Description
International politics abounds with rituals, ranging from diplomatic handshakes and public apologies, carefully orchestrated state visits with their accompanying flag-raising and troop inspection ceremonies to military parades and international summits. But the rationale for ritual action has not been systematically expounded in international theory. This article argues that ritual action is an underappreciated, yet politically consequential genre of action in international relations. Building on Catherine Bell and Erving Goffman, I conceptualize ritual action in relation to the existing rational and constructivist theories of social action as applied in International Relations (IR). This paper probes the rationality, functionality and performativity of ritualized conduct vis-à-vis the logics of consequences, appropriateness, practice/practicality, and habit in international relations. By its promise to create enchantment effects, ritual action seeks to navigate uncertainty and mediate ambiguity in international relations. It defies the rational/non-rational divide in IR, bringing together the strategic and symbolic, intuitive, and reflective. Bridging the individual bodies and social context, ceremonial and everyday, ritual conduct alerts us to the co-presence and mixed political effects of enacting potentially contradictory social logics of action simultaneously. Deterrence and intra-alliance politics of assurance provide an example of ritual action in international security politics.
