| ID | 181535 |
| Title Proper | How can documents speak about practices? practice tracing, the Wikileaks cables, and diplomatic culture |
| Language | ENG |
| Author | Cornut, Jeremie ; Zamaroczy, Nicolas de |
| Summary / Abstract (Note) | Practice theorists favor interviews and participant observations in their study. Using insights from anthropological works on bureaucratic texts, in this article we develop methodological tools to complement these interpretive methods of data collection. We suggest a way to trace practices by systematically looking through both the content of documents and their form. We probe this approach with an analysis of 408 diplomatic cables sent by the US Embassy in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania in 2005–2009 and subsequently released by Wikileaks. We draw on these documents to tell two related stories about diplomatic practices: the first about epistemic practices and how the cables privilege certain voices and types of knowledge over others, and the second about diplomatic culture, where the cables serve as evidence of the powerful socialization processes that diplomats are subject to. This contributes to International Relations (IR) with a new approach for systematically analyzing written documents to uncover international practices. |
| `In' analytical Note | Cooperation and Conflict Vol. 56, No.3; Sep 2021: p.328–345 |
| Journal Source | Cooperation and Conflict Vol: 56 No 3 |
| Key Words | Diplomacy ; Documents ; Methodology ; Practice Theory ; Wikileaks ; Interpretivism |