Normativity in practice: Ordering through enactment, learning, and contestation in global protests
In this short video extract, Frank Gadinger and Holger Niemann discuss their key arguments from their new Review of International Studies article - Normativity in practice: Ordering through enactment, learning, and contestation in global protests
Want to know more? You can read the full article at DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/S0260210525000142
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Abstract
Normative conflict is at the centre of many current discussions about order and change in world politics. In this article, we argue that studying normativity in practice is necessary when analysing processes of global ordering, such as negotiating, cooperating, or protesting. Practices are imbued with normativity. This key aspect, however, remains often overlooked in current International Relations (IR) practice research due to a conservative bias that treats practices mainly as patterned. Focusing on normativity reveals the inherent contestation of practices, providing a conceptual avenue for understanding how international practices oscillate between social order and change. Normativity can be defined as evaluating criteria experienced in practice and used for the contextualised moral judgement of public performances. This perspective is relevant for IR scholars interested in how relational, contested, and learning processes relate to order and ordering in world politics. We propose taking a comprehensive approach hereto based on three key dimensions: how normativity is enacted and disputed in practice; how it must be learnt as practical knowledge in communities; and, how ambiguity remains due to the multiplicity of rules applied in everyday situations. We illustrate our approach by examining global protests in different fields (sports, the environment, and peace).
Photo by Zoe VandeWater on Unsplash
