Critical Practice Studies

Abstract

If the seminal works of Bourdieu and Schatzki’s mark the unofficial beginning of the “practice turn” in social theory and analysis, it has, more than two decades later, reached many disciplines and subfields in the social sciences. Applications of practice theory can now be found in organizational studies, international relations, public administration, policy analysis, planning, environmental studies, food production, water management and many others. Since then Schatzki, Nicolini, Shove, Engeström, Cook and Wagenaar, and others have developed practice theory in different ways and directions. Through mimicry and group socialization every developing field tends to settle into certain set types of research that do not necessarily reflect the potential of the approach. For example, increasingly we see a particular type of practice study in which large social or political questions are reduced to the study of everyday mundane activities, with at best an impressionistic attempt to reconnect these analytically to the larger issue. On the other hand, Elisabeth Shove’s paper “Beyond the ABC: Climate Change Policy and Theories of Social Change” is an excellent example of what a critical use of practice analysis can do to question widely accepted assumptions, in this case about social change in environmental policy. The purpose of this panel is to take stock and ask ourselves a number of crucial questions: What is it that is distinctive about a practice approach as oppose to other interpretive approaches? What is the added value of practice analyses over these other approaches? In what ways can practice analysis be critical? How can power and conflict be dealt with in practice analysis? In answering these questions the panel intends to return to both the Wittgensteinian and pragmatist roots of the practice concept. Wittgenstein famously revealed the limits of rationality by showing how taken-for-granted (language) habits were rooted in unreflective practices and life forms. The pragmatists evoked the primacy of the “the practical starting-point” over the “theoretical staring-point”, and showed how knowledge is rooted in action and how it advances through repeated cycles of intervention, pushback by the world, and reflection. Both have in common that they foreground experience, and that they define experience in a relational, transactional way, in which experience extends beyond the boundaries of the individual. Transactional experience encompasses structures, materialities, unfolding time, meanings, feelings, values and understandings into the fleeting, often habitual, experiences and activities of individuals, thereby firmly anchoring them into the world. BY returning to the roots of practice theory we aim to regain the practice turn's critical promise We invite both theoretical and empirical papers that address one or more of the issues raised in this panel. Literature: Shove, E. (2010) “Beyond the ABC: Climate Change Policy and Theories of Social Change”, Environment and Planning A, 42: 1275-1283