From Conflict to Communities: Fields’ Reshuffles and the Emergence of Communities of Practice in Humanitarian Logistics

Initiatives by agents in a favorable contingency can reshuffle transnational areas of practice and show how fields shape communities of practice (CoPs). The article examines how CoPs emerge and develop and why this happens in some areas and not others. It also explores whether CoPs should be situated within conflictual theories of the international, like field theory. The article argues that CoPs emerge through four stages, whereby (i) the initiative that resourceful agents take at the critical juncture of different fields of practice is followed by (ii) a power reshuffle in the fields concerned due to other organizations recognizing what those agents can offer. The result is (iii) the selective consolidation of common practices only in those fields where organizations engage in collective learning and share the same taken-for-granted. Upon meeting these conditions, (iv) the CoP can resist the competition from other organizations in its field and endure. Empirically, the article examines the case of a CoP that emerged in Dubai from the world’s largest humanitarian free zone and as part of the field of humanitarian logistics. Ultimately, CoPs are an ordering principle of international relations that does not contradict—but exists within—the tenets of field theory.