Enacting meaning-in-use: qualitative research on norms and international relations

This article proposes a framework for empirical research on contested meaning ofnorms in international politics. The goal is to identify a design for empirical research toexamine associative connotations of norms that come to the fore when norms are contested insituations of governance beyond-the-state and especially in crises. If cultural practices shapeexperience and expectations, they need to be identified and made ‘account-able’ based onempirical research. To that end, the proposed qualitative approach centres on individuallyenacted meaning-in-use. The framework comprises norm-types, conditions of contestation,types of divergence and opposition-deriving as a specific interview evaluation technique.Section one situates the problem of contestation in the field of constructivist research on norms.Section two introduces distinctive conditions of contestation and types of norms. Section threedetails the methodology of conducting and evaluating interviews and presents the technique ofopposition-deriving with a view to reconstructing the structure of meaning-in-use. Section fourconcludes with an outlook to follow-up research