Practice approaches to knowledge and expertise in international politics

Abstract

This short introductory chapter maps the range of approaches that emphasize practices, and the historical situations and material arrangements they are situated in, as starting points to the study of the international politics of knowledge. Practice approaches to knowledge and expertise in international politics see knowledge as produced by and observable in the structured and meaningful practices of human communities (or assemblages of humans and non-humans). Focusing on different ways and performances of knowing, they study how knowledge is socially produced, reproduced, and circulated, and with what effects on power and hierarchy in the social settings of international politics. Practice approaches are thus indispensable to understand the power of the seemingly banal and everyday doings that (re)produce knowledge and expertise in international politics and contribute to social ordering. The chapter gives an overview of the approaches that have been subsumed under this category and some debates around them, before introducing the chapters in the section. These include contributions that invite us to think about where to find and how to study (epistemic) practices in international politics; approaches that explore various knowledge practices—practices of co-production between experts and policymakers, practices of knowing war, and forensic practices—using different conceptual tools to study them; studies of particular devices or technical processes of knowledge production in international politics, namely algorithms, pilot studies and massive open online courses (MOOCs); and analyses that focus on wider epistemic infrastructures.