Practicing and Producing Culture

About this event

Studies of ‘culture’ and ‘practice’ in International Relations (IR) mostly talk past one another despite shared intellectual origins and influences. This paper offers a bridge by foregrounding a conception of culture grounded in concrete practical activity. Drawing on William H. Sewell Jr’s definition of culture as the “semiotic dimension of human social practice,” the paper explores the potential of the culture concept in IR with a few questions: how can we use culture in a manner that is conceptually precise and analytically helpful? How might one reconcile the emic uses of essentialist and self-orientalist representations in avowedly “cultural” discourses of practitioners without naturalising these invocations and obscuring their political effects? How can culture as practice sharpen the study of power? I respond to these questions by probing a puzzle about the everyday cultural production of ASEAN’s diplomacy.

Deepak Nair is an Assistant Professor of Political Science at the National University of Singapore (NUS). He specializes in the micro-sociological study of diplomacy, international bureaucracy, and emotions. His research has been published in International Studies Quarterly, European Journal of International Relations, International Studies Review, International Political Sociology, History and Anthropology, among other venues. He is the recipient of the EJIR best Article Prize for 2020 and the ISA Diplomacy Section Article Award for 2021.

*Please note that this is a hybrid-format meeting. In-person meeting will take place in Leacock Building #429, McGill University and will be broadcast on Zoom. Please register if you wish to attend the talk in either of these formats.