ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the scene for understanding how the double distinction between theory/reality and theory/practice has shaped the international relations (IR) discipline. It focuses on Pierre Bourdieu's practice approach to scientific knowledge and discusses how 'seeing as Bourdieu' might turn IR's attention to the practical relationship between science and its object of study. The chapter explores how a Bourdieusian perspective on knowledge can bring the relationship between theory and practice into focus while preserving a view of scientific knowledge production as distinct and valuable. A practice approach emphasizes the power of contextually produced knowledge, the basic involvedness of theory and practice, and a practical reflexivity about the position and habitus of the 'objectifying subject' - the researcher. The researcher's own position was a blind spot in mainstream IR and had been overlooked by reflectivism even though it seemed to follow logically from the epistemological claims about the impossibility of detached knowledge production.
