ABSTRACT
The key way of understanding knowledge practice within International Relations has been to emphasise the idea of accumulating knowledge about ourselves and about the world through increasingly nuanced forms of practice from measurement to observation and reflection. The chapter discusses the nature of this understanding which is based on refusing to start with key political concepts to explain the world and which instead seeks to unpack and investigate key political concepts themselves. It explores three core approaches which help us to understand better what a critical attitude to knowledge practice involves: these are problematisation; disorientation; and rethinking. Knowledge is practised within International Relations (IR) as a discipline, and more generally within the social sciences, is by focusing on particular concepts such as democracy, global justice, humanitarian intervention, citizenship, or gender. The notion of sovereignty within the discipline of IR; this is the idea that a state's authority over a particular jurisdiction is absolute and territorially limited.
