Collective Habitus and the Theory of Practices as Tools of Forecasting in International Relations

The main premise behind this project is that the theory of social constructivism, through the use of the collective habitus concept, embracing the theory of practices, has something new to offer to the understanding and practice of forecasting in International Relation (IR). Practices are in the very centre of the research and they set up analytical lenses, through which I am approaching the future studies in IR. The main aim of the project is to scrutinise how the forecasters in IR, namely persons drawing and preparing scenarios for the future, conduct their work. Through in-depth interviews, I am collecting data on how, in practical terms, practitioners produce their predictions of the future. Thereby I am submitting to scrutiny the whole process of forecasting, step by step, from conceptualisation, through operationalisation, method selection, data collection, data analysis and drawing conclusion. The main hypotheses under verification are: first, that even though many forecasters declare adherence to the positivist approach to future studies, in their practice of forecasting, many of them take into account elements that can be conceptualised under the term collective habitus, such as: collective dispositions, practices, fields, doxa, culture, identity. Second, the praxis of forecasting is to a considerable extent an effect of a “practical imperative” (McCourt 2016), not only rationally understood rules of scientific conduct. The research is conducted in Washington DC, with the use of semi-structured in-depth interviews, with purposive sampling (combined with snowball sampling), based on population framework consisting of think tanks and research institutions based in Washington DC.