By defining international communities of practice (CoPs) as domains of knowledge, this book investigates the adoption of new practices via collective learning. It will be of interest to scholars and students interested in IR theory, international organizations, development workers and anyone interested in global governance.
By defining international communities of practice (CoPs) as domains of knowledge, this book investigates the adoption of new practices via collective learning, i.e., the redefinition of what is acceptable and feasible. Explaining how inclusive practices at the World Bank became institutionalized, it shows that while changes in presidents can influence practices of international organizations, shifts in collective thinking are even more important to understand world ordering.
Since the 1980s, despite stability in their overall political rationality, World Bank employees arranged in CoPs collectively learned that program ownership and consultation in policymaking were more effective than top-down practices. Collective learning happens at the boundaries between CoPs when practitioners interact with others inside or outside the formal walls of an organization, through processes of boundary encounters, boundary brokering and the use of epistemic boundary objects. However, while learning that more democratic practices rendered their projects and policies more effective, Bank employees did not fully challenge colonial epistemic hierarchies in North-South relations. This CoP framework draws from, combines, and extends various strands of cutting-edge IR scholarship (i.e., practice-oriented and constructivist IR), management theory (communities of practice), organizational studies (narratives and day-to-day procedures), as well as development and critical studies (feminist and decoloniality approaches).
This book will be of interest to scholars and students interested in IR theory, international organizations, development practices, and social theory, but also development workers and anyone interested in global governance.
Arvustused
"This rich and thought-provoking book pushes international practice theory forward by demonstrating that learning and inclusion are not the opposites of hierarchy and power but rather their complements. Sondarjees meticulous empirical research on the internal politics of World Bank development policymaking shows vividly the complicity of participatory mechanisms in shapeshifting global social structures largely inherited from the colonial era."
Vincent Pouliot, James McGill Professor, Department of Political Science, McGill University
"Sondarjee's pathbreaking take on the Bank offers fascinating insights on how power is exercised and contested within epistemic communities. Drawing on cutting edge theory, this essential book is also a practical guide to learning about the ways that international development institutions shape and constrain the prospects for transformative change."
Adam Sneyd, Associate Professor, University of Guelph
"This is an innovative and important research on IOs and the World Bank, drawing on feminist and postcolonial approaches and International practices. This book advances the research agenda on communities of practice in world politics to capture the political and economic effects of the social dimension of shared knowledge creation and identify the sources of knowledge production and collective learning, as well as the normative and political contestation within and between communities of practice, so as to explore them as instruments for cultivating norms, values, and practices in global governance from the bottom up."
Niklas Bremberg, Associate Professor of Political Science, Stockholm University
1. Introduction
2. Relations, Processes, and Narratives in Communities
of Practice
3. Collective Learning at the Boundaries of Communities of
Practice
4. Inclusive Procedural Practices within CoPs at the Bank
5.
Boundaries as Sites for Collective Learning
6. Boundary Brokers are not
Alone, not even James Wolfensohn
7. Contestation in and of Practices
8.
Better Practices and Coloniality of Epistemic Power
9. Conclusion:
Implications for Multilateral Development Policymaking
Maïka Sondarjee is an associate professor at the School of International Development and Global Studies at the University of Ottawa. Her research addresses communities of practice, the coloniality of power in global governance, the marginalization of feminist and Global South research in IR, as well as inclusive development at the World Bank. She has published in outlets such as International Studies Quarterly, Third World Quarterly, Millennium, Global Society, International Journal, International Studies Perspectives, and Global Studies Quarterly.
