It is in and through practices - deeds that embody shared intersubjective knowledge - that social life is organized, that subjectivities are constituted and that history unfolds. One can think of dozens of different practices (from balancing, to banking or networking) which constitute the social fabric of world politics. This book brings together leading scholars in fields from international law and humanitarianism to nuclear deterrence and the UN to provide effective new tools to understand a range of pressing issues of the era of globalization. As an entry point to the study of world politics, the concept of practice accommodates a variety of perspectives in a coherent yet flexible fashion and opens the door to much needed interdisciplinary research in international relations. International Practices crystallizes the authors' past research on international practices into a common effort to turn the study of practice into a novel research program in international relations.

Part I. Practices in International Relations and Social Theory: 1. International practices: introduction and framework Emanuel Adler and Vincent Pouliot; 2. Making sense of 'international practices' Friedrich Kratochwil; Part II. Practices and Their Background: 3. A practice theory of emotion in international relations Janice Bially Mattern; 4. Background knowledge in the foreground: conversations about competent practice in 'sacred space' Janice Stein; 5. Interactional international law and the practice of legality Jutta Brunnée and Stephen Toope; Part III. The Evolution of Practices: 6. The practice of deterrence Patrick Morgan; 7. Britain's response to the Spanish Civil War: investigating the implications of foregrounding practice for English school thinking Richard Little; 8. Domestic practices and balancing: integrating practice into neoclassical realism Norrin Ripsman; Part IV. Practices in Practice: 9. Banking on power: how some practices in an international organization anchor others Ole Jacob Sending and Iver Neumann; 10. The practice of political manipulation Erik Voeten; 11. Performing practices: a poststructuralist analysis of the Muhammad cartoon crisis Lene Hansen; 12. Privatisation in practice: power and capital in the field of global security Rita Abrahamsen and Michael Williams; Part V. Conclusion: 13. Practices of theory Raymond Duvall and Arjun Chowdhury.