Gendering the practice turn in diplomacy

2020 ◽  
Vol 26 (1_suppl) ◽  
pp. 140-165
Author(s):  
Catriona Standfield
Keyword(s):  
International Relations ◽  
Interdisciplinary Research ◽  
Research Agenda ◽  
Practice Theory ◽  
Primary Sources ◽  
Practice Turn ◽  
And Gender ◽  
New Research ◽  
Analytical Tools ◽  
Thinking Tools

International Relations has developed an exciting new research agenda on diplomatic practice, drawing largely on the theories of Pierre Bourdieu. However, it largely ignores Bourdieu’s theory of patriarchy, as well as extensive feminist Bourdieusian analysis. These are analytical tools that can be used to understand how diplomacy reproduces itself as a masculinized field. They are ‘practice theory’ as well and should be incorporated into our research on diplomatic practice. My aims here are to recover feminist practice theory for a diplomatic studies audience and to indicate how we can develop an interdisciplinary research agenda on gender and diplomacy. The first part of the article provides an overview of practice theory in diplomatic studies and discusses Bourdieu’s overlooked contributions regarding gender. I then use Bourdieu’s ‘thinking tools’ of field, habitus and practice to examine diplomacy and gender using examples drawn from the literature, as well as from some primary sources. Throughout, I show how feminist sociologists have developed his ideas to create sophisticated approaches to studying the persistence of patriarchy. This does not capture all the ways in which diplomacy is gendered, but these tools reveal the limitations in our current understanding of diplomatic practices. I conclude with suggestions for future interdisciplinary research that takes gender seriously.

The Contradictions and Intersections of Class and Gender in a Global City: Placing Working Women's Lives on the Research Agenda

10.1068/a3781 ◽  
2005 ◽  
Vol 37 (3) ◽  
pp. 441-461 ◽  
Author(s):  
Linda McDowell ◽  
Diane Perrons ◽  
Colette Fagan ◽  
Kath Ray ◽  
Kevin Ward
Keyword(s):  
Labour Market ◽  
Gender Discrimination ◽  
Research Agenda ◽  
Global City ◽  
High Status ◽  
Full Time ◽  
Women's Lives ◽  
Gender Divisions ◽  
And Gender ◽  
New Research

In this paper we examine the relationships between class and gender in the context of current debates about economic change in Greater London. It is a common contention of the global city thesis that new patterns of inequality and class polarisation are apparent as the expansion of high-status employment brings in its wake rising employment in low-status, poorly paid ‘servicing’ occupations. Whereas urban theorists tend to ignore gender divisions, feminist scholars have argued that new class and income inequalities are opening up between women as growing numbers of highly credentialised women enter full-time, permanent employment and others are restricted to casualised, low-paid work. However, it is also argued that working women's interests coincide because of their continued responsibility for domestic obligations and still-evident gender discrimination in the labour market. In this paper we counterpose these debates, assessing the consequences for income inequality, for patterns of childcare and for work–life balance policies of rising rates of labour-market participation among women in Greater London. We conclude by outlining a new research agenda.

Gender in the Classroom

2010 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kathleen Staudt
Keyword(s):  
International Relations ◽  
Comparative Politics ◽  
International Political Economy ◽  
Field Research ◽  
Women And Gender ◽  
The Core ◽  
The Us ◽  
Race Ethnicity ◽  
And Gender ◽  
New Research

Although the study of women and gender flourished at intersection of comparative politics (CP) and international relations (IR), mostly international political economy (IPE) and Development Studies, much of IR itself was resistant at its core. Explicitly feminist analysis challenged the core with several decades of research that instructors can incorporate into their classes. The incorporation/transformation challenge can be daunting, however, as publication outlets for research on women, gender, and feminism often remained separate from mainstream journals, with some promising exceptions. These separate tracks are now changing, but instructors still need to check multiple places to prepare for courses and identify good assignments. And although IR feminists seek interaction with the IR core, the core IR theorists are wedded to frameworks associated with realism, liberalism, Marxism, and others, or to positivist, quantitative methodologies that may rely on flawed and male-centric databases rather than grounded field research. A major challenge in the next 40 years involves growing the interactions among bordered subfields; analyzing the intersections of gender, race/ethnicity, class, and nationality; and engaging with southern voices outside the US and Western-centric IR field. In this vein, the classroom is a major arena in which critical thinking, contestation, new research, and action agendas emerge.

scholarly journals Practising gender, queering theory

2017 ◽  
Vol 43 (5) ◽  
pp. 789-808 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lauren Wilcox
Keyword(s):  
International Relations ◽  
Queer Theory ◽  
Airport Security ◽  
The Political ◽  
Ir Theory ◽  
Area Of Interest ◽  
Practice Turn ◽  
Security Practices ◽  
And Gender ◽  
Feminist And Queer Theory

AbstractThe development of a ‘practice turn’ in International Relations promises to reconstitute IR theory around the study of embodied practices. Despite occasional references to Judith Butler’s work, the contributions of feminist and queer theory are under recognised in existing work. In this piece I note the distinctive approach to gender as a practice represented by Butler and other feminist/queer theorists for its emphasis on intelligibility and failure, particularly the importance on ‘competently’ practising gender in order to established as an intelligible subject. Given the centrality of ‘competency’ in ‘practice turn’ literature, theorising practice from the perspective of ‘gender failures’ sheds light on the embedded exclusions within this literature. To demonstrate the stakes of this critique, I discuss airport security practices, a growing area of interest to IR scholars, in terms of the experiences of trans- and gender non-conforming people. I argue that such practices ultimately complicate success/failure binaries. I conclude by considering the political stakes of practising theory in IR and how competency in theory is similarly marked by the exclusion of feminist/queer work.

Forced Migration Magnitude and violence in international crises: 1945–2015

2020 ◽  
Vol 33 (2) ◽  
pp. 336-357
Author(s):  
Hemda Ben-Yehuda ◽  
Rami Goldstein
Keyword(s):  
International Relations ◽  
21St Century ◽  
Empirical Data ◽  
Research Agenda ◽  
Forced Migration ◽  
International Crises ◽  
International Crisis ◽  
Crisis Behavior ◽  
New Research ◽  
Security Concern

Abstract This study focuses on forced migration and interstate violence during international crises, as a major security concern with salient implications for international relations stability. The empirical data consists of 229 crises designated as Forced Migration Crises (FMC), identified within the 374 crises of the International Crisis Behavior (ICB) project. The study outlines a framework for analyzing FMC compared with Non-Forced Migration Crises (NFMC), presents an index of Forced Migration Magnitude (FMM), and probes three hypotheses. It points to transformations in forced migration since WWII, compares crises with and without forced migration, and explores patterns of FMM and violence. Results lead to rejection of hypothesis 1 on similarities between FMC and NFMC, supporting hypothesis 2 on considerable diversity between them. Findings on extended scope, strategic locale, enduring forced migration problems and increased violence support hypothesis 3, challenging the placement of forced migration merely as a social or humanitarian domestic concern. Instead, results show a salient increase in FMM, coupled with more severe interstate violence and war, dangerously destabilizing regions worldwide. These patterns require the integration of forced migration within crisis frameworks, as a new research agenda, to understand the nature of forced migration in the 21st century and its impact.

The Future of International Relations

2014 ◽  
Author(s):  
Simon Reich ◽  
Richard Ned Lebow
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Policy ◽  
International Relations ◽  
Research Agenda ◽  
International Relations Theory ◽  
International Affairs ◽  
The Future ◽  
New Research ◽  
Material Power

This chapter revisits the concept of hegemony, elaborating some of the most important connections among them and assessing their implications for both U.S. foreign policy and international relations theory. Drawing on empirical findings laid out in the previous chapters, this chapter contends that hegemony is no longer applicable to international affairs, as its constituent functions are widely shared and exercised more by negotiation than fiat. This constellation requires a new conceptualization of influence. The chapter points to a new research agenda for the present century based on the recognition that we now live in a multipowered world—where actors combine social and material power to gain influence in varying ways—and not a unipolar world.

scholarly journals The art of aiming at a moving target: A critique of Lechner and Frost’s Practice Theory and International Relations

2020 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 183-198
Author(s):  
NORA STAPPERT
Keyword(s):  
International Relations ◽  
International Law ◽  
Practice Theory ◽  
Considerable Degree ◽  
Moving Target ◽  
Practice Turn ◽  
Normative Dimension ◽  
Individual Self ◽  
Epistemological Sophistication

Abstract:How can we account for the normative dimension of international practices? Silviya Lechner and Mervyn Frost’s Practice Theory and International Relations answers this question by proposing, with a considerable degree of epistemological sophistication, what the authors call ‘normative descriptivism’, which they combine with a focus on ‘macro practices’. In this contribution, I start by examining the authors’ engagement with IR’s practice turn, and the insights this engagement may offer on the underlying objective of their approach. I then turn to Lechner and Frost’s decision to eclipse history. The contribution concludes by using the evolution of international law as a cursory illustration of the types of analyses Lechner and Frost’s approach would lead to. It thereby emphasises potential challenges inherent in the authors’ combination of internalism as rooted in individual self-consciousness and a focus on ‘macro practices’, including the possibility that it might limit the potential to critically question the standard that becomes identified as universal.

scholarly journals The limits of practice: why realism can complement IR’s practice turn

2017 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 71-97 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jonathan Joseph ◽  
Milja Kurki
Keyword(s):  
International Relations ◽  
Practice Theory ◽  
Social Ontology ◽  
Sociological Imagination ◽  
Knee Jerk ◽  
Practice Turn

This paper argues that the current calls for a practice turn in International Relations (IR) while positive in many respects, are problematic and potentially limiting because they are premised on a confused understanding of the role of philosophy and realist philosophy in particular and a restricted view of the role of sociological investigation. This arises from the problematic tendency to lapse into advocacy of an anti-realist philosophical and sociological imagination. We suggest that the problems that practice theorists point to should lead not to knee-jerk anti-realism but rather can motivate a reinvigorated conversation with realism. This entails revisiting the role of philosophy, realism, and sociology in the study of practices. We argue that far from being antithetical to practice theory, a reconsideration of realist philosophy helps make sense of the role of practice and provides those advocating practice theory with better tools to deal with the challenges which motivated the development of these theoretical stances. Reconsidering realism entails, however, a reconsideration of a wider social ontology within which practice takes place, and openness to the role of philosophical and theoretical abstractions in teasing out the role of practice.

Diaspora economics: new perspectives

2016 ◽  
Vol 37 (7) ◽  
pp. 1110-1135 ◽  
Author(s):  
Amelie F. Constant ◽  
Klaus F. Zimmermann
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Identity ◽  
International Relations ◽  
Research Agenda ◽  
Design Methodology ◽  
Human Relations ◽  
Host Countries ◽  
Content Type ◽  
New Thinking ◽  
New Research ◽  
Culture Of Origin

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to introduce a new field and suggest a new research agenda. Design/methodology/approach Combine ethnicity, migration and international relations into a new thinking. Provide a typology of diaspora and a thorough evaluation of its role and the roles of the home and host countries. Findings Diaspora economics is more than a new word for migration economics. It opens a new strand to political economy. Diaspora is perceived to be a well-defined group of migrants and their offspring with a joined cultural identity and ongoing identification with the country or culture of origin. This implies the potential to undermine the nation-state. Diasporas can shape policies in the host countries. Originality/value Provide a new understanding of global human relations.

scholarly journals Women Thinkers and the Canon of International Thought: Recovery, Rejection, and Reconstitution

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-13
Author(s):  
KIMBERLY HUTCHINGS ◽  
PATRICIA OWENS
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
International Relations ◽  
Research Agenda ◽  
Academic Disciplines ◽  
New Research ◽  
International Thought

Abstract Canons of intellectual “greats” anchor the history and scope of academic disciplines. Within international relations (IR), such a canon emerged in the mid-twentieth century and is almost entirely male. Why are women thinkers absent from IR’s canon? We show that it is not due to a lack of international thought, or that this thought fell outside established IR theories. Rather it is due to the gendered and racialized selection and reception of work that is deemed to be canonical. In contrast, we show what can be gained by reclaiming women’s international thought through analyses of three intellectuals whose work was authoritative and influential in its own time or today. Our findings question several of the basic premises underpinning IR’s existing canon and suggest the need for a new research agenda on women international thinkers as part of a fundamental rethinking of the history and scope of the discipline.

Stepping out of the social world: A lonely call for more philosophy in the practice turn

2020 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 212-219
Author(s):  
AMY SKONIECZNY
Keyword(s):  
International Relations ◽  
Practice Theory ◽  
Social World ◽  
Philosophical Perspective ◽  
Philosophical Foundations ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
The Social ◽  
Practice Turn ◽  
Sociological Approaches ◽  
Empirical Methodology

Abstract:Practice Theory and International Relations will challenge all you’ve come to know about the practice turn in international relations. It will ask you to question how you define practices and call for more precision. It will challenge your starting point of ground-up actions in everyday life and look at practices from above. It will push you to rethink your empirical methodology and call out sociological approaches as misconceived. And yes, it will ask you to reread Hegel and bring philosophy back in to your practice theorising. In short, it will make a lonely, and for many, unwanted call for a U-turn in the field. In this review, I’ll take up this call for a U-turn back to philosophical foundations, and ask what is gained and what is lost in rethinking practice theory from a philosophical perspective.

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