Doing Practice Research on Normativity: A Methodological Toolkit

Abstract International practices are inherently normative. This finding comes to the fore, albeit sometimes rather implicitly, in most current research on processes of global ordering. Focusing on questions of normativity also brings practice scholars closer to research in international relations (IR) on contestation, relationality, and reflexivity. While this has sparked productive conversations between practice and IR scholars, shifting discussions from abstract theorizing to concrete empirical research, methodological clarity remains elusive. It remains an open question how we can and should study normativity in international practices. What does it meanto understand practices as inherently contested and oscillating between order and change? Where should we start doing research on normativity? And how does the role of the researcher change? We argue that doing practice research on normativity requires combining established practice approaches, which together form a methodological toolkit for guiding research projects in IR. Boltanski’s pragmatic sociology allows for studying the nature of disputes, the community of practice account can be adopted for studying learning processes, and practice-oriented norms research is useful for decoding moral ambiguity in its implications. We demonstrate what it means to zoom in and out for all these approaches, using research examples and experiences. The article aims to encourage scholars to reflect systematically on their strategies for conducting practice research on normative issues in world politics.