Activating Archives for the Practice Turn in International Relations

Abstract

International practice theory (IPT) posits the primacy of empirics over theorisation, but what counts as empirical data? In this article, we discuss IPT scholars’ methodological preferences, specifically their prioritisation of ethnographic research over text-based analysis, the latter being understood as providing inferior access to practices. To contribute to a revision of IPT’s dismissive stance towards document analysis, we suggest bringing IPT in conversation with Critical Archival Studies (CAS) – a body of scholarship grounded in a relational and dynamic ontology of archives and committed to analyses of their embeddedness in politics and power relations. We argue that IPT can benefit from activating an analytical sensibility towards the archival practices of record-making, record-keeping and record-using. To support this argument and demonstrate its analytical value, we revisit official accounts of the interactions between interveners and the ‘targets of intervention’ during the United Nations’ Transitional Authority in Cambodia. Through an in-depth analysis of a unique archival collection of 835 Khmer-language letters the Cambodian people sent to Radio United Nations Transitional Authority in Cambodia (UNTAC) in 1993, we provide new perspectives on the people’s lived experiences during the intervention, while also illuminating the implications of archives in the enabling and justification of dominant intervention practices.