Returning Practice to the Linguistic Turn: The Case of Diplomacy

TLDR

The linguistic turn in the social sciences has highlighted textual approaches to action but excludes other kinds of action, limiting its ability to account for social life as a whole. The authors propose reintegrating practices into the linguistic turn by modeling culture as a mutually conditioned play between discourse and practices, drawing on de Certeau and Swidler. They apply this model to analyze Norwegian diplomatic practices in the High North after the Cold War, treating culture as a dynamic interaction between discourse and practice. The analysis shows that Norwegian diplomacy is shifting from a capital‑based, centralized model to a multi‑based system where emerging local practices coexist and are indirectly governed by the capital.

Abstract

The linguistic turn in the social sciences has been fruitful in directing attention towards the preconditions for action, as well as those actions understood as speech acts. However, to the extent that the linguistic turn comprises only textual approaches, it brackets out the study of other kinds of action, and so cannot account for social life understood as a whole. We should return to seminal theorists such as Wittgenstein and Foucault, who complemented a linguistic turn with a turn towards practices. Drawing on the work of ethnographers such as Michel de Certeau and sociologists such as Ann Swidler, in part one of this article I suggest that this may be done by using a simple model of culture as a mutually conditioned play between discourse and practices. In part two, I use this model to study changing Norwegian diplomatic practices in the High North in the aftermath of the Cold War. The claim is that capital-based diplomatic practices are being complemented by emerging local practices which may only be governed from the capital by indirect means. Diplomacy thus changes from being a centralised to being a multibased practice.