Normalising Knowledge: Constructivist Norm Research as Political Practice

NORMALISING KNOWLEDGE? CONSTRUCTIVIST NORM RESEARCH AS POLITICAL PRACTICE Stephan Engelkamp, Katharina Glaab, Judith Renner

Otto-von-Guericke University of Magdeburg, Norwegian University of Life Sciences, Technical University Munich Abstract: Social Science research cannot be neutral. It always involves the (re)production of social reality and thus has to be conceived as political practice. From this perspective, the present article looks into constructivist norm research. In the first part, we argue that constructivist norm research is political insofar as it tends to reproduce predominantly Western values that strengthen specific hegemonic discursive structures. However, this particular political position is hardly acknowledged in norm research. Hence, it is our goal in the second part of the article to outline contrapuntal reading as a research strategy to advance a more reflective and critical norm research. Keywords: constructivism, norms, contrapuntal reading, postcolonialism, feminism

OF LANDMINES AND NORMS In rural provinces of Northwest Cambodia, local peasants engage in lifting and dismantling landmines to clear cultivable land for their own usage as a means of securing their survival.1 Mostly lacking any specialised mine clearance devices as well as professional training, logistical support and medical backup, the usual demining equipment of these so-called ‘village deminers’ consists of a hoe, a bamboo stick and a knife. In terms of Western standards of humanitarian mine clearance, village demining is a hazardous, high risk and inadequate practice. Even though these areas are literally littered with antipersonnel mines, only those landmines are cleared that directly impede peoples’ ability to earn their livelihood. This has in part to do with the fact that technical devices to identify all the mines are lacking. Moreover, especially forests are notoriously difficult to clear. But this is only one side of the story. In fact, these people decided to retain some mines and farm around

1  The authors would like to thank two anonymous reviewers and Oliver Kessler for their insightful comments to an earlier draft of this article. The paper also benefitted from Karoline Färber’s precise proof-reading. The usual disclaimers apply. Engelkamp/Glaab/Renner: Normalising Knowledge?, ERIS Vol. 3, Issue 3/2016, pp. 52–62

Stephan Engelkamp/Katharina Glaab/Judith Renner: Normalising Knowledge?

53

them in order to keep the respective area economically unattractive, for instance to its original proprietor, business investors or powerful strongmen.2 The landmine case has been a prominent example in constructivist scholarship on norms, for instance in studies on the International Campaign to Ban Landmines,3 and it seems to present a case in point for global normative change as a moral progress in global politics.4 In these studies and in the narratives that structure them, one finds apparently clear-cut roles to be assigned, for example for international nongovernmental organisations as ‘norm entrepreneurs’, for local people as ‘victims’, and even for the landmines as statistical ‘figures’. The Cambodian story of villagers who deploy landmines as protective devices against forced evictions does not seem to fit in here. While the anti-landmine norm certainly intends to protect the innocent against indiscriminate violence, in the context of Cambodian politics, it perversely makes them more vulnerable to practices of land grabbing. Landmines not only threaten the Cambodian villagers in our story, they are at the same time subjected to power relations in a larger political economy of land that also threatens their livelihood. The narrative framing of the case in terms of a ‘moral progress’ stabilises the very relations of power that victimise those who should be protected by the intervention in the first place. Perhaps this is an exceptional case5 that can be explained only if one takes into account the local stories about the traumatic experience of the Khmer Rouge period and the multiple upheavals that have shattered the Cambodian society since. And yet, as Giorgio Agamben noted, sometimes an exception can tell us a lot more about a norm than the norm itself.6 Starting from this perspective our paper encounters constructivist research on norms. We proceed from the assumption that this body of scholarship does not offer a somehow neutral or objective perspective on the world it investigates. Rather, constructivist norm research participates in the construction of social reality and, through the knowledge it produces, it contributes to the production, reproduction and normalisation of hegemonic (and primarily Western) knowledge systems and power structures.7 This renders constructivist claims about the spread of certain norms as moral progress particularly problematic, as the justification of these claims depends 2 Ruth Bottomley, ‘Spontaneous Demining Initiatives. Mine Clearance by Villagers in Rural Cambodia. Final Study Report’, Brussels: Handicap International Belgium, 2001; Ruth Bottomley, ‘Balancing Risk. Village DeMining in Cambodia’, Third World Quarterly, Vol. 24, No. 5 (2003), pp. 823–837; Ruth Bottomley, ‘Crossing the Divide. Landmines, Villagers and Organizations’, Oslo: PRIO Report 1, 2003. 3 Richard Price, ‘Reversing the Gun Sights. Transnational Civil Society Targets Land Mines’, International Organization, Vol. 52, No. 3 (1998), pp. 613–644. 4 Richard Price, ‘Moral Limit and Possibility in World Politics’, International Organization, Vol. 62, No. 2 (2008), pp. 191–220. 5 Village demining seems to be a common and continuing practice, at least in Cambodia’s North-Western provinces, but there are similar reports on other post-conflict societies, for example on Angola. 6 Giorgio Agamben, State of Exception. Homo Sacer II, 1 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005). 7 Constructivist research on norms comprises more work than can be discussed here; cf. for example the more epistemologically interested contributions by Friedrich Kratochwil, Rules, Norms, and Decisions. On the Conditions of Practical and Legal Reasoning in International Relations and Domestic Affairs (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991); and Nicholas Onuf, World of Our Making. Rules and Rule in Social Theory and International Relations (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1989). In this article we engage primarily with the large body of constructivist research that focuses on the non-linguistic aspects of norms and that has been labelled as ‘conventional constructivism’, cf. Karin M. Fierke and Knud E. Jørgensen (eds.), Constructing International Relations. The Next Generation (Armonk: M.E. Sharpe, 2001); following a critical approach towards theoretical perspectives, see Robert W. Cox, ‘Social Forces, States and World Orders. Beyond International Relations Theory’, Millennium – Journal of International Studies, Vol. 10, No. 2 (1981), pp. 126–155.

54

European Review of International Studies, Volume 3/2016

on its positioning within a specific reading of a supposedly universalistic historical narrative. Moreover, it presents an obstacle to achieving what Amitav Acharya has called a ‘Global International Relations’ as a discipline that aspires to have the potential of transcending the divide between ‘the West’ and ‘the Rest’.8 At the same time, we contend that constructivist norm research, with its focus on agency, power and contestation, does present a useful avenue to promote a more Global IR. The questions we want to emphasise here are the following: first, how do norm research’s particular theoretical and methodical decisions and practices strengthen particular bodies of knowledge and value systems at the expense of others? Second, how do they contribute to normalising a particular reading of social and normative order, while other orders and value systems are marginalised and delegitimised? And third, what are possible avenues for a more critical and reflective norm research? After a reconstruction of the achievements and potentials of constructivist norm research in IR, we criticise the specific politics of reality this research pursues by accepting, normalising and strengthening certain meanings that are largely shared and accepted as normality in the West, and thereby also legitimising and reproducing the broader knowledge and value systems in which these meanings are embedded. In the final section of this contribution, we suggest contrapuntal reading9 as a possible research strategy for a more reflective and critical engagement with norms drawing on insights and strategies from feminist, postcolonial and poststructuralist research. Throughout this article, we draw on our introductory example of Cambodian village ‘deminers’ to illustrate our argument.

CONSTRUCTIVIST NORM RESEARCH: AN APPRAISAL Norm research has become a central subject matter of a constructivist research programme in IR. The constructivist project began in the late 1980s as a critique of existing rationalist research programmes. Initially, this research aimed to show empirically how ideational factors matter in international politics and to inquire into the causal mechanisms and processes by which norms, culture and identity influence behaviour.10 Agency, and particularly the power of non-state actors, figured prominently in this research. Norms, which are commonly understood as “standard[s] of appropriate behavior for actors with a given identity”11 and considered to be a central aspect of the ideational international structure, soon became a major object of inquiry of constructivist research. Early studies focused primarily on the structural character of norms and investigated their effects on actors’ behaviour in   8 Amitav Acharya, ‘Global International Relations (IR) and Regional Worlds’, International Studies Quarterly, Vol. 58, No. 4 (2014), pp. 647–659.; Amitav Acharya, ‘Advancing Global IR: Challenges, Contentions, and Contributions’, International Studies Review, Vol. 18, No. 1 (2016), pp. 4–15.   9 Edward W. Said, Culture and Imperialism (London: Vintage, 1994), pp. 59–60. 10 Audie Klotz, ‘Norms Reconstituting Interests. Global Racial Equality and U.S. Sanctions Against South Africa’, International Organization, Vol. 49, No. 3 (1995), p. 460. 11 Martha Finnemore and Kathryn Sikkink, ‘International Norm Dynamics and Political Change’, International Organization, Vol. 52, No. 4 (1998), p. 891; see also Peter J. Katzenstein, ‘Introduction. Alternative Perspectives on National Security’, in Peter J. Katzenstein (ed.), The Culture of National Security. Norms and Identity in World Politics (New York: Columbia University Press, 1996), p. 5.

Stephan Engelkamp/Katharina Glaab/Judith Renner: Normalising Knowledge?

55

order to show that “norms matter”.12 According to this research, norms influence international politics in two ways. On the one hand, they are constitutive as they form actors’ (especially states’) interests and identities.13 The general interest in norms as behavioural standards brought norm-oriented behaviour into the focus of constructivist research, i.e. behaviour considered appropriate, in contrast to strategic, self-interested behaviour. As March and Olsen argue, actors do not always behave rationally and want to minimise costs while at the same time maximising their benefits. Rather, they also act according to a logic of appropriateness.14 They adopt intersubjectively shared norms linked to certain identities and roles for actors. These identities evoke specific beliefs about good and legitimate behaviour which, in turn, shape and guide social behaviour.15 While the social and political effects of norms remained an important issue of constructivist research, a growing number of authors soon began inquiring more intensively into structural change and theorising the processes by which norms develop and spread globally.16 Early research on the development of norms centred largely on agency.17 The driving force behind these processes has been located in the efforts of various kinds of transnational actors such as norm entrepreneurs, advocacy networks or epistemic communities.18 These actors share a normative position or a body of knowledge and act purposefully in the international system in order to spread new norms. In this context, constructivist norm research emphasised especially discursive framing and persuasion processes as central strategies by which norm entrepreneurs foster the proliferation of norms.19 The case of the international campaign against landmines illustrates this nicely. Here, we have a broad international alliance of non-governmental organisations and small states which successfully lobbied for banning antipersonnel mines in global politics. Advocating the human right of protection against bodily harm, and often with the aid of celebrities and through emotional media campaigns, the antilandmine movement soon gained momentum and eventually succeeded in bringing 12 Katzenstein, op. cit., p. 30; James G. March and Johan P. Olsen, ‘The Institutional Dynamics of International Political Orders’, International Organization, Vol. 52, No. 4 (1998), p. 958. 13 Jeffrey T. Checkel, ‘The Constructivist Turn in International Relations Theory’, World Politics, Vol. 50, No. 2 (1998), p. 326. 14 March and Olsen, op. cit. 15  Ibid., p. 959; Thomas Risse, ‘“Let‘s Argue!”. Communicative Action in World Politics’, International Organization, Vol. 54, No. 1 (2000), pp. 1–39. 16 See for instance Wayne Sandholtz, ‘Dynamics of International Norm Change. Rules against Wartime Plunder’, European Journal of International Relations, Vol. 14, No. 1, pp. 101–131; Wayne Sandholtz and Kendall W. Stiles (2009) International Norms and Cycles of Change (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009); Ann E. Towns, ‘Norms and Social Hierarchies. Understanding International Policy Diffusion ‘From Below’’, International Organization, Vol. 66, No. 2 (2012), pp. 179–209. 17  See Martha Finnemore and Kathryn Sikkink, ‘Taking Stock. The Constructivist Research Program in International Relations and Comparative Politics’, Annual Review of Political Science, Vol. 4 (2001), p. 393. 18 Klotz, op. cit., p. 463; Thomas Risse and Kathryn Sikkink, ‘The Socialization of International Human Rights Norms into Domestic Practices: Introduction’, in Thomas Risse, Stephen C. Ropp and Kathryn Sikkink (eds.), The Power of Human Rights. International Norms and Domestic Change (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), p. 18; Susan Park, ‘Norm Diffusion within International Organizations. A Case Study of the World Bank’, Journal of International Relations and Development, Vol. 8, No. 2 (2005), p. 117; Thomas Risse, ‘Transnational Actors and World Politics’, in Walter Carlsnaes, Thomas Risse and Beth A. Simmons (eds.), Handbook of International Relations (London: Sage, 2006), pp. 263–265; Emanuel Adler and Peter M. Haas, ‘Epistemic Communities, World Order, and the Creation of a Reflective Research Program’, International Organization, Vol. 46, No. 1 (1992), p. 368. 19 Nicole Deitelhoff, ‘The Discursive Process of Legalization. Charting Islands of Persuasion in the ICC Case’, International Organization, Vol. 63, No. 1 (2009), pp. 33–65.

56

European Review of International Studies, Volume 3/2016

about the 1997 Ottawa Treaty, a legally binding regime banning the use, production, stockpiling and transfer of antipersonnel mines.20 Constructivist norm research has since received a broad range of reactions in the scientific community. One point of critique focuses on the static concept of norms. Norms have been conceptualised as things with a relatively stable content, which diffuse from one setting to another.21 This perspective tends to downplay the fact that norms are generally contested and part of permanent processes of negotiation by which normative meanings are produced and transformed.22 With the analytic focus of early constructivist norm research on the mere diffusion of international norms from the global to the local,23 normative change has been at least implicitly conceptualised dichotomously as either norm adoption or norm rejection.24 This research perspective underestimates the importance of local contexts in adoption processes and tends to underrate aspects of power.25 Thus, concepts of socialisation,26 diffusion,27 or persuasion28 turn out to be insufficient to capture the actual exchanges taking place between international norms on the one hand, and local beliefs and practices on the other. Conceptualising normative change, at least implicitly, as a dichotomy of either norm adoption or norm rejection may entail neglecting conflict and power in processes of normative change, especially when modelled through concepts such as learning or persuasion.29 The notion of norm diffusion as a process of socialisation, which casts normative change as a process, in which non-Western states and societies are socialised into global norms, reinforces the implicit delegitimisation of local agency.30 The concept of socialisation implies that the socialisee undergoes a process of moral improvement. Furthermore, socialisation is conceptualised as unidirectional, it works from the global to the local. Seen that way, local actors automatically appear as passive, reacting recipients of global norms. According to Epstein, this model infantilises local actors by constructing them as morally empty

20 Price, ‘Reversing the Gun Sights’, op. cit. 21 Mona L. Krook and Jacqui True, ‘Rethinking the Life Cycles of International Norms. The United Nations and the Global Promotion of Gender Equality’, European Journal of International Relations, Vol. 18, No. 1 (2012), p. 104. 22 Antje Wiener, ‘The Dual Quality of Norms and Governance beyond the State. Sociological and Normative Approaches to ‘Interaction’’, Critical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy, Vol. 10, No. 1 (2007), pp. 47–69. 23  Susanne Zwingel, ‘How Do Norms Travel? Theorizing International Women’s Rights in Transnational Perspective’, International Studies Quarterly, Vol. 56, No. 1 (2012), pp. 115–129. 24 Antje Wiener, ‘Enacting Meaning-in-use. Qualitative Research on Norms and International Relations’, Review of International Studies, Vol. 35, No. 1 (2009), p. 179. 25 Amitav Acharya, ‘How Ideas Spread: Whose Norms Matter? Norm Localization and Institutional Change in Asian Regionalism’, International Organization, Vol. 58, No. 2 (2004), pp. 239–275; Megan MacKenzie and Mohamed Sesay, ‘No Amnesty from/for the International. The Production and Promotion of TRCs as an International Norm in Sierra Leone’, International Studies Perspectives, Vol. 13, No. 2 (2012), p. 161. 26 Thomas Risse, Stephen C. Ropp and Kathryn Sikkink (eds.), The Power of Human Rights. International Norms and Domestic Change (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999). 27 Beth A. Simmons and Zachary Elkins, ‘The Globalization of Liberalization. Policy Diffusion in the International Political Economy’, American Political Science Review, Vol. 98, No. 1 (2004), pp. 171–189. 28 Deitelhoff, op. cit. 29 Iver B. Neumann and Ole J. Sending, Governing the Global Polity. Practice, Mentality, Rationality (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2010), p. 7. 30 Charlotte Epstein, ‘Stop Telling Us How to Behave. Socialization or Infantilization?’, International Studies Perspectives, Vol. 13, No. 2 (2012), pp. 140–143.

Stephan Engelkamp/Katharina Glaab/Judith Renner: Normalising Knowledge?

57

subjects whose own values and identities are masked and thus nullified.31 In sum, normative change is understood as a transformation towards normative progress.32

CONSTRUCTIVIST NORM RESEARCH AS POLITICAL PRACTICE While the critique of constructivist norm research presented above addresses predominantly analytical problems, it is also important in another regard that has been referred to as ‘the politics of reality’ of social science research.33 This term points to the hidden normative bias of constructivist norm research, which is implicit (though seldom explicitly reflected) in scientific texts and practices thus turning research itself into a political practice, which legitimises and delegitimises normative orders and value systems. With this critical interest in the politics of reality, we join numerous feminist,34 postcolonial35 and poststructuralist36 researchers who have repeatedly criticised dominant bodies of knowledge and practices of knowledge production in the discipline. The Eurocentric predisposition of constructivist norm research surfaces, first, in the selection of empirical research objects. Constructivist norm research usually represents specific norms as global norms – and thereby acknowledges and strengthens them as such – that are embraced and accepted as good and desirable in the West, for example Western understandings of democracy, human rights or justice.37 The social and political costs of the diffusion of supposedly good norms are hardly ever identified and analysed,38 as exemplified in our illustrative case, the implications for landless farmers in Cambodia. When analysing Western norms, constructivist studies seldom take into consideration these norms’ historical context of emergence, 31 Ibid. 32 Richard Price (ed.), Moral Limit and Possibility in World Politics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008); Nicole Deitelhoff and Lisbeth Zimmermann, ‘From the Heart of Darkness: Critical Reading and Genuine Listening in Constructivist Norm Research’, World Political Science Review, Vol. 10, No. 1 (2014), pp. 17–31. 33 Maja Zehfuss, Constructivism in International Relations. The Politics of Reality (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), pp. 196–249. 34 V. Spike Peterson, ‘Whose Rights? A Critique of the ‚Givens‘ in Human Rights Discourse’, Alternatives, Vol. 15, No. 3 (1990), pp. 303–344; J. Ann Tickner, ‘You Just Don’t Understand. Troubled Engagements Between Feminists and IR Theorists’, International Studies Quarterly, Vol. 41, No. 4 (1997), pp. 611–632; Christine Sylvester, Feminist Theory and International Relations in a Postmodern Era (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000). 35 Naeem Inayatullah and David L. Blaney, International Relations and the Problem of Difference (New York: Routledge, 2004); Anna M. Agathangelou and L. H. M. Ling, Transforming World Politics. From Empire to Multiple Worlds (London: Routledge, 2009); Siba N. Grovogui, ‘Postcolonialism’, in Timothy Dunne, Milja Kurki and Steve Smith (eds.), International Relations Theories. Discipline and Diversity (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010), pp. 238–256. 36 James Der Derian and Michael J. Shapiro (eds.), International/Intertextual Relations. Postmodern Readings of World Politics (Lexington: Lexington Books, 1989); David Campbell, Writing Security. United States Foreign Policy and the Politics of Identity (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1992); R. B. J. Walker, Inside/ Outside. International Relations as Political Theory (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993). 37 Risse, Ropp and Sikkink, The Power of Human Rights, op. cit.; Martha Finnemore, ‘Norms, Culture, and World Politics. Insights from Sociology‘s Institutionalism’, International Organization, Vol. 2, No. 50 (1996), pp. 325–347; Kathryn Sikkink, The Justice Cascade. How Human Rights Prosecutions Are Changing World Politic (New York: W.W. Norton, 2011). 38 Ann E. Towns, Women and States. Norms and Hierarchies in International Society (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), pp. 24–27.

58

European Review of International Studies, Volume 3/2016

e.g. colonial rule or slavery, as this might put in doubt their normative authority.39 By not addressing the contingency and historicity of these norms, however, their embedment in hegemonic belief systems remains unquestioned. This contribution seeks to address these questions by situating itself in a critical and de-colonial approach on constructivist norm research, which inquires in to the dark sides of normative change.40 This entails not only a shift from static understandings of norms towards more dynamic processes of normalisation, but also taking a situated perspective that is also informed by everyday practices of those at the margins. Building on poststructuralist, postcolonial and feminist scholarship, we proceed from the notion of fundamental ontological uncertainty about what constitutes normality in global politics.41 According to Durkheim, the ambiguous relationship between norms and deviance is central to understanding what constitutes normative consensus in a society in the first place. Hence, instead of looking at safely established norms in terms of diffusion or socialisation models, critical norm research needs to enquire the processes of normalisation, practices of stigmatisation, and the exercise of power.42 This perspective transcends teleological narratives of moral progress and modernisation and proceeds instead from a situated perspective that takes the everyday experience of those at the margins seriously. This is a necessary first step to conduct critical research that goes beyond current modernist and Eurocentric conceptions of norms and normative change.43 Some constructivist norm scholars, such as in Price’s edited volume Moral Limit and Possibility in World Politics, actively engage with the normative premises of their work.44 In his introductory essay, Price reflects on moral dilemmas in constructivist research and the problem of how to evaluate norms as progressive and ‘good’.45 Yet, as Weber observes, Price’s distinction between the social facticity of norms and normative rightness inhibits the formulation of a self-reflexive position.46 Similarly, Inayatullah and Blaney criticise Price’s notion of ‘moral progress’ through

39 Naeem Inayatullah and David L. Blaney, ‘The Dark Heart of Kindness: The Social Construction of Deflection’, International Studies Perspectives, Vol. 13, No. 2 (2012), p. 168; see also Gurminder K. Bhambra and Robbie Shilliam, Silencing Human Rights. Critical Engagements with a Contested Project (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009). 40 Naeem Inayatullah and David L. Blaney, ‘Liberal Fundamentals. Invisible, Invasive, Artful, and Bloody Hands’, Journal of International Relations and Development, Vol. 15, No. 2 (2012), pp. 290–315; Inayatullah and Blaney, ‘The Dark Heart of Kindness’, op. cit. 41 Rebecca Adler-Nissen, ‘Stigma Management in International Relations. Transgressive Identities, Norms and Order in International Society’, International Organization, Vol. 68, No. 1 (2014), pp. 143–176. 42 Epstein, ‘Stop Telling Us How to Behave’, op. cit.; MacKenzey and Sesay, op. cit.; Ayse Zarakol, ‘What Made the World Hang Together: Socialisation or Stigmatisation?’, International Theory, Vol. 6, No. 2 (2014), pp. 311–332. 43 Stephan Engelkamp, Katharina Glaab and Judith Renner, ‘Office Hours. How (Critical) Norm Research Can Regain Its Voice’, World Political Science Review, Vol. 10, No. 1 (2014), pp. 33–61; Vivienne Jabri, ‘Disarming Norms: Postcolonial Agency and the Constitution of the International, International Theory, Vol. 6, No. 2 (2014), pp. 372–390; Robbie Shilliam, ‘Open the Gates Mek We Repatriate: Caribbean Slavery, Constructivism, and Hermeneutic Tensions, International Theory, Vol. 6, No. 2 (2014), pp. 349–372. 44 Richard Price (ed.), Moral Limit and Possibility in World Politics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008). 45 Richard Price, ‘Moral Limit and Possibility in World Politics’, in Richard M. Price (ed.) Moral Limit and Possibility in World Politics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), pp. 1–52. 46 Martin Weber, ‘Between “Isses” and “Oughts”. IR Constructivism, Critical Theory, and the Challenge of Political Philosophy’, European Journal of International Relations, Vol. 20, No. 2, pp. 516–543.

Stephan Engelkamp/Katharina Glaab/Judith Renner: Normalising Knowledge?

59

norms47 as denying the historical context and colonial violence.48 This has important consequences: as Acharya points out, the depiction of Western norms as cosmopolitan and universal may lead to the delegitimisation of local forms of resistance against the putatively global as immoral.49 From the perspective of a postcolonial critique, however, normative orders are always based upon the discrepant experiences of colonisers and colonised.50 The recognition of these different historical experiences of colonialism and resistance directs the view towards the question of how power and rule are exerted in non-Western societies and makes it possible to question the apparent normality of hegemonic norms.51 The ‘real world’ consequences of such discursive normalising practices become visible whenever contending cultural or political structures of meaning clash. Our introductory example of Cambodian village deminers highlights the normative ambiguities of a supposedly “progressive intervention in world politics” whose primary objective has been “to protect the lives and limbs of innocent human beings wherever they live” and to ease the suffering of human beings.52 Freeing land from antipersonnel mines seems to be an unequivocally ‘good thing’, but our example complicates this assessment significantly. While the anti-landmine norm certainly intends to protect the innocent against indiscriminate violence, in the context of Cambodian politics, it perversely makes them more vulnerable to practices of land grabbing. As Ruth Bottomley makes clear in her study on village demining, landmines are not the only threat to which Cambodian villagers are subjected.53 More important are short-term necessities to make a living. At the same time, villagers face power relations linked to the larger political economy of land in post-conflict Cambodia. Lacking formal land titles, they are increasingly threatened with being evicted once their land has been cleared and hence subject to commodification on the market. This counter-story from the margins of the landmine ban narrative makes it much more difficult to speak of ‘moral progress’ in our case, while those who should be protected by the intervention in the first place continue to suffer from relations of violence. In fact, for village deminers, landmines may even become resources enabling their agency and possible resistance.

TOWARDS (A SOMEWHAT MORE) GLOBAL NORM RESEARCH As a more context-sensitive approach towards studying normative change, contrapuntal reading offers a fertile and critical possibility for conducting constructivist research, as it enables reconstructing the processes through which hegemonic discourses and

47 Richard Price, ‘Moral Limit and Possibility in World Politics’, International Organization, Vol. 62, No. 2 (2008), pp. 191–220. 48 Inayatullah and Blaney, ‘The Dark Heart of Kindness’, op. cit., p. 167. 49 Acharya, ‘How Ideas Spread’, op. cit., p. 242. 50 Grovogui, op. cit., p. 239. 51 Dipesh Chakrabarty, ‘Postcoloniality and the Artifice of History. Who Speaks for “Indian” Pasts?’, Representations, No. 37 (1992), pp. 1–26. 52 Price, ‘Moral Limit and Possibility in World Politics’, op. cit., p. 35. 53 Bottomley, ‘Balancing Risk’, op. cit.

60

European Review of International Studies, Volume 3/2016

thus norms emerge.54 Moreover, it highlights the conflicts and exclusions at play and emphasises alternative voices, stories, knowledge and experiences. These often marginalised perspectives are to be revealed in a critical study in order to disclose the contingency of a hegemonic discourse. In order to reconstruct those norms and narratives that are mostly overlooked by constructivist research, critical norm research can resort to strategies suggested by postcolonial and feminist authors who have probably been most explicit in elaborating and theorising the reflexivity and normativity of their own research. The task of questioning hegemonic knowledge structures is thereby embedded in an explicit feminist research ethic.55 In their research, these authors shifted their focus of enquiry towards practices and developed techniques such as close reading in order to analyse marginalised perspectives. Therefore, critical norm research demands a different kind of reading as a research strategy. For this purpose, Edward Said suggested a ‘contrapuntal reading’ of Western cultural archives looking at dominant narratives in their mutual constitution with subaltern stories.56 Being inspired by classical music, contrapuntal in Said’s metaphor describes the organised interplay of temporarily privileged topics which together constitute a complete melody. Thus, this kind of reading includes a consideration of practices of domination as well as resistance carved out in the Western cultural archive.57 In the context of a critical norm research, this means not simply presuming particular norms as generally valid standards to which local contexts can be compared and evaluated. Rather, it is essential to reconstruct alternative voices and bodies of knowledge in their reciprocal constitution and contingency. As a research strategy, or method, it thus includes an ethical dimension, but it can even serve, as Pinar Bilgin writes, as a metaphor for a more global IR, as it aims at combining both dominant and marginalised narratives by pointing out their mutual constitution.58 Our example of the practices of village deminers in Cambodia may serve as a contrapuntal reading to the dominant stories of the landmine ban in constructivist norm research. First of all, our focus illustrates how everyday people do not assume the role of powerless victim. The villagers in Bottomley’s study are able to cope with their living situation, they use the resources available to them in order to make 54 We draw in this section on our previous work on critical norm research (Engelkamp, Glaab and Renner, ‘Office Hours’, op. cit.; Stephan Engelkamp and Katharina Glaab, ‘Writing norms. Constructivist Norm Research and the Politics of Ambiguity’, Alternatives: Global – Local – Political, Vol. 40, No. 3–4 (2015), pp. 201– 218.), where we situate ourselves in an understanding of poststructuralism as a radical and political form of constructivist thought which, roughly, builds upon an ‘anti-essentialist ontology’ and an ‘anti-fundamentalist epistemology’ (Jacob Torfing, ‘Discourse Theory. Achievements, Arguments, and Challenges’, in David Howarth and Jacob Torfing (eds.), Discourse Theory in European Politics. Identities, Policy and Governance (Hampshire: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005), p. 13) and takes discourse to be the central constitutive category of social reality through which meaning is temporarily stabilised and ‘real world’ things become meaningful (Charlotte Epstein, The Power of Words in International Relations. Birth of an Anti-Whaling Discourse (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2008), pp. 4–8; David Howarth and Yannis Stavrakakis, ‘Introducing Discourse Theory and Political Analysis’, in David Howarth, Aletta Norval and Yannis Stavrakakis (eds.), Discourse Theory and Political Analysis. Identities, Hegemonies and Social Change (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2000), pp. 2–3; Torfing, op. cit., p. 21). 55 Cf. Brooke A. Ackerly, Maria Stern and Jacqui True (eds.), Feminist Methodologies for International Relations (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006); Brooke Ackerly and Jacqui True, ‘Reflexivity in Practice. Power and Ethics in Feminist Research on International Relations’, International Studies Review, Vol. 10, No. 4 (2008), pp. 693. 56 Said, op. cit., pp. 59–60. 57  Geeta Chowdhry, ‘Edward Said and Contrapuntal Reading. Implications for Critical Interventions in International Relations’, Millennium – Journal of International Studies, Vol. 36, No. 1 (2007), pp. 102–106. 58 Pinar Bilgin, ‘Contrapuntal Reading as a Method, an Ethos, and a Metaphor for Global IR’, International Studies Review, Vol. 0 (2016), pp. 1–16.

Stephan Engelkamp/Katharina Glaab/Judith Renner: Normalising Knowledge?

61

a living under severe conditions. The case forces norm researchers also to question their own normative commitments. What does it mean when local villagers prefer to stay with their families in mine-affected parts of the country rather than waiting for official mine-clearing assistance? This echoes Shilliam’s de-colonial plea for acknowledging the normative tensions that may arise from different epistemological bodies of knowledge: recognising the validity of villagers’ ‘lay knowledge’ and their concerns about land rights presents both practitioners and norms researchers with tough questions.59 As Bottomley’s report illustrates the phenomenon of village demining sparked a controversial debate among the professional demining community.60 One of the key issues concerned the question whether or not to support and train village deminers in order to make their demining practices safer. According to Bottomley, this example illustrates contending assessments of acceptable risk regarding demining practices.61 While professional deminers assessed village demining as irresponsible and dangerous, villagers engaging in these practices considered it a possible coping strategy in order to deal with the necessities of their everyday life. Yet, acknowledging the practice of village demining may also have serious consequences for the image of professional demining agencies and the nongovernmental organisations lobbying for a complete ban on landmines. Moreover, for norm research that aims at integrating different voices and contending worldviews, the question arises whether or not one can stop inquiring processes of normative change once a treaty has been negotiated. After all, the land issue has not been settled for the villagers in our story, even though demining may advance in Cambodia.

POSSIBILITIES OF CRITICAL NORM RESEARCH Norm research, as any research, is always part of a particular political economy of knowledge. In our Cambodian example, practices of local villagers to avoid land eviction do not go easily with the stereotypical image of ‘victims’ in need of protection through norm entrepreneurs. Epistemological violence is executed here in highly subtle ways, namely through seemingly unambiguous norms that inscribe certain practices and subjectivities into the protagonists. Recognising these practices as forms of domination and violence at all is not self-evident. The research strategy of contrapuntal reading proposed here attempts to set counterpoints to dominant narratives in constructivist norm research. Norm research often tends to focus on norms that are widely accepted in the West, thereby leaving them unchallenged and even strengthening them by representing them in terms of a moral progress. Our paper suggests emphasising aspects of power and domination at play in global processes of norm change while at the same time identifying the contingency of contending voices, experiences and bodies of knowledge. Therefore, we resorted to contrapuntal reading as a strategy which addresses different questions to IR norm research. It critically questions the supposed origins of global norms, the conditions of their attainment and what function they serve.62 This kind of critical reading and 59 Shilliam, ‘Open the Gates’, op. cit., p. 352. 60 Bottomley, ‘Crossing the Divide’, op. cit. 61 Ibid., p. chapter 4; Bottomley, ‘Balancing Risk’, op. cit., p. 830–831. 62 Grovogui, op. cit., p. 243.

62

European Review of International Studies, Volume 3/2016

listening enables a non-essentialist and empathic understanding of social change and local contingency that is often concealed by the politics of reality of constructivist norm research.63

63 Ibid., p. 244; Shilliam, ‘Open the Gates’, op. cit.