates in IR, including those centred on the perennial question of how norms, practices and interests interact to influence international society and its practitioners? (2) How, if at all, should international practices and practitioners adapt in the face of pressing global security, climate and health challenges? (3) Given the Pragmatist answer to these first two questions, what normative conclusions can we come to about actual practice in contemporary international society? A summary of how each chapter contributes to answering these questions is provided.

This chapter addresses the book’s first question by focusing on what classical Pragmatism can tell us about constructivist-inspired norm theory. Pragmatism can contribute to a new wave of norm research, which focuses on how normativity (or appropriateness) is established and not just how norms change. Pragmatism finds normativity in experimental processes that test a norm’s ability to ameliorate the lived experience in social and political contexts (rather than in abstract theorizing). This requires a commitment to epistemic fallibilism, deliberation and inquiry. Drawing on the writings of Peirce and Dewey in particular, the chapter argues that this process can only resolve normative doubt and establish epistemic authority if the knowledge of those affected by a practice is included in the community of inquiry that establishes normativity. What Dewey called a ‘stock of learning’ emerges from this process, which can be used as a starting point for acting in uncertain situations and judging the relative strength of the alternatives offered in processes of norm contestation. The chapter relates this argument to important contributions to norm theory, including the Habermasian-inspired ‘logic of arguing’ and Antje Wiener’s ‘theory of contestation’. It illustrates the Pragmatist contribution with reference to the debate on the anti-torture norm.