The notion of institutional entrepreneurship has become very popular in the last decade. Starting from a review of the literature on the topic, I first focus on the use of the idea of individual entrepreneurs and point out three theoretical incongruities it produces. I then discuss notions of collective entrepreneurship and institutional work to see if they can overcome these incongruities. I conclude that although they can remedy some of the problems, these notions run the risk of describing everything until (...) they describe nothing. In order to limit and enable the entrepreneurship literature to discuss agency meaningfully, I argue, it needs to develop analytical frames of agency derived either from existing sociological theories or from further developing its own brand of agency theory. (shrink)

Set within discussions of gender, migration and social practices, this thesis explores the ways in which Thai women migrants to Sweden build connections between rural areas through their daily activities. Arriving in Sweden primarily through marriage ties, Thai women migrants are more likely to live in Swedish rural areas than in urban areas. Rural areas are typically not seen as a site of globalization or as receivers of international migrants. In contrast to these perceptions, the case of Thai women migrants (...) in the Swedish countryside reveals a complex and vigorous set of social practices that connect rural Sweden across spatial and temporal scales. The aim of this study is to explore the ways in which Thai migrant women construct and implement social practices spatially and temporally. Drawing on the life stories of 16 Thai women living in Sweden, along with other sources of empirical data analysed within feminist epistemologies, this thesis discusses: In what ways does gender shape migrant social practices? How are social practices constructed within individual migrant micro-geographies? By what means are migrant social practices contextualized by spaces and places? Thai women migrants are gendered agents of these social practices and are utilizing specific resources, objects and networks to bridge the distances found in their daily lives. The empirical material examined in this thesis points to the importance of women’s everyday social practices in connecting and linking rural areas globally at different spatial and temporal scales. The results highlight the importance of a translocalism perspective to understanding gendered social practices. This study adds to the translocal discussion by demonstrating that social practices are embedded in multiple geographic sites and scales. Thai women migrants, in this study, emerge as significant actors in global countrysides and do the functional work of bringing spaces and places together daily and through their life course. This thesis consists of an introductory chapter and five papers. The introductory chapter outlines the context and theoretical approaches to understanding Thai migration flows to Sweden. The papers share an emphasis on local sites: homes, workplaces and community. They examine different ways that women construct and build social practices – for example, through food, community projects and in developing their businesses. (shrink)

This article analyzes the role of emotions in social interaction and their effects on social structuration and the emergence of micro-social order. It argues that facial expressions of emotion are key in generating robust patterns of social interaction. First, the article shows that actors' encoding of facial expressions combines hardwired physiological principles on the one hand and socially learned aspects on the other hand, leading to fine-grained and socially differentiated dialects of expression. Second, it is argued that decoding facial expression (...) is contingent upon this combination so that reciprocal attributions of emotional states, situational interpretations, and action tendencies are more effective within rather than across social units. Third, this conjunction affects the conditions for emotional contagion, which is argued to be more effective within social units exhibiting similar encoding and decoding characteristics, and thus aligns emotions and action tendencies in a coherent, yet socially differentiated way. (shrink)

The philosophical assumptions that organize moral sociology as practical philosophy are the outcome of a secular quest to investigate the principles, norms and values behind the constitution of society. As a protracted response to the whole utilitarian-atomistic-individualistic tradition that systematically deemphasizes the constitutive role that morality plays in the structuration of self and society, the sociological tradition has continued, by its own means, the tradition of moral and practical philosophy in theoretically informed empirical research of social practices. Going back to (...) classic moral philosophy, I want to show in this article how social theory is involved in the quest for ‘the good life with and for the others in just institutions’ (Ricoeur). (shrink)

Research integrity is usually discussed in terms of responsibilities that individual researchers bear towards the scientific work they conduct, as well as responsibilities that institutions have to enable those individual researchers to do so. In addition to these two bearers of responsibility, a third category often surfaces, which is variably referred to as culture and practice. These notions merit further development beyond a residual category that is to contain everything that is not covered by attributions to individuals and institutions. This (...) paper discusses how thinking in RI can take benefit from more specific ideas on practice and culture. We start by articulating elements of practice and culture, and explore how values central to RI are related to these elements. These insights help identify additional points of intervention for fostering responsible conduct. This helps to build “cultures and practices of research integrity”, as it makes clear that specific times and places are connected to specific practices and cultures and should have a place in the debate on Research Integrity. With this conceptual framework, practitioners as well as theorists can avoid using the notions as residual categories that de facto amount to vague, additional burdens of responsibility for the individual. (shrink)

This article uses foodscapes as a lens to explore the potential of ecovillages’ food practices towards enhancing sustainable food systems. Ecovillages are collective projects where members attempt to integrate sustainability principles into daily community life. In these communities, food acts, not only as an element of social life, but also as a venue through which to interact with mainstream food systems and society. Yet, how food practices at ecovillages contribute to sustainable food systems remains vague. This article proposes foodscapes, as (...) a lens, for exploring the sustainability potential of place-based food practices in ecovillages, while also directing attention to how these practices intersect with networks at broader social and spatial scales. It asks, how can we better understand and draw from sustainable food practices, when considering these as both, place-based and relational? And what is the potential and the role of ecovillage communities to contribute to broader sustainable food system change? Drawing on ethnographic and food mapping methods, the article explores selected food practices at three ecovillage communities in the United States. Using social practice theory for “zooming in” on place-based practices and “zooming out” to examine relational networks, we investigate how these communities create internally sustainable food systems, while externally bridging themselves with broader urban and rural communities. Through viewing ecovillage food practices as place-based and relational, we develop a broader and spatially-focused understanding of food system sustainability. (shrink)

In this paper I argue that we can no longer afford to ignore technology’s so-called ‘soft’ impacts, as this type of impact is becoming increasingly prominent in affluent societies where people have sufficient resources to pursue self-realization and where technologies are becoming more and more ‘intimate’ as they pervade our life world. These soft impacts come with their own type of normative challenges. The first challenge is to acknowledge the mutual shaping of technology and morality that causes soft impacts to (...) be fundamentally morally ambiguous. The second challenge is to anticipate soft impacts, which requires a rich and thick description of our morally laden current practices in the light of plausible technomoral change provoked by emerging technologies. The third and last challenge is to avoid both relativism and foundationalism, by opting for an open and learning attitude vis à vis the ways new and emerging technologies put our current morals into question. (shrink)

The concept of practice is thematically central to modern conservative thought, as evident in Edmund Burke’s writings on the aesthetic and his diatribe against the French Revolution. It is also the main organizing thread in the framework in the human sciences known as practice theory, which extends back at least to Karl Marx’s ‘Theses on Feuerbach’. This article historicizes ‘practice’ in conservative thought and practice theory, accounts for the family resemblance between the two, and takes apart that family resemblance to (...) reveal differences. The ingredients of practice theory (historical inheritance, embodiment, cognitive limits, loose coupling between conscious thought and action) are in many cases also distinctive traits of conservative thought. But the similarity is deceptive. Practice theory and conservative thought constitute two distinct interpretations of practice, two disparate endeavours for connecting human science with political strategy, and two different formulas for opposing theory and practice. The present study will argue that this is primarily a political opposition for conservative thought, while it is a human-scientific opposition for practice theory. Conservative thought is initially political and then human-scientific; practice theory is initially human-scientific and then political. This article advocates for practice theory against conservative thought as differently amended versions of a politics that recognizes human finitude. (shrink)

In a recent paper (Haslanger 2016), Sally Haslanger argues for the importance of structural explanation. Roughly, a structural explana- tion of the behaviour of a given object appeals to features of the struc- tures—physical, social, or otherwise—the object is embedded in. It is opposed to individualistic explanations, where what is appealed to is just the object and its properties. For example, an individualistic explanation of why someone got the grade they did might appeal to features of the essay they wrote—its (...) being well-written, answering the set question, etc. But if the class is graded on a curve, then a better explanation will appeal to features of the class—of the social structure in which the student is embedded. That she wrote a better paper than 90% of the class explains better than that she wrote a well-argued paper. In this paper, I get clear as to various candidate concepts of structure that we might appeal to in structural explanations, argue that Haslanger’s preferred account is lacking, and present an alterna- tive that is more conducive to social structural explanation. (shrink)

Problems of climate change present new challenges for social theory. In this article we focus on the task of understanding and analyzing car dependence, using this as a case through which to introduce and explore what we take to be central but underdeveloped questions about how infrastructures and complexes of social practice connect across space and time. In taking this approach we work with the proposition that forms of energy consumption, including those associated with automobility, are usefully understood as outcomes (...) of interconnected patterns of social practices, including working, shopping, visiting friends and family, going to school, and so forth. We also acknowledge that social practices are partly constituted by, and always embedded in material arrangements. Linking these two features together, we suggest that forms of car dependence emerge through the intersection of infrastructural arrangements that are integral to the conduct of many practices at once. We consequently explore the significance of professional – and not only ‘ordinary’ – practices, especially those of planners and designers who are involved in reconfiguring infrastructures of different scales, and in the practice dynamics that follow. (shrink)

This article investigates the various forces that may help to explain the ongoing historio-graphical phenomenon of revision. It takes as its point of departure Michel de Certeau's understanding of the writing of history as a process consisting of an unstable and constantly changing triangulated relationship among a place , analytical procedures , and the construction of a text . For de Certeau, revision is the formal prerequisite for writing history because the very distance between past and present requires continuous innovation (...) simply to produce the objects of historical knowledge, which have no existence apart from the historian's identification of them. The specific nature of revision at a given moment is determined by the specificities of the process as a whole, that is, by the characteristics of place, procedure, and text and their contemporary relational configuration.Taking the rise of "linguistic-turn" historiography as exemplary of the process of historical revision in its broadest possible meaning, the article seeks to discover the possible "causes" for that turn. It begins with an analysis of the psychological roots of poststructuralism as a response to the holocaust and its aftermath, and then proceeds to explore the possible economic and social transformations in the postwar world that might account for its reception, both in Europe but also, more counterintuitively, in the United States, where postmodernism proved to have an especially strong appeal. Added to this mix are the new patterns of social recruitment into the historical profession in the "sixties." the essay suggests that, to the extent that revision is understood as the result of the combined effect of psychological, social, and professional determinations, it is unlikely that there will ever be genuine consensus about the sources of revision in history, since all historians bring to their work differing congeries of psychological preoccupations, social positions, and professional commitments. (shrink)

This article explores the ways in which ultrasound screening influences the temporal dimensions of prevention in the obstetrical management of pregnancy. Drawing on praxeographic perspectives and empirically based on participant observation of ultrasound examinations in obstetricians’ offices, it asks how ultrasound scanning facilitates anticipatory modes of pregnancy management, and investigates the entanglement of different notions of time and temporality in the highly risk-oriented modes of prenatal care in Germany. Arguing that the paradoxical temporality of prevention—acting now in the name of (...) the future—is intensified by ultrasound screening, I show how the attribution of risk regarding foetal growth in prenatal check-ups is based on the fragmentation of procreative time and ask how time standards come into play, how pregnancy is located in calendrical time, and how notions of foetal time and the everyday life times of pregnant women clash during negotiations between obstetricians and pregnant women about the determination of the due date. By analysing temporality as a practical accomplishment via technological devices such as ultrasound, the paper contributes to debates in feminist STS studies on the role of time in reproduction technologies and the management of pregnancy and birth in contemporary societies. (shrink)

Recruitment and Reproduction: The Careers and Carriers of Digital Photography and Floorball The claim that social practices have a relatively durable existence in space and time, and that their persistence depends upon their recurrent reproduction through necessarily localised performances is theoretically plausible, but what of the detail? How do the careers of practices and those who "carry" them actually intersect? In this paper we have two related ambitions. One is to show how selected practices are concurrently shaped by the ebb (...) and flow of recruits and defectors and by what it is that cohorts of practitioners actually do. The second is to learn more about the relation between recruitment and reproduction by comparing the ways in which these processes play out in different situations. In taking these two ambitions forward through a discussion of digital and film photography and of floorball (a team game in which players use plastic sticks to hit a small ball into a goal) we explore ways of concretely examining processes that are implied in Giddens' theory of structuration (1984) and in Bourdieu's concept of habitus (1984). This exercise generates insights into the internal dynamics of practice and the methodological challenges of pinning them down. (shrink)

In transformation research of late, accounts on the relation between intentionality and agency on the one hand, and the more routinised and structured side of social co-existence on the other, are increasingly nuanced. However, we observe a deficiency in the way arguments are set up by the interlocutors: both, scholars who grant intentionality a central role and those who emphasise its limitations generally do so at the level of ontology – debating degrees of human capacity for conscious planning versus a (...) largely unconscious reproduction. We wish to shift this question from an ontological to a pedagogical one, exploring possibilities to cultivate and learn intentionality. We do so by developing the concept of consciousness-in-nature that we derive from, and contextualise in, the traditions of deep ecology and (Westernised) Buddhism which both view human beings as inseparable from nature and one another. With consciousness-in-nature we refer to an understanding of humans as a part of nature that has developed the capacity for (self-) reflection and deliberation – a capacity that is not static or firm but can be nurtured and cultivated or clouded over and subdued. From this standpoint, we lay out an understanding of the role of (re)learning consciousness for processes of social change and explore potentials for its nurturing. (shrink)

While current literature on examination and testing mostly engages with the objectivity of exams and their procedural logic, this article is concerned with the ‘ethical dimension’ of examination: Examinations provoke a particular relation to oneself, possibly self-transformation. The praxis of examination entails self-confrontation in the light of the uncertainty regarding that which is expected of the self. Referring to an example taken from the field of early education, four ‘figures' – positional difference, exposition, identification, and representation – are used in (...) a heuristic manner to elaborate on the ethical dimension in examination. The aim of the paper is to view ‘examination’ from a theoretical point of view focusing on practices, on the one hand, and to analyze the ethical norms and expectations that the self is addressed with in the field of early education, on the other. (shrink)

The material interrelations between bodies and objects are a wide, worthwhile and absorbing field, which has not been sufficiently examined yet. Focusing on such interrelations within air travel, this article contributes to the exploration of this field. It delineates that such interrelations do not simply happen, but that they have to be accomplished continuously by different participants with a certain risk to fail at many points. Within mobilities, such processes of interrelating occur under the specific circumstances of a moving vehicle. (...) Based on empirical data from an ethnographic study on air travel, the paper is concerned with the ongoing dynamics of body-object-interrelations. Based on this analysis, it suggests emphasizing the continuous modification that material assemblages built of people and objects undergo even when “only” staying immobile during a flight. Passengers do not simply enter and exit a vehicle staying identical with themselves. Rather, they are continuously adapting to a material infrastructure that shapes and adjusts their corporeal needs and capacities, including their senses. (shrink)

The EU's Farm to Fork strategy (European Commission European Commission. 2020. Farm to Fork strategy. https://food.ec.europa.eu/horizontal-topics/farm-fork-strategy_en. Accessed 31 August 2023.) highlights the need for a resilient food system capable of providing affordable food to citizens in all circumstances. Behind the provision of affordable food for EU citizens there is the effort of many migrant and seasonal food workers (MSFWs). In Almería, Spain, the area with the biggest concentration of greenhouses in the world, MSFWs face vulnerability in the form of physical (...) and institutional invisibility despite performing the essential task of providing affordable food for the EU’s food system. This paper aims to move on from structuralist concerns and place MSFWs’ lived experiences at the center, including the (in)formal nature of their food practices, to understand how the people that feed Europe feed themselves. A combination of social practice theories and diverse economies is used to explore MFSWs’ daily food routines. These theories are used as lenses that inform the data collection process, performed through semi-structured interviews, photography, and observations. The findings of the study reflect a dynamic portfolio of (in)formal practices that evolve based on the length of stay in the county. These practices demonstrate how the EU food system resilience relies on the diverse economies of migrant settlements. We conclude that informality is a reality in the EU food system, and that shedding light on previously hidden food practices and their structures can help us envision food security interventions that are inclusive for all actors involved. (shrink)

Constellations, Volume 29, Issue 3, Page 269-282, September 2022.

Mensch and Barge in their interpretation of Alasdair MacIntyre’s critique of genealogical ethics as a basis of ethical weakness in the emerging field of “leadership-as-practice,” suggest that L-A-P is lacking in ethical grounding especially because of its relativist philosophy. I address this valid ethical concern in L-A-P theory by arguing that there is a form of realism in Nietzchean axiology and that the dialogic potentialities in material-social interactions may offer a greater capacity for ethical reflexivity than a reliance on rules.

RESUMO Neste artigo, procuraremos contribuir, dentro dos limites de um trabalho dessa natureza, para uma nova orientação para a filosofia social contemporânea. Com efeito, num primeiro momento mostraremos que a filosofia social recente tem se notabilizado pela análise de experiências negativas, com um acento no processo de formação da subjetividade, assim como pelo foco no diagnóstico de patologias sociais relacionadas aos padrões subjetivos de autorrealização pessoal. Num segundo momento, salientaremos que o problema é que, nesse quadro, o próprio social pode (...) eventualmente aparecer como algo tão-somente negativo, ameaçador, deficitário e gerador de patologias. Ora, acreditamos que o desafio de captar igualmente a causa das patologias, os poderes e a perspectiva do dominante, e não somente os efeitos deletérios por eles gerados e a perspectiva dos dominados, pode ser melhor enfrentado por meio da temática do capitalismo como fenômeno social. É por isso que iremos esboçar, em linhas gerais, num terceiro momento, algumas diretrizes básicas - uma abordagem praxeológica e "normativa" - para que a filosofia social simultaneamente mantenha suas conquistas fundamentais e avance no sentido de dar conta diretamente do social capitalista como causa de patologias. ABSTRACT In this paper, we will seek to contribute, within the limits of a work of this nature, to a new orientation for contemporary social philosophy. In fact, in a first moment we will show that the recent social philosophy has been notable for the analysis of negative experiences, with an emphasis on the process of subjectivity formation, as well as for the focus on the diagnosis of social pathologies related to the subjective patterns of personal self-achievement. In a second moment, we will point out that the problem is that, in this context, the social itself may eventually appear as something exclusively negative, threatening, deficient and generating pathologies. However, we believe that the challenge of capturing equally the cause of the pathologies, powers and the perspective of the dominant, and not only the deleterious effects generated by them and the perspective of the dominated, can be better dealt with through the theme of capitalism as a social phenomenon. That is why we will outline, in a third way, some basic guidelines - a praxeological and normative approach - so that social philosophy may simultaneously maintain its fundamental conquests and advances in order to directly account for the capitalist social as cause of pathologies. (shrink)

We examined the subjective experiences of young environmentalists who engage in green consumption practices from the theoretical lens of Warde’s :131–153, 2005) practice theory. Data were gathered through 21 photo-elicited, in-depth interviews with young environmentalists. Based on our findings, we postulated a theoretical framework to understand green consumption practices among our informants as a process with three interrelated phases: green credibility seeking, green procurement and prosumption, and green whispers. This inductive investigation revealed various symbolic meanings of green consumption that are (...) instrumental in effectively engaging in green consumption practice and are widely shared among our informants. Our investigation extends the existing literature on green consumption with an alternative theoretical perspective and provides managers with insights into the motivations and practices of green consumers. (shrink)

Consumption is essentially an institutional action. While both the formal institutional environment and cultural embeddedness shape consumption, individuals may reciprocally amend the institutional setting through consumption choices that challenge the prevalent institutional constraints. This paper reconciles theoretical and conceptual premises from institutional and practice theory literature to study the sustainability of consumption. Using institutional ethnography as a methodological approach, the study explores the pendulum between embeddedness and agency in shaping the sustainability of day-to-day consumption of necessary goods; and further, how (...) the external institutional environment may interact with human behaviour to contribute towards sustainability. The study finds a hierarchy of informal institutions, each level of which interacts differently with external changes. For example, sustainability is found to be more widespread the more it is embedded in practices, and this is a result of overall institutional development beyond regulation and choice editing. The results also highlight the importance of understanding unintentional sustainability in consumption practices. (shrink)

In the present article, working from within the framework of critical rationalism and focusing mostly on the views developed by some Iranian writers, I argue that the programmes of producing ‘Islamic Science’ and ‘Islamisation of Science/Knowledge’ are doomed to failure. I develop my arguments in three parts. I start by explaining that the advocates of the programmes of producing cIS or IoK subscribe to mistaken images of science that are shaped by either a positivist or outmoded culturalist/interpretivist theories of science. (...) I shall then focus on the similarities and differences of ‘science’ and ‘technology’, arguing that despite close interconnection between the two it is of utmost importance, for analytical purposes, to keep these two socially constructed entities apart. Drawing on the above distinction, I argue that while creating ‘Islamic’ or ‘indigenous’ sciences is impossible, constructing ‘Islamic’ or ‘indigenous’ technologies is, in principle, feasible. Lastly, I turn to some of the... (shrink)

Local food systems have grown in popularity around the world in recent years. Their framing often emphasizes the re-connection of producers and consumers against the “faceless” and “placeless” industrial agriculture. However, previous research suggests that such romanticized narratives may not keep up with reality. This relates to the transformative potential of LFSs and to whether they actually generate alternative modes of social organization that challenge problematic aspects of the food system. We place our focus on the practices and narratives that (...) construct the producer/consumer relationship and show how these systems are governed. Our fieldwork was carried out in two LFSs in two distinct settings: community supported agriculture groups in NYC and responsible consumption communities in Catalonia, Spain. Three main types of practices and narratives are identified: sharing, negotiation and utilization practices, and narratives. Our findings reveal great heterogeneity between the two LFSs and show how intermediates participate in the producer/consumer relationship. (shrink)

Critical realists offer a set of philosophical underpinnings for social research. Critical realists also engage constructively with social theory, but they are more than just theorists. In this chapter I list and describe various innovative methodological contributions made in recent years by realists. I point out ways in which research methods (i.e. techniques) fit with particular methodological assertions. There is a historical legacy of empiricism which critical realists often use as a foil to make their own position more clear. However, (...) among realists, a wide variety of methods are used, and the range of realist methodological assumptions is wider than one might expect because of their efforts to work with social theory.The introduction to the chapter covers ontology as it relates to research methods. The second section of the review introduces retroduction, a major methodological starting-point common to most realists. The third section reviews concretely the realist debate over statistics and some realist contributions to qualitative methodology, qualitative methods, and action research as used by realists. The fourth section takes up the challenge of realist claims about knowledge (debates usually known as epistemology). An important aim in this chapter is to argue that 'factual' statements usually embody layers of meaning, and thus are contestable; that enquiry using quantitative methods can coherently be done from a realist perspective; and that among realists qualitative enquiry is a broad and useful set of methods which have made genuine innovations in methodological knowledge. Meta-critique and pluralism are widely-used realist contributions to the methods tool-basket in social science, and the realist approach to social statistics is a much better guide to how statistics is, in practice, done than any currently available empiricist quantitative textbook (Ron, 2002). However 'quantitative' research always rests upon conceptual, theoretical and qualitatively derived frameworks and therefore is derived from qualitative work, whereas the converse is not true; qualitative research does not require any quantitative research. In the current scene, mixed methods also play a key role as a growing area of research methods. In this way, within sections one and two, the reader is given an overview of Volume 1 of this collection. Sections two and three of this chapter review Volumes 2 and 3 (realist methods, and empirical examples, respectively). Section four reviews the epistemological theme that is at the core of Volume 4. This introduction thus roughly parallels the contents of the rest of the volumes. (shrink)

This paper builds on existing research investigating CSR and ethical consumption within luxury contexts, and makes several contributions to the literature. First, it addresses existing knowledge gaps by exploring the ways in which consumers perform ethical luxury purchases of fine jewellery through interpretive research. Second, the paper is the first to examine such issues of consumer ethics by extending the application of theories of practice to a luxury product context, and by building on Magaudda’s :15–36, 2011) circuit of practice framework. (...) This is significant in that, to date, consumer research using practice theories has focused mainly on routine and habitual practices. Our findings and discussion provide an analysis of intentional and less intentional ethical consumer performances within the interconnected nexus of activities of consumers’ fine jewellery consumption practice, where meanings, understandings and intelligibility of social phenomena are worked through the various activities that shape such a practice. Finally, the paper concludes with significant managerial and policy-related implications, as our extended circuit of practice analysis conveys that if ethics and sustainability dimensions are to be embedded in fine jewellery consumption practice, they must first be made an intrinsic part of the nexus of the social and material environment of trading and consumption places. (shrink)

In this paper, we argue that ‘good care’ in residential nursing homes is enacted through different care practices that are either inspired by a ‘professional logic of care’ that aims for justice and non-maleficence in the professional treatment of residents, or by a ‘relational logic of care’, which attends to the relational quality and the meaning of interpersonal connectedness in people’s lives. Rather than favoring one care logic over the other, this paper indicates how important aspects of care are constantly (...) negotiated between different care practices. Based on the intricate everyday negotiations observed during an ethnographic field study at an elderly nursing home in Germany, the paper puts forth the argument that care is always a matter of tinkering with different, sometimes competing ‘goods’. This tinkering process, which unfolds through ‘intuitive deliberation’, ‘situated assessment’ and ‘affective juggling’ is then theorized along the conceptualization of a ‘practical ethics of care’: an ethics which makes no a priori judgments of what may be considered as good or bad care, but instead calls for momentary judgments that are pliable across changing situations. (shrink)

The new social theories of practice have been inspired by Wittgenstein's late philosophy, phenomenology and more recent sociological theories. They regard embodied skills and routinized, mostly unconscious habits as a key foundation of human practice and knowledge. This position leads to an overstatement of the significance of the habitual dimension of practice. As several critics have suggested this approach omits the problems of transformative agency and change of practices. In turn classical practice theories, activity theory and pragmatism have analyzed the (...) mechanisms of change. Pragmatism suggests that a crisis of a habit calls for reflection. Through working hypotheses and experimentation this leads to a transformation of a practice. Activity theory introduced the concept of remediation. A collective elaboration of shared mediational artefacts is needed to transform an activity. (shrink)

The emerging field of responsible management learning is characterized by an urgent need for transdisciplinary practices. We conceptualize constellations of transdisciplinary practices by building up on a social practice perspective. From this perspective, knowledge and learning are ‘done’ in interrelated practices that may span multiple fields like the professional, educational, and research field. Such practices integrate knowledge across disciplines and sectors in order to learn to enact, educate, and research complex responsible management. Accordingly, constellations of collaborative transdisciplinary practices span the (...) three layers of the responsible management field: Professional responsible management, responsible management education, and responsible management research. We apply this framework to map both recent responsible management learning publications and contributions to this special issue. We notice that although the responsible management field’s aspiration for transdisciplinarity is high the degree to which it has been realized is low. This results in our proposal for a research agenda, which points out impediments to transdisciplinary, and research directions for the responsible management learning field. We also highlight theoretical implications of our conceptual framework for the larger transdisciplinarity discussion. (shrink)

While mainstream CSR research has generally explored and argued for positive ethical, social and environmental performance, critical CSR scholars argue that change has been superficial—at best, and not possible in any substantial way within the current capitalist system. Both views, however, only address the role of business within larger systems. Little attention has been paid to the everyday material CSR practice of individual managers. We go inside the firm to investigate how the micro-level acts of individual managers can aggregate to (...) drive transformation of the macro-level business logic. We draw on the strategy-as-practice approach to organize our research. The study reveals two orientations towards the integration of personal ethics into the workplace: abdication and activism. These orientations are supported by managerial practice such as reproductive and coping tactics and covert and overt tactics ; and, three enabling conditions of activist practice: empowerment and psychological safety, moral shock, and morality praxis. While our findings illustrate the tremendous challenges managers face when attempting to influence organizational practices towards their ethical and environmental aspirations, we also show that under specific conditions, individual managers can become fully engaged advocates and drivers of positive change from the inside. In so doing, our individual-level analysis of intrapreneurship provides a more complex picture of the possibilities for positive change than have been previously put forth by mainstream and critical CSR research. (shrink)

Proponents of engineering and design approaches to biology aim to make interdisciplinary bioscience research faster and more reproducible. This paper outlines and deploys a practice-based approach to analyses of infrastructure that focuses on the routine epistemic activities and charts how two such routines are unsettled and resettled in the background of epistemic culture. This paper describes attempts to bring about new research infrastructures in synthetic biology using robotics and software-enabled design. A focus on the skills of pipetting shows how established (...) manual labor has to be reconfigured to fit with novel robotic automations. An analysis of curating frozen materials shows that automated design presents new problems for the established activities of storing and retrieving biological materials. These movements, while transient, have implications for organizing interdisciplinary collaboration, research productivity, and enabling greater reproducibility. This paper explores the idea of infrastructure as practice and shows how this has important implications for studies of research infrastructures. This article discusses the main contributions of this approach for analysts of infrastructure in terms of movements, temporalities, and ethics and offers suggestions for what the research implies for synthetic biology. (shrink)

This article presents a meta-disciplinary and institutional framework of practices used by nurses and doctors to manage the indeterminacy of knowing in emergency departments (EDs) in Australia. We draw on Schatzkian perspectives of how practices prevail and reflect particular site ontologies. We posit that nurses and doctors draw on a repertoire of practices to finesse their knowing at patients’ bedsides: they practise knowing. Drawing on existing practice knowledges (old learnings) they tailor them in the ED (new workplace learnings). This suggests (...) that learning (practices) in the ED is teleological and emergent. This alerts us to new ways of thinking about attachments to practice knowledges, or ‘the teleological–affective structuring’ of practices (Schatzki, 2006, Organization Studies, 27, 1864), and its implications for organizational learning. (shrink)

This paper engages with two contrasting approaches to conceptualising and studying consumer behaviour that appear to dominate existing research on consumption. On one hand, agency-focused perspectives take an individual consumer to be the primary author of practice and a basic unit of analysis. On the other hand, socio-centric paradigms focus on the social roots of consumption activities and the wider societal contexts in which they take place. The need to provide a more balanced view of consumption phenomena has been acknowledged, (...) yet not adequately acted upon. This paper begins to fill this gap through relevant theoretical and empirical contributions. First, we provide a critical review of the dominant theoretical perspectives on consumption in general and ethical consumption in particular, highlight their key ontological assumptions and explain how they preclude a fuller understanding of the ways in which consumer practices are moulded and shaped. Taking a critical realist approach, we then present the findings from qualitative analysis of consumers' ethical food practices to empirically demonstrate the role of human agency and social structure in creating and shaping ethical consumption. Thus, by means of theoretical analysis and empirical research this paper responds to the call for a more comprehensive understanding of consumption and provides a consolidated account of consumer behaviour which acknowledges and explains the complex ensemble of individual and systemic powers in which consumer practices are contained. (shrink)

We still lack an operational theory for a complete analysis of early socialization processes. Bourdieu has stressed their bodily dimension but has done so at the expense of more symbolic aspects. This theoretical option corresponds to a very general goal of the Bourdieusian theory of practice: analysing sociality without suffering an intellectualist bias. However, symbolic activity and socializing language in particular can be approached as a practical phenomenon (i.e. habitual, informal, unconscious, etc.). From this viewpoint, the sociology of embodiment may (...) have much to learn from cultural psychology, which has focused on early language as it is naturally performed – when people speak to children, and when children speak. The work of cultural psychologists on the role of everyday words and narratives in the making of the self can be extended through a sociological ethnography of language. The features and interests of such an ethnography are discussed in the final section of the article, on the basis of fieldwork conducted in a nursery. This final development illustrates and analyses the concrete appropriation of caregiver injunctions by 2- to 3-year-old children. (shrink)

Design thinking has emerged as an important way for designers to draw on rich customer insights to enhance their products and services. However, design thinking is now also beginning to influence how corporate managers bring customer data into their day-to-day strategic planning. We call this integration of design thinking into the practice of strategic management “Design-Led Strategy” and show how it complements but extends current design-thinking perspectives. Adopting a strategy-as-practice perspective, this article identifies four archetypal practices that managers can use (...) to strategize with design-thinking content. Its findings provide insight into the practices associated with situating design thinking within organizational practice. (shrink)

This chapter introduces the AHRC Cultural Value Project and the ensuing legacy work. It suggests that this work has resulted in the re-positioning of the field of inquiry into cultural value by shifting attention away from policy constructs and towards lived experiences; away from measuring the outcomes of cultural participation and towards understanding the process of engagement. The challenge still remaining is to develop an empirically grounded pragmatist account of cultural value as a form of practice—a situated interface of agents, (...) actions and structures taking place in an institutionalised and materially circumscribed environment. Reconceiving cultural value in these terms will have profound methodological implications, not least the challenge of finding methodologies appropriate to its analysis within the realm of historically and geographically variable relations and structures. It is however a challenge worth taking. The proposed shift, it is suggested, will provide a way of addressing some long-standing ‘problems’ arising in relation to cultural value: the separation of conditions and consciousness; the overemphasis on the cognitive at the cost of the bodily; the separation between ‘the best and the brightest’ and the ‘everyday’ conceptions of culture. The proposed approach may also drive the refinement of flat(ter)-ontology methodologies which neither succumb to methodological individualism nor overemphasise methodological structuralism. (shrink)

Resumo Este artigo procura apresentar e discutir tentativas recentes em filosofia social de analisar e interpretar o capitalismo, a partir de uma perspectiva praxeológica. O practice turn em teoria social procurou superar o dualismo entre agência e estrutura, ou entre ação e sistema, por meio da noção de prática social. Seria possível então interpretar o capitalismo como um tipo especifico de prática social? Para tentar encaminhar essa questão, explicita-se brevemente, em um primeiro momento, em que consiste o practice turn em (...) teoria social. Num segundo momento, analisa-se e se discute a proposta de Rahel Jaeggi de conceber a economia como uma rede de práticas sociais. Em seguida, expõe-se e se avalia a tentativa de Christian Lotz em ver, no dinheiro, a chave para compreender aquilo que ele chama de esquema capitalista. Por fim, conclui-se, chamando a atenção para os potenciais e desafios ligados ao empreendimento de interpretar o capitalismo em função de uma teoria da prática, sugerindo que um aprofundamento na análise da imaginação especificamente capitalista, vinculando-a com a típica plasticidade e diversidade do capitalismo, possa ajudar a avançar nesse campo.This paper aims to present and discuss recent attempts in social philosophy to analyze and interpret capitalism from a praxeological perspective. The practice turn in social theory sought to overcome the dualism between agency and structure, or between action and system, through the notion of social practice. Is it then possible to interpret capitalism as a specific type of social practice? To try to address this question, I briefly introduce, in a first moment, the practice turn in social theory. In a second moment, I analyze and discuss Rahel Jaeggi’s proposal to conceive the economy as a network of social practices. I then explain and evaluate Christian Lotz’s attempt to see money as the key to understanding what he names as “the capitalist schema”. Finally, I conclude by drawing attention to the potentials and challenges of interpreting capitalism as a social practice, suggesting that a deeper analysis of specifically capitalist imagination, linking it with the typical plasticity and diversity of capitalism, may help to move forward in this field. (shrink)

The recent “turn to matter” evident in material feminist theories of the more‐than‐human world offers distinct posthuman understandings of the world as continuously relationally entangled, emergent or materializing. In this paper, I consider how these premises both trouble conventional understandings of matter and/or materials, but likewise potentially revise and revitalize understandings of the political for health and inequalities, and for nursing. This is both timely and much needed given contemporary contexts of austerity‐driven neoliberalism in health care and the unprecedented growth (...) in disparities of wealth and well‐being. I wish to explore whether material feminisms allow us to retheorize connections between abstract theory and material concerns like health and inequalities, differently. This is not theory in opposition to practice or activism, but theory conceptualized as sets of entangled emergent practices, but also what constitutes the political, as more fully relational to and in praxis with health‐related activism. I will argue these theories further justify how practitioners can visibly care for and care more about social and health inequalities. Drawing mainly on the work of material feminist, Karen Barad, and her bringing together of queer and feminist theory, as well as feminist new materialisms and understandings of posthumanism, I discuss how this turn to matter together with meaning might transform understandings of health and inequalities. (shrink)

Technology has developed to the point where a clear distinction between nature and culture seems to be dissolving. Against this background, a broad aspect of social research has emerged that considers an interdependence between the social and the material. So far, social-systems cybernetics as described by Luhmann has remained rather marginalized in these discussions. This article is intended to overcome this marginalization by developing the concept of meaning. Meaning can abstractly be defined as a ‘doing negativity’. Returning to systems theory, (...) it becomes obvious that verbalized meaning is only one possible medium of meaning. Adopting some concepts from Helmuth Plessner, I introduce another medium of meaning – corporealized meaning, which also operates meaningfully along the distinction between actuality and potentiality, and thus does negativity. I discuss consequences of observing the relationship between sociality and materiality from this perspective. (shrink)

BackgroundTriggered by a series of controversies and diversifying expectations of editorial practices, several innovative peer review procedures and supporting technologies have been proposed. However, adoption of these new initiatives seems slow. This raises questions about the wider conditions for peer review change and about the considerations that inform decisions to innovate. We set out to study the structure of commercial publishers’ editorial process, to reveal how the benefits of peer review innovations are understood, and to describe the considerations that inform (...) the implementation of innovations.MethodsWe carried out field visits to the editorial office of two large academic publishers housing the editorial staff of several hundreds of journals, to study their editorial process, and interviewed editors not affiliated with large publishers. Field notes were transcribed and analysed using coding software.ResultsAt the publishers we analysed, the decision-making structure seems to show both clear patterns of hierarchy and layering of the different editorial practices. While information about new initiatives circulates widely, their implementation depends on assessment of stakeholder’s wishes, impact on reputation, efficiency and implementation costs, with final decisions left to managers at the top of the internal hierarchy. Main tensions arise between commercial and substantial arguments. The editorial process is closely connected to commercial practices of creating business value, and the very specific terms in which business value is understood, such as reputation considerations and the urge to increase efficiency. Journals independent of large commercial publishers tend to have less hierarchically structured processes, report more flexibility to implement innovations, and to a greater extent decouple commercial and editorial perspectives.ConclusionOur study demonstrates that peer review innovations are partly to be understood in light of commercial considerations related to reputation, efficiency and implementations costs. These arguments extend beyond previously studied topics in publishing economics, including publishers’ choice for business or publication models and reach into the very heart of the editorial and peer review process. (shrink)

The majority of contemporary models of wisdom define it in terms of a cognitive ability that is located in an agent’s mind. Even those models that include emotions, affective states, gut feelings etc. hardly recognise the relation between those non-cognitive dimensions, agents’ bodies and how they shape the content of experiences and how social practices of wisdom enfold. This paper will address this gap by providing a phenomenological account that depicts wisdom not as generated by wise individuals but as being (...) produced by and within embodied practices of agents relating to other people, artefacts, concepts, and ways of using others and things. It is argued that management should aim at building facilitative contexts that afford people to make use of and exploit the embodied dimension of wise practices. Exemplary strategies and tools that establish such sites, where embodied social practices of wisdom happen, are described. (shrink)

The principal aim of this article is to examine the capacity of existential analytic to suggest alternatives to entrenched dichotomies and dilemmas in practice theory, and more generally, in social theory. In this regard, the doctrine of trans-subjective existentialism is developed. The underlying aim is to inform hermeneutic engagement with social practices’ potentiality-for-being in order to illuminate a possible existential ontology of practices. It is argued that the concept of chronotope should be central in this ontology. Thus, the possibility of (...) hermeneutic realism about social practices becomes open to scrutiny. (shrink)

The emerging field of responsible management (RM) studies the integration of sustainability, responsibility, and ethics in managerial practices. Therefore, turning to practice theories for the study of RM appears to hold great promise of conceptual and methodological contribution. We propose a posthumanist practice approach for studying RM-as-practice. Managerial practices are conceived as the agencement of heterogeneous elements (humans, nonhumans, more-than-humans, materials, and discourses) that achieve agency in their being interconnected. Thus, RM is understood as processual, relational, emergent, and sociomaterial. We (...) contribute a framework for the empirical study of RM-as-practice on the basis of three sensitizing concepts: situatedness, sociomateriality, and textures_._ We further discuss the implications of understanding responsibility as response-ability, an engaged practice for relating to the other and the RM researcher’s role as internal to the practice agencement under study, thus, opening the debate on our own response-ability. (shrink)

Practice theory has lately taken a turn towards modelling the evolution of practices, which appear situated at the centre of the study of social action. I argue in this paper, following previous criticisms, that such centrality can be revised in order to better incorporate elements of agency and normativity, which are much determinant of the emergence and development of practices. The aim of this paper is to propose an alternative heuristic which advances on lefebvrean trialectics, in order to better account (...) for process in the study of practices. For this I rely on previous concepts from anthropology and sociology, such as fetishisation, ritualisation and bricolage. A relevant case study is merely outlined in order to illustrate how such a conceptual framework can identify agencies and situate practices in relation to power structures and performance at an early stage within the research process. (shrink)

In my thesis I argue for a philosophical-anthropological approach which enables investigations in empathy and care by opening up a window on the motivation of recognition. I show how biographies as narratives can help to understand the other within her or his own life-world, even if the life-world is the very part of our personality as a dividually conceived relational self. Therewith, personhood can be conceived in a new concept of personhood that is understood as a category of the human (...) being endowed with a stronger focus on culturally and historically founded dividuality and relationality, instead of relying exclusively on individuality and subjectivity. To show this relational movement in our life-world, I introduce ‘the Melanesian’ worldview on personhood. This worldview assumes that we are holistically relational. Thus, it lets the perception of an objective world shift into a world of animated entities which become parts of the human. Other people are also part of our life, and, in this way, take part in the life-world − and thus in life. In consequence, the life-world as the place where humans get in touch with each other builds up the social community: others have a particular role just as we take part in their lives. Our relationship with others is related to certain tasks in the social community and to definitions of personality and character. In academia, it is common ground that increasing individuality causes an increasing claim to recognition, especially since Honneth’s revival and actualization of Hegel’s concept of recognition. It is also Honneth who is inseparably linked with the recent philosophical discussion about recognition. We are recognized and we recognize others both on a personal as well as on a social level. The leading question, still unsolved and at the same time unsolvably linked with the relationship of individual and society, is: why are we relying on recognition? In other words: how do we recognize me, my self, and the other? My approach of a self-based model of mutual recognition follows two methodological paradigms: hermeneutics and phenomenology. Unsurprisingly, the hermeneutical investigation of our self in relation to mutual recognition has to start at the current state of the recognition debate, and takes its way to the anthropological state of personhood- and self-debate. The phenomenological approach constitutes the second main basis for an approach to a self-based concept of mutual recognition. Also the connection of philosophical and anthropological approaches to identity, personhood, and self-recognition is very fruitful in the way of developing a holistic approach of mutual recognition. To support this, I connect Western approaches in the phenomenological and hermeneutical traditions as well as theories of narrativity and human biography with non-Western approaches to elaborate and emphasize the intersection of both approaches. In consequence, the Cartesian Ego is rejected in favour of a decentral, cosmomorphic, and sociocentric approach to personhood. This anthropological approach is merged with a narrative concept of identity to emphasize the self-reflexive way of personal identity. Building on this set of philosophical and anthropological arguments, my purpose is to draw up a self-based model of mutual recognition which includes all stages of mutual recognition: recognition of one’s own identity, recognition of one’s own acting, recognition of others, and evaluative recognition. I begin this journey with preliminary remarks on recognition, person, and self by elaborating the state of the art in approaches to mutual recognition, the Anthropological notion of personhood, individual, and self, and their Philosophical notion. In the second part of my work, I show how these approaches compose a self-based model of mutual recognition. Here we receive the idea how we are recognized: through empathic understanding an act of knowledge is performed, in which the other is perceived and acknowledged as another human similar to ourselves. Therefore, empathic understanding, feelings of sympathy, care and solicitude, personal ethos, and theories of mind are related to mutual recognition. The definition of our being through empathy highlights our social wellbeing. By implication we refer to the recognition of others as constitutive of the community, since we recognize others and take care of them. (shrink)