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Towards a Practice Turn in EU Studies: The Everyday of European Integration
Author(s) -
AdlerNissen Rebecca
Publication year - 2016
Publication title -
jcms: journal of common market studies
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.54
H-Index - 90
eISSN - 1468-5965
pISSN - 0021-9886
DOI - 10.1111/jcms.12329
Subject(s) - dualism , core (optical fiber) , european union , sociology , grasp , practice theory , power (physics) , epistemology , political science , social science , engineering , business , telecommunications , philosophy , software engineering , economic policy , physics , quantum mechanics
This article explores how practice theory can be recruited for the study of European integration. New generations of EU researchers are fascinated by the prospect of leaving the armchair and studying the people and artefacts that make the EU on an everyday level. This article surveys key practice‐oriented, anthropological and micro‐sociological studies of the EU and European integration and shows how their findings challenge more traditional understandings of the dynamics of European integration. Moving beyond a stock‐taking, the article distinguishes between ‘ordering’ and ‘disordering’ practices and explores the potential of a practice turn in EU studies for both theory (overcoming dualism, replacing substantialism with processualism and rethinking power) and methods (including unstructured interviews, fieldwork and participant observation). A practice turn will force us to rethink core assumptions about the EU and allow us to grasp otherwise uncharted performances and social activities that are crucial for European integration.