Practices as models: A methodology with an illustration concerning wampum diplomacy

Millennium: Journal of International Studies

Volumn 40, Issue 3, 2012, Pages 457-481

  Andersen, Morten Skumsrud ^a   Neumann, Iver B ^a  

^a NORWEGIAN INSTITUTE OF INTERNATIONAL AFFAIRS NUPI   (Norway)

Author keywords

Diplomacy; Methodology; Practices

Indexed keywords

EID: 84861906664     PISSN: 03058298     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1177/0305829812441848     Document Type: Article

References (98)

1. Patrick Thaddeus Jackson, Civilizing the Enemy (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2006), 18.
2. Patrick Thaddeus Jackson, The Conduct of Inquiry in International Relations (New York: Routledge, 2011), 129-135.
3. Charles Tilly, Explaining Social Processes (London: Paradigm, 2008), 47.
4. Friedrich V. Kratochwil, Rules, Norms, and Decisions: On the Conditions of Practical and Legal Reasoning in International Relations and Domestic Affairs (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989);
5. Nicholas G. Onuf, World of Our Making: Rules and Rule in Social Theory and International Relations (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1989).
6. Benjamin de Carvalho, Halvard Leira and John Hobson, 'The Big Bangs of IR: The Myths That Your Teachers Still Tell You about 1648 and 1919', Millennium: Journal of International Studies 39, no. 3 (2011): 735-58.
7. Iver B. Neumann, 'Returning Practice to the Linguistic Turn: The Case of Diplomacy', Millennium: Journal of International Studies 31, no. 3 (2002): 627-651.
8. Emmanuel Adler, 'The Spread of Security Communities: Communities of Practice, Self-Restraint, and Nato's Post-Cold War Transformation', European Journal of International Relations 14, no. 2 (2008): 195-230;
9. Christian Büger and Trine Villumsen, 'Beyond the Gap: Relevance, Fields of Practice and the Securitizing Consequences of (Democratic Peace) Research', Journal of International Relations and Development 10, no. 4 (2007): 417-448;
10. Ronald R. Krebs and Patrick Thaddeus Jackson, 'Twisting Tongues and Twisting Arms', European Journal of International Relations 13, no. 1 (2007): 35-66;
11. Iver B. Neumann, 'The Body of the Diplomat', European Journal of International Relations 14, no. 4 (2008): 671-694;
12. Iver B. Neumann, At Home with the Diplomats: Inside a European Foreign Ministry (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2012);
13. Vincent Pouliot, International Security in Practice (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010).
14. Emmanuel Adler and Vincent Pouliot, 'International Practices: Introduction and Framework', in International Practices, eds Emmanuel Adler and Vincent Pouliot (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011).
15. Theodore R. Schatzki, 'Introduction', in The Practice Turn in Contemporary Theory, eds Theodore R. Schatzki, Karin Knorr Cetina and Eike von Savigny (New York: Routledge, 2001), 13-14.
16. Stephen Krasner, ed., International Regimes (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1983);
17. Robert O. Keohane, ed., Neo-realism and Its Critics (New York: Columbia University Press, 1986);
18. Peter J. Katzenstein, ed., The Culture of National Security (New York: Columbia University Press, 1996).
19. E Adler and V Pouliot, 'Introduction and Framework', 15.
20. E Adler and V Pouliot, 'Introduction and Framework', 16;
21. Emmanuel Adler and Vincent Pouliot, 'International Practices', International Theory 3, no. 1 (2011): 20.
22. E Adler and V Pouliot, 'International Practices', 3, emphasis in original. We thank Jorg Kustermans for discussions that clarified our thinking on this score.
23. Roman Frigg, 'Fiction and Scientific Representation', in Beyond Mimesis and Nominalism: Representation in Art and Science, eds Roman Frigg and Matthew Hunter (Berlin: Springer, 2010), 97.
24. Although this is a discussion regarding models in general, it is worth mentioning a well-known example from our own field: Kenneth Waltz's structure of anarchy (Theory of International Politics [New York: McGraw-Hill, 1979]) can be said to consist of transitive relations between entities. This structure needs content, for example states, and it needs a notion of what different capabilities entail, like armies or natural resources. Put differently, for Waltz, 'being a transitive relation' is structural, while 'having a bigger army than' is not, and in this sense "structural claims ride on the back of non-structural claims' (Frigg, 'Fiction', 108). Coincidentally, Waltz also approximates our general view of models and theory in his greatly unrecognised first chapter of Theory (pp. 1-17). Another well-known example of a structural element is Bourdieu's "field'. Note
25. Frigg, 'Fiction', 106. In other words, the more concrete concepts from the world we investigate that are needed to ground structural claims are not themselves structural.
26. Ray Monk, Ludwig Wittgenstein: The Duty of Genius (London: Penguin, 1990), 510-511;
27. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Italian Journey 1786-1788 (New York: Pantheon Books, 1962), 305
28. Max Weber, The Methodology of the Social Sciences (Glencoe, IL: Free Press, 1949);
29. Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations (New York: Macmillan, 1953);
30. Karl Popper, The Logic of Scientific Discovery (London: Routledge, 2002 [1934]).
31. Kenneth M. Sayre, Metaphysics and Method in Plato's Statesman (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 73-112.
32. Jackson, Conduct of Inquiry, 203.
33. The oft-debated and very important reflexive question of how scientific models might be performative and come to influence the objects of study or constitute practice is clearly relevant here, but must be left for another day. Note
34. Brenda Farnell, 'Getting out of Habitus: An Alternative Model of Dynamically Embodied Social Action', Journal of the Royal Anthropological Society 6, no. 3 (2000): 397-418.
35. Jackson, Conduct of Inquiry, 202-203.
36. Theodore Schatzki in his Social Practices (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996) states explicitly that he is not concerned with questions about the investigation of social life, what he calls epistemol-ogy. His is a general account of social existence and the social constitution of individuals. That is a task which is rather different from the use of analytical models. Still, Schatzki faults Bourdieu for just making stuff up in his explicitly analytical models (see pp. 150-2). Note
37. In this case, Schatzki does not make the distinction between what is a general social ontology and a model as a methodological and analytical tool, consisting of both abstract structural concepts and tangible data, to be used in specific investigations. Schatzki's is a social theory, or an ontology of social life in general, and not a methodological claim specifically about the status of academic knowledge. Therefore, the critique of Bourdieu on methodological grounds seems misplaced in the context of his discussions of social ontology. Note
38. What does, however, is the exact meaning of "representation', but that does not affect our argument in this section.
39. Michel de Certeau, The Practice of Everyday Life (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1984 [1974]).
40. Vincent Pouliot, '"Sobjectivism": Toward a Constructivist Methodology', International Studies Quarterly 51, no. 2 (2007): 359-384;
41. International Security in Practice: The Politics of NATO-Russia Diplomacy (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2010); "Methodology: Putting Practice Theory into Practice', in Bourdieu in International Relations, ed. Rebecca Adler Nissen (forthcoming 2012). Note
42. Pouliot, 'Methodology'.
43. We agree with Waltz (Theory, 4), when he points out that "data never speak for themselves. As the American pragmatist, C.S. Peirce, once said, "direct experience is neither certain nor uncertain, because it affirms nothing - it just is. It involves no error, because it testifies to nothing but its own appearance. For the same reason, it affords no certainty." The problem is that "we do not know what to add up, and we do not know whether addition is the appropriate operation' (ibid.). In casu, how can we recognise a practice when we see one, and how do we know what is the "appropriate operation'? Note
44. Pouliot, '"Sobjectivism"', 365.
45. Ibid.
46. Jorg Kustermans, 'Practice and Agency, with a Case-Study from International Relations', unpublished manuscript.
47. Patrick Thaddeus Jackson, 'How to think about Civilizations', in Civilizations in World Politics, ed Peter J. Katzenstein (New York: Routledge 2010), 176-200.
48. Alexander Wendt, 'The Agent-Structure Problem in International Relations Theory', International Organization 41, no. 3 (1987): 344:
49. 'Since the social relations which constitute states as states will be potentially unobservable and irreducible to the properties of states themselves, however, such a theoretical reorientation [away from 'as if' arguments] will require a non-individualist and non-empiricist understanding of system structures and structural analysis, an understanding of structure as something more than a distribution of capabilities.' Note
50. Stephen P. Turner, The Social Theory of Practices: Tradition, Tacit Knowledge and Presuppositions (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1994).
51. Ibid., 130.
52. Andy Pickering, 'Time and a Theory of the Visible', Human Studies 20, no. 3 (1997): 327.
53. Nicholas Rescher, Objectivity (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1997), 12;
54. S Jackson, Conduct of Inquiry, 128-130.
55. Martin Heidegger, Being and Time (Oxford: Blackwell, 1962 [1927]), 95-102.
56. Jackson, Conduct of Inquiry, 129;
57. Bent Flyvbjerg, Making Social Science Matter (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001).
58. Vincent Pouliot, 'The Logic of Practicality: A Theory of Practice of Security Communities', International Organization 62, no. 2 (2010): 257-288.
59. Jackson, Conduct of Inquiry, 130-131.
60. Barry Barnes, 'Practice as Collective Action', in The Practice Turn in Contemporary Theory, eds Theodore R. Schatzki, Karin Knorr Cetina and Eike von Savigny (New York: Routledge, 2001), 23-24.
61. Francis Jennings, The Ambiguous Iroquois Empire: The Covenant Confederation of Indian Tribes with English Colonies from Its Beginnings to the Lancaster Treaty of 1744 (New York: Norton, 1984), 124.
62. Paul Sharp, Diplomatic Theory of International Relations (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 133.
63. The question of diplomacy remained wholly tangential to the debate that raged in the 1980s about the possible Iroquois origins of American ideas about democracy; for an overview
64. Bruce E. Johansen, Native American Political Systems and the Evolution of Democracy: An Annotated Bibliography (Westport, CN: Greenwood, 1996).
65. Harold Nicolson, Diplomacy (London: Butterworth, 1939);
66. Iver B. Neumann, 'Euro-Centric Diplomacy: Challenging but Manageable', European Journal of International Relations 18, no. 2 (2012), available online at doi: 10.1177/1354066110389831.
67. Ragnar Numelin, The Beginnings of Diplomacy: A Sociological Study of Intertribal and International Relations (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1950).
68. Daniel K. Richter, 'Cultural Brokers and Intercultural Politics: New York-Iroquois Relations, 1664- 1701', Journal of American History 75, no. 1 (1988): 41;
69. Matthew Dennis, Cultivating a Landscape of Peace: Iroquois-European Encounters in Seventeenth-Century America (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1993).
70. J.A. Brandão and William A. Starna, 'The Treaties of 1701: A Triumph of Iroquois Diplomacy', Ethnohistory 43, no. 2 (Spring 1996): 217-218.
71. Nancy L. Hagedorn, '"A Friend to Go between Them": The Interpreter as Cultural Broker during Anglo-Iroquois Councils, 1740-70', Ethnohistory 35, no. 1 (1988): 60-61.
72. Brandão and Starna, 'Treaties', 239, n. 84.
73. Richter, 'Cultural Brokers', 59.
74. Marcel Mauss, The Gift: The Form and Reason for Exchange in Archaic Societies (London: Routledge, 1990 [1954]).
75. Hagedorn, '"A Friend to Go between Them"', 70.
76. Mary A. Druke, 'Iroquois Treaties: Common Forms, Varying Interpretations', in The History and Culture of Iroquois Diplomacy: An Interdisciplinary Guide to the Treaties of the Six Nations and Their League, ed. Francis Jennings (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 1985), 88.
77. Brandão and Starna, "Treaties', 218.
78. At least in the 19th century, wampum was also used for tasks such as reinforcing morality tales to children in school settings;
79. Robert E. Bieder, 'The Grand Order of the Iroquois: Influences on Lewis Henry Morgan's Ethnology', Ethnohistory 27, no. 4 (1980): 349-61, especially p. 354.
80. However, even during its most popular period, other objects such as skins could be substituted for wampum. Still, as pointed out in Elisabeth Tooker ("Book Review', Ethnohistory 32, no. 1 [1985]: 71), it is not correct when Richard Aquila maintains in The Iroquois Restoration: Iroquois Diplomacy on the Colonial Frontier, 1701-1754 (Detroit, MI: Wayne State University Press,1985) that, 'by the mid-1600s, wampum usually consisted of glass beads manufactured by whites' (p. 34). Note
81. Brandão and Starna, "Treaties', 204.
82. Druke, 'Iroquois Treaties', 103-104.
83. Hagedorn, '"A Friend to Go between Them"', 66-67.
84. English, not British; this was before the Union between England and Scotland in 1707.
85. Neumann, "Euro-Centric Diplomacy'.
86. Hagedorn, '"A Friend to Go between Them"', 70.
87. Ibid., 68.
88. A Druke, "Iroquois Treaties', 89.
89. Bruno Latour, Reassembling the Social: An Introduction to Actor-Network-Theory (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005).
90. Jaques Derrida, Writing and Difference (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1978);
91. Jack Goody, The Logic of Writing and the Organization of Society (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986).
92. Brandão and Starna, Treaties', 230. The General Governor was the French king's viceroy.
93. De Certeau, Practice of Everyday Life;
94. James C. Scott, Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1998).
95. Iver B. Neumann, At Home with the Diplomats: Inside a European Foreign Ministry (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2012).
96. Richter, "Cultural Brokers', 41.
97. De Certeau, Practice of Everyday Life, 82;
98. Scott, Seeing, 313.