Christian Bueger

Article on Epistemic Practices, the UN and Knowledge Production on Piracy published

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IPS coverMy article titled “Making Things Known. Epistemic Practices, the United Nations and the Translation of Piracy” which has been in the pipeline for a while has now been published in International Political Sociology. The article has two core objectives:Firstly, to develop an appropriate theoretical framework on the basis of practice theory by which we can study knowledge production in international relations. My basis is here Karin Knorr Cetina’s practice theory as well as considerations from Actor-Network Theory. Secondly, to provide an initial empirical investigation of different types of knowledge production in the United Nations system. Drawing on the case of how piracy is made known for the UN Security Council I document three types of epistemic practices: the Quantification work of the International Maritime Organization, the detective work of a Monitoring Group, and the net-work of a special adviser. I hope that the article will spur some further discussion on variants of practice theory and what to do with it in IR, as well as how the UN works as a knowledge production organization. It is hence of interest in the debates on IR theory, as well as International Organization.

The article is available as open access in International Political Sociology 9(1).

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