Bueger Gadinger ISP Final PDF

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Reassembling and Dissecting: InternationalRelations Practice from a Science Studies

Perspective

CHRISTIAN BGER

European University Institute

FRANKGADINGER

Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz

What does it take to be an international relations (IR) scholar? IR dis-courses have tackled this question with focus on very different problems:the role and function of IR scholars for policy; the (ir)relevance andimpact of IR knowledge and expertise in world politics; disciplinary his-tory; or in studying IRs institutions. We argue that all these disciplinarysociology debates struggle with the relation between an internal scien-tific IR world and an external social context (policy, society). We rejectthis distinction and argue that science studies can help us to address theseproblems more adequately by treating IR as a scientific practice that isclosely tied to its social environment. The article sets out to explorescience studies possible contributions. Based on science studies key as-sumptions, we develop a heuristic by which the relations between IR andits environment can be grasped systematically. From this perspective, IR

is pivotally a culture constituted by different domains of practice. Hence,understanding IR scholars in doing IR requires taking into accounttheir daily and sometimes trivial practices. For instance, writing an articlein IR means much more than only thinking theoretically at a desk. Wesystematize the different domains of practices as the articulation ofknowledge claims, mobilizing the world, autonomy seeking, alliance

building, and public representation. Being an IR scholar and pro-ducing IR knowledge depends inevitably on these sets of practices andIR is intrinsically interwoven with its environment through these.

Keywords: IR practice, policy relevance, science studies, Bruno Latour

Introduction: The Disciplinary Sociology Debate

The way the profession remains strangely quiet, almost silenced, [. . .], makes thisa particularly relevant time to enquire into the links between theory and practice(Steve Smith 2002:233).

Authors note: This paper has profited from several discussions. Earlier versions of this paper were presented atthe 46th Annual Convention of the International Studies Association, Honolulu, Hawaii, 2005, and at two work-

shops at Frankfurt University. For insightful comments and ongoing support, we are especially grateful to OleWver, Iver Neumann, and Gunther Hellmann. For their comments and hints, we would also like to thank JohanEriksson, Friedrich Kratochwil, Dirk Peters, and Gerard Holden, as well as the three anonymous reviewers of ISP.For research assistance, we would like to thank Eric Hower. The usual disclaimer applies.

r 2007 International Studies Association.Published by Blackwell Publishing, 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA, and 9600 Garsington Road, OxfordOX4 2DQ, UK

International Studies Perspectives (2007) 8, 90110.


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The relationship between IR and sociology of science is virtually nonexistent.Sociology of science has concentrated on the natural sciences,[. . .]. A sub discip-line (IR) within one of the least studied disciplines (political science), thereforegets no attention from professional sociology of science. If sociology of sciencewere to be applied to IR, a combination of the two could come from the oppositeside (Ole Wver 1998:691).

International Relations (IR) scholars have (re-)discovered themselves as a relevantobject of study. What has now established as IRs disciplinary sociology debate(Holden 2004:451) has triggered research on the history of the discipline (e.g.,Dunne 1998; Long and Schmidt 2005), the nature of disciplinary knowledge pro-duction (e.g., Elman and Fendius Elman 2003; Aganthangelou and Ling 2004) andinstitutions (e.g., Wver 2003; Jrgensen and Knudsen 2006) andFmost import-antlyFon the status of IR in national and global policy processes.

Although a large body of literature has now been produced, this debate suffersfrom a too loose and often careless treatment of conceptual questions. How can we

think and speak about and analyze our own discipline thoroughly? While manyanalysts have followed the tradition of Stanley Hoffmann (1977) of merely mud-dling through,1 the main conceptual inspiration has been that of intellectual history(e.g., Guzzini 1998; Schmidt 2002). Others have introduced ideas from public pol-icy studies (e.g., Nincic and Lepgold 2000; Eriksson and Sundelius 2005).

While these conceptual imports and approaches are valuable, we argue in thisarticle that the concepts and cases of science studies can complement these studiesand help us to advance our thoughts on the discipline. As Ole Wver (1998) hasstressed, the intellectual field of science studies has been largely ignored by IR, butit offers promising insights into the praxis and function of the discipline. Further, aswe cannot hope that science studies scholars will decide to study our discipline, wehave to do the job ourselves. This requires a careful exploration of the contribu-tions that science studies can make to IR.

This paper picks up a conceptual line of science studies to explore and toillustrate in what ways science studies can advance IRs disciplinary sociology. Wesuggest that from this perspective, a very different picture of the discipline and thekind of relations with its environment can be developed. We thus address one of thekey issues of disciplinary sociology, the character of the relations of IR to otheractors, their institutions, and discourses, such as politicians, journalists, citizens,funding agencies, or neighboring disciplinesFin sum, IRs environment. As thequestion of environmental relations directly addresses IRs role for policy and so-ciety, as well as the social relevance of the discipline, it is indeed one of the mostfundamental issues, if not the most important one. However, we do not attempt to

present yet another assessment of the relevance of the discipline, but to inquire intothe foundations on which we can set up such attempts.

We proceed as follows: first, we discuss why the IRenvironment relation hasbeen conceived as problematic. Different problem frames can be identified. Thisdiscussion also stresses that the disciplinary sociology debate is much wider thenusually perceived: we are faced with far more then a self-reflexive enterprise ofscholars who do not want to get in touch with the reality of politics. Second, weargue that these problem frames all stress different facets of the IRenvironmentrelation, but do not seem to be complementary. Moreover, these frames strugglewith the problem of relating internal and external dimensions. What is missing is aheuristic by which these thoughts can be combined, integrated, and pushed further.

As we sketch in section three, such a heuristic can be drawn from science studies,although a revision of some of the current assumptions is necessary. This can bedone, as science studies points us to a different focus, i.e. an emphasis on the

1Cp. for instance the critique by Wver (1998), Holden (2002), Schmidt (2002), and Thies (2002).

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everyday and often banal practices of IR scholars. To outline this path, we brieflyintroduce science studies and its core assumptions and discuss what kind of generalimage of IR can be deduced from these.

Drawing on this rather basic and broad discussion, we attempt in section four todig deeper into the relations between IR and its environment. Following Bruno

Latour, we argue that these relations can be best understood as composed of fivecentral domains of practice. We briefly discuss these domains and stress that theseare interactive patterns. Even though these domains as such are hardly new, theheuristic allows us to think about the interrelation between them in a structuredway and opens a path for a new type of research. In our conclusion, we stress howthe perspective developed might help us to leave old and often unproductivequestions and can prompt new promising ones.

Frames of IRs Environmental Relations

A small but growing body of literature is addressing the question of how IRs

theories and theorists relate to policy. Recently, several senior scholars have arguedfor more attention to and reflection on the issue. For instance, Stephen Walt (2005)has emphasized the need to revise the concepts of knowledge transfer in order toimprove the dialogue between IR and policy and the use of IR knowledge. BruceJentleson (2002) has expressed his disappointment with IRs performance andcalled for a rethinking of the status of policy-relevant activity. Steve Smith hasargued in several articles (2002, 2003), including one ISA presidential address(2004), for more reflexivity about the impact of IR on world politics. Smith is notonly concerned about the public silence of IR but also deeply worried about howIRs knowledge reinforces the common sense of everyday political discourse.

All three contributions focus on very different facets of the relation between IR

and policy, and thus draw different conclusions about the status of the discipline.While Smith suggests that IR is too close to policy, Walt and Jentleson adopt theopposite view. Their notion of relevance is very different. Smith argues that con-ceptual choices made by IR theorists strengthen choices made in global politics.Jentleson argues that IR has been producing knowledge different from what isneeded, and Walt stresses the need for adequate mechanisms of dialogue betweenIR and politicians.

Six Problem Frames . . .

However, this is only the tip of the iceberg of research dealing with the disciplinesenvironmental relations. If IRs environment is conceptualized as not only includ-ing politicians and bureaucrats (Booth 1997; Malin and Latham 2001), then therelations are more complex. Thus, it is more satisfactory to speak about multipleproblems related to the IRworld relationship than to think of it in terms of asingle problem. Seen through this lens, several problems of the IRenvironmentrelation can be identified. At least six different problem frames are present in theliterature.2

Irrelevance

A growing number of scholars are worried about the irrelevance of IR knowledgefor policymaking. These scholars claim that IR knowledge is not being used by

those who should use it. Often this diagnosis is based on personal experiences, and

2Research comes from various corners of the discipline, which makes it hard to speak of a common field ofresearch. We will treat this literature as if such a single field of inquiry already existed in IR. However, we recognizethat this list is in no way complete. Further perspectives from political theory or epistemology might be added.

Reassembling and Dissecting92


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indeed on the frustration of scholars who have spent a life in academia withoutbeing able to identify their impact. These criticisms often have a polemical char-acter, and rarely offer constructive suggestions (e.g., Kruzel 1994; Newsom 1996).Other scholars criticize IR for producing the wrong kind of knowledge, which isnot useful for policy-makers since it is not applicable in daily policy practice (George

1993). It is argued that in order to be useful (Nincic and Lepgold 2000), scholarsshould concentrate on contemporary and pressing problems. Most, if not all, sug-gestions in this frame recommend an adaptation to the needs of politicians. Inthis way, IR analysts are most useful if they anticipate the concerns politicians areconfronted with in the future and can offer problem-oriented knowledge. Scholarswith this perspective tend to ask questions such as: why is our knowledge not used?Is our knowledge useful? How can we produce useful knowledge?

Bridging the Gap

Closely related to the irrelevance frame are conceptualizations of the relation as aproblem of knowledge transfer. The assumption here is that the world of IR can beconceptually split of from the rest of the worldFthus, two worlds exist.3 Based onthe diagnosis that the two worlds are drifting apart, scholars speak of a gapbetween IR and the other world, which has undergone a chasm-like widening inrecent years (Jentleson 2002:129, see also Kruzel 1994:179, Lepgold 2000:367).Scholars with this perspective stress the need for adequate mechanisms of ex-change, institutional environments that can facilitate dialogue (Eberwein andHorsch 1994), attempts to steer knowledge usage (Lepgold and Nincic 2001), orpoint to the failures of these. The questions those scholars struggle with are thus:how can we build new bridges over the gap? How can we improve knowledgetransfer from IR to policy? Which discursive conditions and institutions can help tofacilitate knowledge transfer?

Expertise

Some scholars have come to grasp the relationship between IR and the world byfocusing on one distinct mechanism of knowledge transfer: expertise. Scholars areconceptualized as experts. Groups of experts are seen as influential actors in policyprocesses as they facilitate policy makers learning processes. The key concept hereis theepistemic communitiesconcept developed by Ernst and Peter Haas and EmanuelAdler. Although this concept is primarily understood as a framework for studying

the role of natural scientists, it is applicable to IR scholars as well. For instance,Emanuel Adler (1992) argues that the ideas of the American arms control com-munity became political expectations, which led to the global diffusion of theseideas. With some conceptual difference Thomas Risse-Kappen (1994) stresses thatthrough the engagement of peace research scholars and organizations, the conceptof collective security contributed to the global transformations of the late 1980s.Further, most research concerned about think tanks belongs to this perspective, asit conceives of think tanks as collective experts.4 Scholars tend to ask questions suchas: what is the role of experts in the policy process? What is the exact form of powerexperts draw on to become influential policy actors? How do experts positionthemselves towards other actors?

3The image of two worlds is frequently used either in implicit rhetoric (Girard, Eberwein, and Webb 1994) orin an explicit title Two worlds of international relations (Hill and Beshoff 1994). Bridging the gap is a key concernin most of the contributions that deal with the policy dimension of the environment. Eriksson and Sundelius(2005:55) even claim that the gap exists is hardly a controversial statement.

4See, for instance, the contributions in Stone and Denham (2004) or Villumsen (2006).



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Effects and Consequences

Most critical IR scholars agree with the expert perspective that scholarship has animpact. Through their assumptions, conceptual choices, and language use, scholarsenforce and justify global politics.5 And this relevance is the crucial problem for

them. For instance, Steve Smith (2004) criticizes the way in which IRs conceptualchoices stabilize and justify the choices of global politics. He argues that phenomenasuch as poverty and sub-state violence are thus overlooked and an alternative im-agery of world politics is undermined. In the context of security studies, analystshave been concerned about how their research reinforces the definition of issues assecurity issues (securitization processes), and thus produces the possibility thatthese issues will be tackled by extraordinary measures (such as the use of themilitary instrument).6 This seems to be especially noticeable in the case ofthe securitization of migration, where it has been argued that the persistence of thesecuritization of migration could not be explained other than through the strongrole played by security analysts (Bigo 2002). As Huysmans (2002a:43) has put it,this poses a normative dilemma for security scholars: The normative dilemma [. . .]consists of how to write or speak about security when security knowledge risks theproduction of what one tries to avoid, what one criticizes: that is, the securitizationof migration, drugs, and so forth. In sum, while less interested in the role ofexperts, these scholars tend to set out the effects that evolve from scholarly dis-courses and engagements. From this perspective largely normative questions areaddressed, such as: what effects evolve from research? Are the effects desirable?What kind of research can avoid unwanted effects?

Disciplinary History and Context

By contrast, the evolving field of history of IR expounds the problems of the

relation quite differently. Historians of IR are concerned about how far the worldinfluences theory, and which factors of scientists environments have to be includedin the story of the discipline. Research has either focused on the early history of thediscipline (Schmidt 2002; Oren 2003), and here especially on the first great de-bate (e.g., Wilson 1998; Thies 2002; Quirk and Vigneswaran 2005), or conductednational case studies (e.g., Lucarelli and Menotti 2002; Breitenbauch and Wivel2004; Jrgensen and Knudsen 2006). While many argue for a rather distinct focuson IR scholars alone, others have stressed that non-IR actors, institutions anddiscourses need to be taken into account. Thus scholars ask questions such as: canwe exclude the (non-IR) world from our (hi)stories of the discipline? What is therole of context (events, institutions, culture, politics, etc.) in the development of IR?

Threats of the Knowledge Society

Another group of scholars has picked up diagnoses from sociology, such as theconcept of the knowledge society.7 Sociologists have claimed that fundamentaltransformations are occurring in the relation between science and society, leadingto completely new arrangements between science, politics, and society, and to atransformation of situations in which scientists find themselves. Relying on thisclaim, scholars (e.g., Anderson 2003; Hellmann and Muller 2004) have addressedthe question in what way IR or political science in general has to adjust to this

5

Such positions are for instance taken in much of the poststructuralist literature, e.g. Walker (1993) and George(1994).6On this issue see Eriksson (1999), Behnke (2000), and Aradau (2004).7The notion of the knowledge society is only a recent import to IR Thus most scholars seem only to touch upon

the issues and do not take the full range of transformations into account (e.g., the contributions in Nincic andLepgold 2000). See our more detailed discussion in Buger and Gadinger (2006).



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change. Scholars inspired by this perspective tend to ask questions such as: what arethe consequences of a changing social environment for the discipline? Can thediscipline survive if the trend towards a knowledge society is confirmed?

The range of frames and questions dealing with the IRenvironment link is agood indication that these are substantive questions for IR. However, all of the

frames identified focus on different facets of the relationship between IR and itsenvironment. But how do these lines of argument fit together? Can they speak toeach other, and do they complement each other? Some of these lines seem to becompatible at first sight, and it isFeven under the conditions of a diversifyingdisciplineFsurprising that they have not really taken notice of each other.8 Otherlines seem to be inconsistent or even incommensurable because they rest on com-peting assumptions. However, as we will see in the following they are compatibleand all of these perspectives can profit from a systematic engagement with the links.

. . . and a Common Problem: Knowledge Production and Social Context

An initial access point is that all these frames struggle to a greater or lesser extentwith a general problem: the question in what way the production of knowledgerelates to its social context. The historians argue most directly about which con-textual and nonscientific factors should be considered as relevant for understand-ing IRs knowledge production. Contextual factors such as political events, politicalstructures, internal scientific institutions (such as the university system), or ratherconcepts of culture (e.g., Jrgensen 2000) have been introduced as relevant. How-ever, this debate between so-called contextualists and anti-contextualists is alively one, and as Holden concluded in 2002 (259): Anti-contextualists do notmanage to exclude references to context, while contextualists [. . .] have surpris-ingly little to say about the relationship between the academy and the worlds of

politics and foreign policy. Although placed more directly in a policy context, asimilar debate takes place in the discussion on expertise. Here the issue at stake is inwhat way the knowledge of experts can be conceived as value and interest-free, andin what way the knowledge production of experts should be understood as anintegral part of the political struggle (e.g., Lidskog and Sundqvist 2002; Haas 2004).Again this is a struggle about how knowledge production (of experts) is related to(or even dependent on) the context (of experts in politics).

In the consequence perspective these issues seem to be less controversial, here aclear contextual position is taken. Knowledge production cannot be separated fromits context, and indeed some even argue the reverse, claiming that IRs knowledgeproduction should be seen as a representative discourse of global politics (Walker1993). However justified this argument may be from a poststructuralist perspective,it seems to be an overstatement, as science occupies a social space with some degreeof independence. Scholars with this perspective have hardly allowed for variancesin influence (Buger and Villumsen 2006). Thus the question of which contextualfactors are influential under which conditions is an important question for thisperspective as well.

A rather na ve position is taken by the irrelevance and gap perspectives, whichtend to struggle with the question only implicitly. In following an objectivist notionof science those scholars tend not to expound the problem of contextual influenceson knowledge production, but claim a rather pure independence. At least, this iswhat the underlying imaginary of two different worlds suggests. Knowledge pro-duction and theory (IR) here forms one world, different and separated from an-

other, which seems to be composed of pure practice. Analysts struggle to bringtogether what they once split apart: many of the increasing relevance or bridge-

8For instance, the literature on expertise and on knowledge societies or the works of critical theorists and thoseof historians of IR have rarely acknowledged each other, but could profit from such a dialogue.



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building recommendations are directed towards reconsidering social influence. Itis argued that there is a need to adjust knowledge production to social needs andpolitical interests, as it is often metaphorically put to leave the ivory tower, or, insum, to return context to knowledge production.

At stake in all these perspectives is thus the question of how context and know-

ledge production speak to each other. It is a conceptual question, of how contextualfactors link up with knowledge production and which factors can be considered asrelevant. Here we see a direct contribution of science studies in providing tools bywhich we can systematically explore the conversation (or links) between context (orenvironment) and knowledge production (or IR). Such an exploration most dir-ectly challenges the gap and irrelevance diagnosis, because these perspectives tendto neglect existing linksFalthough they claim to restore links. In the followingsection we will introduce the toolbox of science studies and explain how it can offerthe conceptual contribution we seem to need.

The Science Studies Perspective

In his 1998International Organizationarticle, Ole Wver already argued strongly forusing science studies in IR. However, as Wver (2003) recently stated himself, hisdiagnosis that the relationship between IR and sociology of science is virtuallynonexistent (Wver 1998:691) is still valid today. Sociology of science or sciencestudiesFthe term we prefer9Fcan contribute to our general understanding of thelinkages between IR and its environment.

The evolving research field of contemporary sciences studies10 takes up the ideaintroduced by Thomas Kuhn (and Ludwik Fleck) that science is a social process andthat the outcomes of science can only be understood by referring to social phenomena.Inspired by the Edinburgh school of social constructivisms symmetry principle,11

contemporary science studies accounts had their origins in the laboratory studies of the1980s (e.g., Latour and Woolgar 1979; Knorr Cetina 1984). These studies attemptedto study science ethnographic and focused on what scientists actually do, what kind ofactions they perform everyday, and how they produce knowledge through these.

While the early focus was on the laboratory and on the interaction between instru-ments, scientists and other factors in producing new objects, the laboratory as primeresearch object was left in the 1980s and the focus widened to include other sites andother forms of knowledge production. Although research still prioritizes natural sci-ence or medicine, these days scholars are also focusing on the social sciences.

A First Approximation

As a first approximation science studies argues that science12 is a set of practicesshaped by their historical, organizational, and social context. Scientific knowledge is

9The field of research we refer to operates under different terms such as Social Studies of Science or Science andTechnology Studies. We prefer the term Science Studies, as it is the most neutral one and does not indicate a priori-tization of social factors. Good overviews of the field are Jasanoff et al. (1995). For introductions to the field seeespecially Law (2004), and for an outstanding summary see Traweek (1996).

10Like any field of inquiry, contemporary science studies includes different groups of scholars. The main dividemight be between those favoring a Sociology of Scientific Knowledge and those advocating Cultural Studies of Science.However, the divides are blurred and we will not discuss the conceptual differences between them here. We more orless follow those authors who have advocated a cultural understanding of science and observational analysis.

11This understanding implies that research on science cannot formulate statements as to whether a (scientific)

representation is true or false. Consequently, true and false representations have to be explained by the same means.Additionally, concepts of knowledge production also have to be applicable to the researchers conducting the re-search themselves (known as the strong symmetry principle).

12In the following we use the term science in the tradition of the German term Wissenschaft, covering thenatural, social, and cultural sciences. Whether there are fundamental differences between these types of science isa debate beyond the realm of this article.



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produced in a set of practical contingencies. In its practice, science produces itsrealities as well as describing them. Scientists participate in the social world, beingshaped by it and simultaneously shaping it. Consequently, scientific knowledge issomething that is constructed within those practices (Law 2004:8). To summarize,science studies accounts broadly share the following assumptions:

Science is one cultural formation among many. However, no clear-cut de-marcation line between the scientific culture and other cultural formationsexists. The crucial objective is to identify the specific practice of the culturalformation science in contrast to other formations.

Social order (culture) is understood as constituted by the practices of multipleagents. In agency-structure terms, science studies starts from an agency per-spective. However, it is not the actions of single actors that are pivotal, butthose actions by which actors constitute intersubjective meanings. These socialactions are depicted as practices.

Scientific knowledge is one form of social order. Therefore, knowledge is nota natural entity. Knowledge (or representation) is created and stabilized bypractices. Through practices, representations gain stability and truth value.

In the frame of these assumptions, scholars argue that in order to understandscientific knowledge production and the relations between science and other socialenterprises, careful (and often microscopic) examinations of the practices of sci-entists are necessary. Joseph Rouse (1992:4) provides a good summary of theagenda in stating that science studies

take as their object of investigation the traffic between the establishment ofknowledge and those cultural practices and formations which [. . .] have often[been] regarded as external to knowledge. Scientific knowledge is taken to be acultural formation that has to be understood through a detailed examination of

the resources its articulation draws upon, the situations to which it responds,and the ways in which it transforms those situations and has an impact uponothers.

Rouse points us to the centrality of three analytical terms: practices, resources,and cultural formation. Given the importance of these terms, they require somefurther conceptual clarification.

Key Concepts

Practices

In a basic definition, practices can be conceived as a type of behavior which con-sists of several elements, interconnected to one another: forms of bodily activities,forms of mental activities, things and their use, a background knowledge in theform of understanding, know-how, states of emotion and motivational knowledge(Reckwitz 2002:249). The term practices, thus, covers not only speech acts but alsomaterial activities: body-based activities and engagement with things.

Understood in this sense, sciences daily practice consists of a wide range: prac-tices such as organizing a panel by email communication, writing a conferencepaper, teaching, delegating research to assistants, writing references for students, orcoping with computers and overhead projectors.

Theodore Schatzki (1996:89) conceives such social practices of x-ing (such as

reading, writing, presenting a paper) as a temporally unfolding and spatially dis-persed nexus of doings and sayings, organized by a socially typical under-standing of x-ing. This conceptualization stresses the sociality of practices: they aresocial because they are actions that become meaningful by being related to a cul-tural formation. They draw their meaning from intersubjective understandings.



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Cook and Brown (1999:387) provide a nice illustrative example: In the simplestcase, if Vances knee jerks, that is behavior. When Vance raps his knee with aphysicians hammer to check his reflexes, it is behavior that has meaning, and thusis what we call action. If his physician raps his knee as part of an exam, it is practice.This is because the meaning of her action comes from the organized context of her

training and ongoing work in medicine. While this is a rather abstract approach tothe concept of practice, in the third section we will discuss in more details whatthese scientific practices actually are.

Resources

The second analytical key term is that of resources. Scientists have to rely on adiverse set of resources to conduct their work, to stabilize and to increase the truthvalue of their knowledge claims. Such resources include symbols and rituals such asquotations and citations or reliance on earlier research, but also communicativeresources such as support from peers and rhetorical strategies. However, many

resources cannot be acquired by scientists independently: scholars need other ac-tors to acquire these resources. Such resources most obviously include funding, butalso nonmaterial, cognitive resources, such as rhetorical support.

Latour (1987, 1999) stresses that there are five main domains of resources sci-ence needs in the conduct of knowledge production. These are: (1) earlier research,(2) a certain degree of recognized independence and the organization of peers,(3) a number of (nonpeer) supporters who provide resources that can not be ac-quired independently, (4) the acceptance of the public, and (5) support by theobjects (or the world) that are being studied. To acquire resources from the latterfour domains scholars have to engage with nonpeers, with their environment.However, as earlier research is built upon these resources as well, the first domain isnot independent from engagements with the environment either. The practices bywhich scientists acquire these resources are consequently what we have called herethe links with the environment.

Science as Cultural Formation and Research as a Social Process

Science studies scholars argue that practice (understood as a set of practices) con-stitutes the cultural formation of science. Many of the practices have a routinecharacter and are rather invisible or tacit. Younger scholars being socialized in thefield learn this practice, and practice becomes part of their habitus. However, sci-entific practices also can have a nontacit, creative character. This is the case when,for instance, the identification and observation of new objects require new practices

(Knorr Cetina 2001), or when conceptual innovations (such as the multiple turnsin social theory) call for different treatments of objects. These old and sometimesnew practices continuously structure and re-structure, stabilize and destroy thecultural formation of science. Indeed, the meaning of the term science itself andwhat it means to be scientific is intersubjectively established by practice. Culturalformations like science are thus not predetermined entities, but only temporally,contextually stable. A cultural formation is flexible and open for new practices.Hence, science is not a definite catalogue of tasks or criteria but rather a sort ofnever-ending and frequently changing technique, practiced by doing.13

Different concepts have been advanced to grasp the formation. Knorr Cetina(1999) coined the term epistemic culture. In highlighting the nested character of

13This indicates that it is problematic to speak of science as one homogeneous type of cultural formation or onecommunity. Accordingly, IR too can only with difficulty be treated as one cultural formation and discipline. IR seemsrather a heterogeneous set of different and only sometimes overlapping communities that differ locally over whichpractices are accepted, which knowledge is shared and which is disputed, which topics of research are considered asbeing important or innovative.



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practices Bruno Latour and others have coined the parallel concept of actor-net-works.14 This term highlights the fact that through practice, a diverse set of actorsand objects become tied to each. Following Latour, such a network makes know-ledge production possible in the first place. A network guarantees the stability,endurance, and finally social acceptance of a knowledge claim.15 In addition to

scholars, actors from other social spaces (such as policy makers or journalists) areneeded for this process. Thus, knowledge (production) can only be understood bytaking into account the rich network of actors, discourses, and their practices thatallows for the stabilization of knowledge. If we are to understand the links betweenIR and its environment we consequently have to inquire into the IR network, itsrecurrent practice, its internal traffic, and the role of nonpeer actors in the pro-duction and stabilization of IR knowledge.

Practice Approaches in IR

Although this concept may initially sound abstract, it is not entirely new to IR. IR

scholars such as Didier Bigo (2002, 2005), Jef Huysmans (2002b, 2006), MikkelVedby Rasmussen (2002, 2003), Iver Neumann (2002), and Emanuel Adler (2005)have argued for a focus on culture understood as practice.16 While the IR culture(or network) has not come into focus yet, their research stresses the productivity ofresearch along these lines. These authors have argued that the focus on practicescan contribute to reducing structural biases in IR theory, to re-focusing on agency,and to preventing the over-intellectualization of practitioners actionsFwhich is thecase for many discourse theory approaches.17

A good illustrative case of this research is Neumanns (2005) work on the cultureof diplomacy. Neumann identifies the practices that are necessary to be a diplo-mat and argues that diplomats follow different sets of practices, or scripts, in per-

forming their job. Neumann observes three different sets that constitute diplomaticculture: a bureaucratic script serves the diplomats as guideline for their tasks athome, aheroic scriptguides their performance as specialists in trouble-shooting inworld affairs, and when they follow the third mediator script diplomats act self-effacingly as mediators in negotiations. The differences of the diplomatic scriptslead to tensions between them, but also between professional and private life. AsNeumann (2005:72) concludes, the different sets of diplomatic practices (scripts)cannot be reconciled, only juggled.

The case of diplomacy highlights that cultural formations are constituted bydifferent and often conflicting sets of practices (scripts in Neumanns terminology).Moreover, cultures such as diplomacy are fluid entities: they do not stand still for a

portrait, because practices are changing, are in flux.Neumanns argument is fully applicable to our present case. Indeed, the discip-line of IR is not only constituted by theory and concepts, but being an IR scholarmeans performing everyday actions, ranging from writing to drinking coffee atconference breaks. In this sense, doing IR is a technique, a set of practices. A focuson these actions and practices thus avoids thinking of IR only in terms of structure(theory) and over-intellectualizing IR scholars actions, which consist of many other

14See Latour (2005), Law (2004), and the contributions in Law and Hassard (1999) for contemporary work thatstresses this metaphor.

15Latour and proponents of the actor-network metaphor leave it an open and empirical question which know-ledge is stabilized by a network. In our understanding it can be theories, facts, norms, rules, shared practices, or

even social arrangements like the boundary between science and policy itself. Readers familiar with the actor-network approach will recognize that this is a quite pragmatic usage of the concept. Using these insights as a way ofunderstanding IR and its environment does not mean going all the way with them.

16See also Neumanns further work on strategic culture (Neumann and Henrikki 2005) and internationalorganization (Neumann and Sending 2006).

17See explicitly on this Neumann (2002) and Huysmans (2006).



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things than theorizing. Thus, if we grasp IR as a cultural formation constituted bydifferent sets of practices that establish the meaning of being an IR scholar, twoquestions arise: what are these different set of practices, and how are they related toeach other?

In contrast to cases such as diplomacy, where this type of research can claim

novelty, in the case of the culture of science (and thus of IR) we can draw uponearlier research that can help identify the principle sets or domains of practice. Inthis way science studies means we do not have to start from scratchFalthough itwill be necessary to specify the practice for the case of IR. In the following wediscuss how science studies have sorted sciences domains of practice. We argue thatthis is a heuristic that can guide our way in understanding IR and its links. As wewill see some of these domains have come into focus through the problem frames inIR literature.

Systematizing Domains of Scientific Practice

Although awareness of the significance of the locality, contingency, and the largevariety of practices is necessary, as in the case of diplomacy practices can be clus-tered. Making such an attempt, Latour (1999:80112) identifies five domains ofscientific practice: (1) the practice oflinks and knots; (2) the practice ofthe mobilizationof the world; (3) the practice ofautonomization; the (4) the practice ofalliance-building;and (5) the practice ofpublic representation.

In the following we discuss those practices that form the repertoire of action ofscholars. As in the case of diplomacy, these practices can only be separated foranalytical purposes and being a scientist involves paying attention to all of them.Latour stresses the interwoven character of these domains by using the metaphor ofblood circulation: one domain could not do without the other, and the function of asingle domain can only be understood through the others. Thus, some care aboutthe tensions and conflicts between the domains is necessary in our discussion.

Links and Knots or the Articulation of Knowledge Claims

The articulation of knowledge claimsFwhether as vocabularies, arguments,concepts, or theoriesFis the first and central domain of practice. These practicesare commonsensically characterized as being scientific. In sum, these are prac-tices associated with the utterance of statements and deliberations about the valueof these statements.

Latour places this practice in the center and uses the term link and knots to stressthat this domain is the cement by which all the other domains are held together.

However, the practices of the centre use resources that have to be gathered byother practices. The practices of the four other domains support the articulation ofknowledge claims, but also transform and translate them. Karin Knorr Cetina(1995:143, emphasis in original) summarizes this interaction as

scientific objects are not only technically manufactured [. . .] but also inextric-ably symbolically and politically construed. For example they are construedthrough literary techniques of persuasion that one finds embodied in scientificpapers, through the political stratagems of scientists in forming alliances andmobilizing resources, or through the selections and decision translation that build

scientific findings from within.

In the following, we devote our attention to the domains of practices, which KnorrCetina exemplary stresses here. However, given the limits of this paper, we cannotdiscuss these practices in all their facets and details here. These are too complex tobe covered by a single article. What we try to do instead is to give an impression ofhow these practices are intrinsically part of knowledge production, and as such



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form scientific knowledge from within. Moreover, we attempt to show how thesepractices are interactive patterns. They are interactions with the environment, andas such it is these practices that form the links to the environment. As we will discussat the end of this section, the dilemma that is at the heart of IRs current literature,the relation between knowledge production and context, or internal and external,

is fundamentally transcended from this perspective, and it will be an important taskfor future research to specify the practices that we discuss here only on a generallevel in IR contexts.

Mobilizing the World

The production of a statement about the world requires establishing a sort ofrelation to this world. The practices that deal with this relation can be conceived aspractices that mobilize the world. To mobilize the world means (a) the reductionof the complexity of the world by translating it in such a manner that it becomes a

relevant scientific object or problem18

and (b) to collect data of these objects.If the things, actions, and processes of the world are translated to become a part

of scientific discourse, this induces a long chain of translations: decisions about therelevance of observations and objects, choices about analytical levels and the meth-odological instruments by which the world can be translated. These processes are aconstant ordering and re-ordering of the world. Things are classified and sorted asbelonging to each other and things are sorted out as being irrelevant or insignifi-cant. Attempts to classify often follow culturally defined, preestablished criteria andmethodological instruments. However, these meta-criteria and meta-instrumentsagain rely on earlier choices of earlier generations of scientists.

How this process unfolds can be illustrated by the classification that IR struggled

with for almost thirty years, the so-called level of analysis problem, see also thefollowing similar situations of which indeed forms a truly IR classification. While thedistinction between man, states, and the international system was introducedby Kenneth Waltz (1959) to support his argument for a focus on the system, it wastranslated by people such as David Singer (1961) into an analytical frameworkwithin which the IR scholar was forced to choose a level prior to conducting anyresearch. In consequence IR was not only split into discourses focusing on one ofthe levelsFwhile the man-level was left pretty much to other disciplinesFbut therelation between the analytical levels became one of the core problems of the dis-cipline. It was the constructivist and critical scholarship of the late 1980s that chal-lenged this classification system in arguing for the inclusion of other political units,such as transnational actors, and in showing how this classification system led to theignorance of phenomena such as change, small events, or routine actions. However,as constructivism became established it is now also its classification systems thatguide research. This instance highlights how the culture of a discipline is formed bya set of choices and translations.

A decisive part of the domain mobilizing the world is further the collection ofdata based on these classification systems, criteria, and instruments. Scholars collectdata about their object of study, which later becomes evidence in support of theirstatements. In this sense the world becomes truly mobile. The world is translatedinto a set of dataFnumbers, actions, speech acts, arguments, or historicalfacts according to the criteria usedFwhich are useful for calculation or interpre-tation and can support statements of the links and knots domain. In sum, the

world is translated into data. Moreover, these data need to be organized and in-stitutionalized to guarantee the endurance of the data and the possibility of

18This notion comes close to what Bourdieu characterizes as the process of objectivation. See the discussion inBuger and Villumsen (2006) for parallels and differences between Latour and Bourdieu.



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revision. Data are, for instance, collected in institutions such as databases (like themultiple war databases) or archives.

In sum, through the practices of this domain, the world is made usable for thescientist and the organization guarantees a constant stream of data from the worldinto science. In IR, mobilizing the world-practices are frequently at stake and

these debates form the heart of the epistemological controversies and the meth-odological controversies that have increased recently.19 While most IR analystswould accept that mobilizing the world is one of the key links to the environment, ithas rarely become part of the discussion about environmental relations. It haslargely been the consequences perspective that has acknowledged this dimension,in arguing that IRs classification systems support those classifications, which aredominant in public discourse. This is for instance the case when Smith (2004:510)argues that

IR has defined its core concerns in such a way as to exclude the most markedforms of violence in world politics, in favour of a relatively small subset whichultimately relies on the prior moves of separating [. . .]. The disciplines definition

of violence looks very closely linked to the concerns of the white, rich, male worldof the power elite.

However, there is more to this dimension, as there is also the question of whichinstruments (methods) we use to mobilize the world. And the full range of thisdimension can only be considered if we take the other domains into account.Moreover, in the case of IR many of the objects of studyFthe world that is mo-bilized for IRs discourseFare often at the same time clients of IRs research. Thisdirectly points us to the other domains of practicesFthe interplay between distanceand influence, as well as the public as a client.

Autonomy

Science as a social project was from its birth set up on the idea that science operatesindependently from other social domains. And indeed, this independence consti-tutes the main argument for the special qualities of scientific knowledge. However,while scientists certainly need a certain degree of self-organization and independ-ence (or autonomy) to conduct their workFnot only since the rise of the policysciencesFthis autonomy is frequently at stake. Practices are needed to secure au-tonomy, and this is done in two ways: (a) by setting up a self-organization and (b) bymaintaining the imaginary boundary to non-science.

Self-organization starts with the basic fact that to establish a knowledge claim,scholars will need someone they can convince. Researchers need peers who listen tothem and with whom they can debate data, results and concepts. To organize thesepeers, institutions such as disciplines, professions, schools, and related as-sociations, journals and conferences are constructed and maintained. This disci-plinarity serves a wide range of purposes: a common identity is established,common criteria and standards are enforced, agendas are formulated, dialogueand dispute settlement are organized, multiple sites of knowledge production getconnected to each other, and actors are given a map to navigate through the realmsof knowledge production. But also the internal demography is regulated by de-fining access criteria, gatekeeping, and career placement.

That IR has become professionalized over recent decades, that its institutions,such as journals, are growing in number, is a basic observation. However, this

development has consequences for knowledge production and the regulation ofenvironmental relations. As has been stressed, for instance, by Walt (2005),

19This development has been spurred for instance by the Perestroika movement. For a good discussion of thePerestroika debate, see for instance Topper (2005).



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Jentleson (2002), and Jrgensen (2000), the disciplinary criteria, regulations, andhabits define which practices are honored with the scholarly currencies reputa-tion, tenure, and research money. The higher the degree of disciplinarity, thegreater will be the rewards for routinized practice and the less room there will befor creativity.

Moreover, practices of disciplinarity require practices of exclusion. Science stud-ies designate these practices accurately as boundary work (Gieryn 1995). Bydrawing and maintaining boundaries, professional identities and roles are pre-served. Boundary work is an ongoing practice and takes place on various levels:schools (or paradigms) distinguish themselves from each other, disciplines strugglewith each other about who has the competence to interpret events, and scholarsdeliberate with politicians in terms of how labor will be divided or how boundarieswill be blurred to facilitate cooperation.

Indeed, the domain of boundary work touches most explicitly on the question ofenvironmental relations. The two world assumption is an image of the boundary.Discourses about bridging a diagnosed gap are discourses about how the boundary

should be constructed and how flexible and permeable it should be. This processhowever not only relates to politicians, but alsoFif we want to use the economicmetaphorFto competitors on the market of interpreting global politics. Bound-aries are drawn to knowledge producers such as think tanks, international organ-izations, activist groups or the media. As a boundary needs approval and autonomyneeds to be granted, boundary work is interactive.

However familiar IR is with boundary work, it has hardly been studied as such. Ifall interactions with non-IR agents are a sort of boundary work, and the meaning ofnon-IR thereby becomes defined, then this indeed needs to become a focus ofresearch. But this requires more than just acknowledging what has been writtenabout boundaries. A focus on how scholars in specific situations, such as advisorycontexts, actually define, draw and re-draw boundaries, and how these experiencesstructure the discipline at large is needed.

Moreover, boundary maintenance means both keeping distance and facilitatingcooperation. It is an interplay between the two. It is the domain of cooperation, oralliance formationFas we conceive itFon which we will focus next.

Alliances

Scholars need resources they cannot acquire independently from other social ac-tors. While many of these resources are acquired by mobilizing the world, auton-omy, or public representation practice, scholars need to guarantee the constant flowof these resources and acquire additional ones. These are practices by which

scholars form and stabilize alliances. The notion of alliance is here understood in aMachiavellian sense, as an alliance between differing parties possessed of differinginterests where borrowed forces keep one another in check so that none can flyapart from the group (Latour 1987:130). Scholars not only try to find as manyallies as possible, but also to keep them together. In alliance-seeking practices,scientists create interest in their research and try to convince other actors that theyshare a common goal.

Consider the engagement of a scientist in policy advice. While the scholar wouldkeep a careful eye on his independence from the client (autonomy), he will alsoseek to convince his client of the relevance of his knowledge. If the client is con-vinced, he will, together with the scholar, share an interest in the status of know-

ledge. Thus an alliance has been formed that is interested in keeping andstrengthening the status of the knowledge. While the client can profit from theexpertise of the scholar, the scholar also receives knowledge (of the clients needs,world views, etc.) in exchange. This knowledge is a resource in the knowledgeproduction process. In the case of IR this is highlighted by the study of Keith Webb,



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who found that for 47% of his interviewees insights into the policy-making pro-cess (Webb 1994:90) were their most important reason to engage in policy advice.

Science does need some sort of alliances, and indeed most if not all IR scholarsopenly declare the necessity of alliances. Maybe one of the strongest statements ofthis kind is that of Michael Nicholson (2000:183) who claims that: The purpose of

doing International Relations, like all social science, is to influence people, some-time, somewhere in a context which will make a difference to their actions. How-ever, alliance formation too is an interactive pattern; not only do scholars gainresources from an alliance, it is likely that the utterance of statements in the linksand knots domain and mobilization practice are changed by alliances. And this iswhat is regularly neglected, for instance in Almond (2001), Muller and Risse (2001),and Snyder (2001). IRs critical theorists have paid special attention to this form ofinfluence and warned of academic prostitution if alliances are too tight. However,what these critiques often undervalueFthis becomes clearly visible in distinctionssuch as Coxs (1996) between critical theory and problem solving theory (Duvalland Varadarajan 2003)Fis that any kind of research assembles agents to form

alliances, be it in the case of critical scholarship the virtual category of the op-pressed or activist movements.20 Understood in this sense, alliance-building is adaily practice of IR, and it is never absent from specific scholarly groups.21

To sum up, alliances are a decisive part of the science-policy network of IR.Contrary to the expectations of the gap literature, alliances (or bridges) are a dailyphenomenon. However, alliances cannot be observed in isolation from the rest ofthe circle of IRs practices. The interplay and synchrony of autonomy and alliancesis one of the key puzzles of the whole discussion, but it is not independent from therest. It is also a question of how autonomy and alliances influence mobilizing theworld, and how their interplay shapes the practices of the centre: the ways in whichthey support knowledge claims, and how they transform them.

Public Representation

Finally, scientists also engage with the public. While engagement with the public canbe part of alliance building and autonomy, it is a practice very different in character.Scientists have to take care of their relations with another outside world civilians:reporters, pundits and the man and woman in the street (Latour 1999:105). Sci-entists write op-eds, are called by journalists for background talks, or even inter-viewed in live contexts, they are asked for public lectures, teach generations ofcitizens or publish books that make it onto the nonfiction market.

Although practices of public presentation are rarely an issue of official scientificdiscourses, they make up a part of scientific work. Needless to say, different skills

are necessary to perform these practices. A scientist can be excellent in advising apolitician, gaining research funding, or managing a research institution, but in-capable of going on a talk show.

However, under the conditions of a democratic system, scientists need to justifytheir existence and the resources they are granted before a wider audience. Withpresence in the public sphere a group of scientists can easily acquire more re-sources, but with a lack of such presence they are more likely to lose resources.22

20This seems to be a blind spot of much critical scholarship: while many have criticized alliance practices, thiscritique is rarely supported by a reflection of the critics own alliances. See for instance the case of Gibbs (2001). A

good example of these debates is also the discussion in Review of International Studies 25:1 about Andrew Linklaterswork.21Of course, there might be something like a theorist who does not care about alliances at all, but even this

theorist would rely on a group of scholars engaged in alliance-building.22For instance, if there is a general cut-back in funding, it wouldnt be solely the disciplines with the weakest

alliances that are the main victims of reduced funding, but also those least visible in public.



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In the context of media work, Peter Weingart and Petra Pansegrau (1999) havedemonstrated that public representation practices can have direct spill-back effectsin the scientific discourse. First, scientists are able to acquire resources in the media(prominence) that also change the social status of a scientist among his colleagues(reputation). Second, the evaluation of knowledge claims in the public sphere can

lead to a change of scientific practices in the sense that the public evaluation criteriaare also used in science to justify research. This point can even be pushed further:through interaction with the public, scientists gain much of the background know-ledge they have about society.

While public practice has not been a focus of analysis in IR, several scholars haveat least called for fostering these actionsFwhether as a channel to reach politicians(Malin and Latham 2001), to secure public confidence in the usefulness of thediscipline (Jentleson 2002), or to promote emancipatory objectives (Booth 1997).However, IRs disciplinarity has underestimated public presence so far. In thissense Newsom (1996:22) might be right in arguing that IR is an elite culture,but an elite culture only in favor of speaking to other elites, rather than to a lay

audience.

Summary: IR Practice and Environmental Relations

To sum up, if we follow science studies we can identify five domains of practice thatconstitute the cultural formation of science and give meaning to being a scientist.These domains are interwoven with each other, and the practice we placed at thecenter, the articulation of knowledge claims, is dependent on and transformed bythe others. The other four domains we have described as (1) translation processes(mobilization of the world); (2) self-organization and boundary work (autonomizat-ion); (3) alliance-building; and (4) public activities. Our claim was that these prac-tices, first, build scientific knowledge from within, and second, are interactivepatterns, by which scientists engage or link up with their environment. Third, wesought to show how the problem perspectives we sketched in section two tend tofocus only on some of these practices, and thus rarely cover the whole spectrum ofpractices relevant to understanding environmental relations. As we stressed fromthe beginning, the domains as such are hardly new, but the heuristic allows us tothink about the interrelation between them in a structured way and opens a pathfor a new type of research. In sum, it enables us to combine research and tran-scends the internal/external problem.

From a science studies perspective, it does not make sense to treat the process ofknowledge production as an internal exercise separated from its context. Thepractices of scholars by which they deliberate about the status of their knowledge

claims are tied to those types of practices by which they link up with their envi-ronment. Scientists assemble their environment with the claims they make. Thisshould be not misunderstood as anything goes in a manner that scientific pro-cesses are a matter of coincidentally gambling. Establishing knowledge is a de-manding enterprise for scientists, yet they only succeed by interacting with theirsocial context. The practices by which scholars engage with their environment forma unified whole with internal knowledge production practices, or to put it an-other way, there is a constant traffic between the two.

As the science studies perspective stresses, we cannot start from a particulardivision between science and the rest of social context and then determine theirinteraction. Social context is more restricted and more extended than understood

in IR so far. It is more restricted as scholars draw upon a variety of resources thatare situationally contingent. It is more extended as scholarly practices are based ona background of interaction and discourse, interaction with disciplinary neighbors,administrators, publishers, funding agencies, politicians, bureaucrats, journalists,and so on.



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Conclusion: Using Science Studies

In this paper, we have discussed concepts from science studies in order to exploreand to illustrate in what way these can advance IRs disciplinary sociology. Wesketched how, from this perspective a very different picture develops of what thediscipline and its relation to the environment are. We claimed that we can addressone of the key issues of disciplinary sociology, the character of the relations of IR toother actors and their institutions and discourses.

By identifying six strands in IRs contemporary literature we sought to show thatthese can speak to and complement each other if a common heuristic can be found.Following science studies we developed the notion of IR as one cultural formationbeside others. To grasp the IR culture the task lies in identifying the resources andpractices on which IR builds its knowledge. Instead of focusing on single practices,such as writing or reading, we argued for initially observing domains of practices(or scripts). Science (IR) can be understood as composed of five interactive domainsby which scientists engage with their environment and build knowledge fromwithin. The internal/external dilemma is transcended when considered from this

perspective. While we discussed some IR literature in exemplifying the domains ofpractices, we advocated for further specifications of these through detailed exam-inations of IR.

However, our discussion can only be a starting point for further inspiration fromthe sociology of science, and there is a need for empirical research based on theseinspirations. Such empirical research can use the outlined domains of scientificpractices as a framework. Good starting points for such research might be, first, theobservation of the traffic inside the network of scholarly practice. As earlier re-search from science studies highlights, the ways in which metaphors travel and aretransformed in the network might be interesting objects of research.23 Second,disputes and controversies among different communities are also valuable entry

points for empirical research. In disputes scholars and other social actors deliberateabout which knowledge and which practices are legitimate. And disputes also havethe capacity to transform and change the relations in the network.24

Finally, we share the position of much of the IR-policy literature that the ultimategoal of research should neither be knowledge about the IR-policy nexus per se(although we certainly lack knowledge here), nor the pure evaluation of the impactof IR, but empirically supported prescriptions for how to manage the IR-policyrelationship. It has to be stressed that the heuristic we outlined in this paper is notonly a modelofIRs network; it can also be used as a model for IR. The key task ofthe reflective IR practitioner is not the ethical consideration of whether to bridge agap or not, but reflection on the mobilization, autonomy-seeking, alliance-building,

and public representation practices he is engaged in and keeping a careful eye onthe balance between the different practices.

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