Abstract
We consider how the main approaches of IPT relate to one another and how their relationship spurs exciting new questions for future research. To explore these relations, we focus on a set of conceptual challenges. These challenges present issues that are contentious, present dilemmas or paradoxes and over which IPT scholars take differing positions. These must be appreciated as creative tensions; rather than playing the approaches against each other, we argue that their tensions provide fruitful heuristics for advancing IPT. The challenges are major ontological puzzles. We begin with a discussion of the tension between an understanding of practice as a social regularity and as a fluid entity. This leads us to the question of how far IPT can make statements on the contingency and change of practical configurations. Next, we address the issue of how to conceptualise the scale and size of practice. This is largely a question of (ontological) prioritisation, which is fundamental given the interest of IPT in the international and the global. We proceed with a reflection on different standpoints towards the normativity of practice, how the material dimension of practices (bodies, technology, artefacts) is prioritised, and how to conceptualise power and critique.
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Notes
- 1.
This includes the more detailed debates on visuality and the practice of seeing (e.g. Lisle 2017), cognition and the role of the brain in practice (e.g. Turner 2007; Lizardo 2009), knowledge and learning (e.g. Turner 2001; Alkemeyer and Buschmann 2017), or affectivity and feeling (e.g. Reckwitz 2012; Bially Mattern 2011).
- 2.
In addition to those discussed below, metaphors recently introduced include the concept of ‘textures of practice’ proposed by Silvia Gherardi (2012), ‘practice architectures’ proposed by Stephen Kemmis (see Mahon et al. 2017), the concept of ‘complexes of practice’ developed by Elizabeth Shove (Shove et al. 2012), Karin Knorr Cetina’s concept of ‘global microstructures’ (Knorr Cetina 2005; Knorr Cetina and Bruegger 2002), as well as various recent understandings of discourse and discursive formations (see Schatzki 2017).
- 3.
- 4.
Hopf distinguishes between meaningful difference or novelty, repeated exposures to I, exposures to social margins and liminars, weakly socialised and institutionalised environments, institutionalised differences and novelties, discursively resonant challenges to the status quo, intelligible and plausible alternatives to the status quo, and productive crises.
- 5.
- 6.
- 7.
See Srnicek (2017) as well as the special issue on ‘Materialism and World Politics’ of Millennium: Journal of International Studies 41(3).
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Bueger, C., Gadinger, F. (2018). Conceptual Challenges of International Practice Theory. In: International Practice Theory. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-73350-0_5
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