​​Normativity of International Practices

With the intro­duction of practice theories to Inter­national Relations (IR), the discipline has begun to revisit several of its key con­cepts by taking inter­national practices as the central unit of analy­sis. This includes the notions of norms and normativity. How can practice theories contribute to the vivid research area of IR norms research? How are inter­national practices linked to inter­national norms and vice-versa? How can we criticize inter­national practices? This project explores the mani­fold and intri­cate links between normativity and practice. Drawing on field-theoretical approaches and the prag­matic socio­logy, the project contri­butes to a better under­standing of how actors cope with and shape over­lapping fields and multiple, hybrid “orders of worth”. Theoretically, it shifts the focus from studying indivi­dual norms to the normative multi­plicity and hybridity of international practices. Empirically, it studies disputes about trans­national practices such as corruption in the German parlia­ment or infra­structure projects in China’s “Belt and Road” initia­tive. It analyzes situated dis­putes in which inter­national practices are evaluated, contested, and changed.​