Abstract:
Hedley Bull championed a heuristically valuable concept of international law insofar as he recognized that law is part of social reality and, conceived as such, a social process, i.e. a sort of practice composed of actors and their interactions. What is systematically left out of consideration by Bull and many others is the question as to the social mechanisms which, if they do, make the actors involved in international law identify themselves and others as members of international society and conform to its rules. I undertake to show how this constitution of conformity may be imagined as a social process, or practice. It is for this purpose that I take recourse to the theory of practice outlined by Bourdieu. That is, I regard it especially fruitful for the purpose of this paper to draw from the notions of ''field'', by which is meant an area of structured, socially patterned activity, or practice; and ''habitus'', which refers to the very structural element that patterns the activity in question by tradition, education, and daily experience. It is the envisaged goal of the paper to illuminate the constitution of conformity as a social process and so to account for the likelihood that actors partake in collective action that underlies the ordering of international society.
