Alena Drieschova - Böcker

This book brings together the key scholars in the international practice debate to demonstrate its strengths as an innovative research perspective. The contributions show the benefit of practice theories in the study of phenomena in international security, international political economy and international organisation, by directing attention to concrete and observable everyday practices that shape international outcomes. The chapters exemplify the cross-overs and relations to other theoretical approaches, and thereby establish practice theories as a distinct IR perspective. Each chapter investigates a key concept that plays an important role in international relations theory, such as power, norms, knowledge, change or cognition. Taken together, the authors make a strong case that practice theories allow to ask new questions, direct attention to uncommon empirical material, and reach different conclusions about international relations phenomena. The book is a must read for anyone interested in recent international relations theory and the actual practices of doing global politics.

Different units of international politics, such as states or the church, cannot be present in their entirety during international interactions. Political rule needs to be represented for international actors to coordinate their activities. Representants (i.e. maps, GDP, buildings, and diplomatic and warfare practices) establish collective understandings about the nature of authority and its configuration. Whilst representants are not exact replica, they highlight and omit certain features from the units they stand in for. In these inclusions and exclusions lies representants' irreducible effect. This book studies how representants define the units of the international system and position them in relation to each other, thereby generating an international order. When existing representants change, the international order changes because the units are defined differently and stand in different relations to each other. Power is therefore defined differently. Spanning centuries of European history, Alena Drieschova traces the struggles between actors over these representations.

Different units of international politics, such as states or the church, cannot be present in their entirety during international interactions. Political rule needs to be represented for international actors to coordinate their activities. Representants (i.e. maps, GDP, buildings, and diplomatic and warfare practices) establish collective understandings about the nature of authority and its configuration. Whilst representants are not exact replica, they highlight and omit certain features from the units they stand in for. In these inclusions and exclusions lies representants' irreducible effect. This book studies how representants define the units of the international system and position them in relation to each other, thereby generating an international order. When existing representants change, the international order changes because the units are defined differently and stand in different relations to each other. Power is therefore defined differently. Spanning centuries of European history, Alena Drieschova traces the struggles between actors over these representations.