In recent years we may observe increasing interest in the development of social innovation both regarding theory as well as the practice of responding to social problems and challenges. One of the crucial challenges at the beginning of the 21st century is population ageing. Various new and innovative initiatives, programs, schemes, and projects to respond to negative consequences of this demographic process are emerging around the world. However, social theories related to ageing are still insufficiently combined with these new practices, (...) social movements, organisational models, and institutions. Many scholars are still using notions and tools from classical theories of social gerontology or the sociology of ageing such as disengagement theory, activity theory, and successful and productive ageing. Such theories do not sufficiently explain ageing in the context of, for example, a broad use of the information and communications technologies including robotics and automation, new healthcare and long-term care models, advancements in the development and governance of age-friendly environments, and public engagement of older adults into co-production of services delivered by public, private, non-governmental as well as non-formal entities. (shrink)

The question of how the university can relate to the world is centuries old. The poles of the debate can be characterized by the plea for an increasing instrumentalization of the university as a producer and provider of useful knowledge on the one hand (cf. the knowledge factory), and the defense of the university as an autonomous space for free inquiry and the pursuit of knowledge for knowledge’s sake on the other hand (cf. the ivory tower). Our current global predicament, (...) however, forces us to rethink the relation between university and world. Indeed, an easy nstrumentalization of the university for the purposes of society is no longer possible in troubled times when the future of society itself seems to be at stake. Nevertheless, urgent societal concerns do need to be addressed by the university. Hence, the disinterested position seems a highly irresponsible option. The aim of this dissertation is to reconsider the relation between the university and the world from an educational perspective by addressing the question “How to situate study in the relation between university and society?” The dissertation consists of three parts. In Part One, the existing literature on the relation between university and society will be discussed. The first chapter discerns two main approaches to this issue, namely the transcendental-philosophical approach (cf. the idea of the university) and the critical-sociological approach (cf. academic capitalism) that conceive of the university, respectively, as an idea and as an organization. By means of an excursus on the emergence of the university in the Middle Ages, the case is made for an ecological approach to the university. In the second chapter, the work of two authors who have recently adopted such an ecological approach is briefly presented. Whereas Ronald Barnett’s theory of the ecological university is situated more in the transcendental-philosophical tradition, Susan Wright’s investigations of the university in the knowledge ecology can be placed in the critical-sociological tradition. Both conceptions, however, are hinged on an institutional understanding of the university. In line with recent developments in social theory, namely the focus on practices, it is proposed to work towards an ecology of study practices. Part Two presents Isabelle Stengers’ idea of the ecology of practices. The third chapter elucidates Stengers’ work on scientific practices by first situating it within the so-called Science Wars, which provided the impetus to elaborate a theoretical framework for a civilized dialogue between scientists and the broader public. The basic tenets and concepts of her approach, such as the understanding of practice as a set of requirements and obligations, are presented, explained, and discussed. In the fourth chapter, the focus shifts from scientific practices to study practices. Assisted by Stengers’ writings on Whitehead’s speculative philosophy, this chapter aims to flesh out Whitehead’s description of the university as a ‘home of adventures’ in order to come to an educational understanding of the study practices of the university. A conceptual inquiry into how study practices activate certain worldly problems and turn them into matters of study is presented. Part Three develops the conceptual work on study practices further in relation to the activities of the Palestinian experimental university Campus in Camps. Chapter Five presents the work of Campus in Camps and explains how it relates to the theoretical discussion offered in the second part. On the basis of Stengers’ conception of practice, which discerns requirements and obligations as vital ingredients, this chapter argues that life in exile is what drives the study practices of Campus in Camps, and hence, that it is the issue of life in exile that participants are obligated to when they study. Whereas Chapter Five is focused on what is being studied in Campus in Camps, Chapter Six inquires in to the specific requirements its activities need to fulfill in order to be study practices; in other words, how the participants study. Four requirements are discerned that, taken together, seem indispensable to understand the study practices of Campus in Camps; namely, storytelling, comparing, mapmaking, and using. The concluding chapter returns to the research question and again takes up the main ideas developed in the dissertation, such as the adventure of study and the cohabitation of scientific and study practices in the university. The last two sections of the conclusion deal with two remaining issues of a more practical nature; namely, how to relate to institutionalization when working from a practice-theoretical point of view, and lastly the question of what can be done. In all, and returning to the initial problem, the dissertation asks what it means to conceive of the university as situated by and engaged with worldly questions. (shrink)

The large-scale, intensive production of meat and other animal products, also known as the animal-industrial complex, is our largest food system in terms of global land use and contribution to environmental degradation. Despite the environmental impact of the meat industry, in much of the policy literature on climate and environmental change, sustainability and food security, meat continues to be included as part of a sustainable food future. In this paper, I present outcomes of a discourse analysis undertaken on a selection (...) of key major international and Australian reports. After highlighting common themes in the ways that meat and animals are discussed, I draw on the animal studies literature to critically analyse the assumptions underpinning such policy documents. My analysis illustrates that animals are effectively de-animated and rendered invisible in these bodies of literature by being either aggregated—as livestock, units of production and resources, or materialised—as meat and protein. These discursive frames reflect implicit understandings of meat as necessary to human survival and animals as a natural human resource. A critical examination of these understandings illustrates their dual capacity to normalise and encourage the continuation of activities known to be seriously harming the environment, climate and human health, while at the same time obstructing and even denigrating alternative, less harmful approaches to food. In response, I offer some conceptual and analytical modifications that can be easily adopted by researchers on climate change, sustainability and food security with the aim of challenging dominant discourses on meat and animals. (shrink)

In view of the philosophical problems that vex the debate on situated affectivity, it can seem wise to focus on simple cases. Accordingly, theorists often single out scenarios in which an individual employs a device in order to enhance their emotional experience, or to achieve new kinds of experience altogether, such as playing an instrument, going to the movies or sporting a fancy handbag. I argue that this narrow focus on cases that fit a ‘user/resource model’ tends to channel attention (...) away from more complex and also more problematic instances of situated affectivity. Among these are scenarios in which a social domain draws individuals into certain modes of affective interaction, often by way of attunement and habituation to affective styles and interaction patterns that are normative in the domain in question. This can lead to a phenomenon that is not so much ‘mind extension’ than ‘mind invasion’: affectivity is dynamically framed and modulated from without, often contrary to the prior orientations of the individuals in question. As an example, I discuss affective patterns prevalent in today’s corporate workplace. I claim that workplace affect sometimes contributes to what is effectively a ‘hack’ of employees’ subjectivity. (shrink)

This book chapter shows how the early Heidegger’s philosophy around the period of Being and Time can address some central questions of contemporary social ontology. After sketching “non-summative constructionism”, which is arguably the generic framework that underlies all forms of contemporary analytic social ontology, I lay out early Heidegger’s conception of human social reality in terms of an extended argument. The Heidegger that shows up in light of this treatment is an acute phenomenologist of human social existence who emphasizes our (...) engagement in norm-governed practices as the basis of social reality. I then defuse a common and understandable set of objections against invoking the early Heidegger as someone who can make any positive contribution to our understanding of social reality. Lastly, I explore the extent to which the early Heidegger’s philosophy provides insights regarding phenomena of collective intentionality by showing how the intelligibility of such phenomena traces back to individual agents’ common understanding of possible ways of understanding things and acting with one another. With the early Heidegger, I argue that this common understanding is the fundamental source and basis of collective intentionality, not the non-summativist constructionism on which contemporary analytic social ontology has sought to focus with much effort. The lesson about social ontology that we should learn from the early Heidegger is that there is a tight connection between the social constitution of the human individual and his or her capacity to perform actions or activities that instantiate collective intentionality. (shrink)

This paper proposes an alternative approach towards ethical leadership. Recent research tells us that socioeconomic and cultural differences affect moral intuition, making it difficult to locate a guiding organizational principle. Nevertheless, in this paper I attempt to open an alternative path towards an ethics that might serve as a guide for leaders – especially leaders who are leading a highly professionalized workforce. Using the Chilean writer Roberto Bolaño and the French philosopher Gilles Deleuze as points of reference, I develop an (...) ethical form of leadership that is based on a continuous ‘poetic’ dialogue between creation and affirmation. The nature of this dialogue requires a leadership approach that plays both a courageous and imaginative role in liberating its workforce. Last, I develop a frame which provides the constituent principles of leading in the direction of an ethical organization. (shrink)

Practice, Spatiality and Embodied Emotions: An Outline of a Geography of Practice The paper outlines an approach to social analysis/human geography taking off from a social ontology of practice. This means a focus of attention to embodied or practical knowledges and their formation in people's everyday lives, to the world of experiences and emotions, and to the infinitude of encounters through which we make the world and are made by it in turn. The paper proceeds in three parts. First, considering (...) the way in which subjectivity and identity are created in and through practices sets the ground. The two following sections are extensions from that discussing "embodiment and spatiality" and "affectivity and emotion" respectively. The purpose is threefold; to develop the sensuous character of practice, to consider the spatialities involved in that character, and to discuss possible developments including power and the social differentiation of bodies. The paper is concluded by a short discussion of the geographies following from the suggested account. (shrink)

Although learning has always been a central topic for philosophy of education, little attention has been paid to the notion of group learning. This article outlines and discusses some plausible examples of group learning. Drawing on these examples, various principles and issues that surround the notion of group learning are identified and discussed. These principles and issues are then further elaborated in the context of a detailed discussion of practice theory and its relevance for thinking about group learning and group (...) practice. (shrink)

Although the critique of reification is a core commitment of critical theories, there is no widely accepted account of its normative foundation. In Lukács’s original analysis, this foundation is provided by a strong concept of practice which is, however, not acceptable from a contemporary point of view. I argue that the systematic character of reification theory can only be upheld if this concept is replaced by a more intersubjective notion of normative practices. Reification can then be analysed as a second-order (...) pathology of social practices, as an inhibition of reflexivity by their normative shape. The normative justification of such critique, however, turns out to be more context-dependent than it is usually imagined. (shrink)

How or in virtue of what does any one particular action differ from another? Available views on the issue of action individuation tend to emphasize the descriptive features of actions, such as where and when they occur, or what they cause or are caused by. I contend instead that actions are individuated by their normative features, such as what licenses them and what they license in turn. In this essay, deploying a suggestion from Sellars and Brandom, I argue specifically that (...) actions are individuated by their normative function or role. (shrink)

Following the recent practice turn in privacy research, informational privacy is increasingly analyzed with regard to the “appropriate flow of information” within a given practice, which preserves the “contextual integrity” of that practice (Nissenbaum, 2010, p. 149; 2015). Such a practice-theoretical take on privacy emphasizes the normative structure of practices as well as its structural injustices and power asymmetries, rather than focusing on the intentions and moral considerations of individual or institutional actors. Since privacy norms are seen to be institutionalized (...) via the role obligations of the practice's participants, this approach can analyze structural and systematic privacy infringements in terms of “defective role performances and defective social relations” (Roessler & Mokrosinska, 2013, p. 780). -/- Unfortunately, it is still often somewhat unclear what this exactly means within the context of informational privacy, why these performances and relations are defective and for whom. This raises the common objection of a so-called “practice positivism” (Applbaum, 1999, p. 51), that is, the difficulty of practice–theoretical accounts to take a practice-independent standpoint, from which to normatively evaluate the existing practice norms themselves. For example, Nissenbaum herself initially argues for a “presumption in favor of the status quo” with respect to the appropriateness and flow of privacy norms within a practice (Nissenbaum, 2004, p. 127). Such a “practice conservatism” (Nissenbaum, 2010, p. 169) comes dangerously close to committing a naturalistic fallacy, if not undergirded by practice-external criteria (which is ultimately what she does). -/- Merely resorting to existing practice norms to assess what defective role performances amount to, only shifts the question from how to recognize an appropriate flow of information to the question of how to recognize those defective role performances and social relations. Against this backdrop, the central aim of this article is to shed light on this question without resorting to practice-independent first principles or far-reaching universalistic anthropological assumptions. For this, I will analyze the notion of “defective role performances and social relations” in terms of social pathologies.1 Doing so has two advantages: First of all, it can draw on already existing concepts and distinctions, which help to categorize the different levels of analysis that exist in informational privacy research and situate the notion of “defective role performances” within them (Section 1). Second, those concepts and distinctions can serve as a basis for establishing a typology of phenomena with regard to deficient practices of informational privacy (Section 4). (shrink)

Dog whistling—speech that seems ordinary but sends a hidden, often derogatory message to a subset of the audience—is troubling not just for our political ideals, but also for our theories of communication. On the one hand, it seems possible to dog whistle unintentionally, merely by uttering certain expressions. On the other hand, the intention is typically assumed or even inferred from the act, and perhaps for good reason, for dog whistles seem misleading by design, not just by chance. In this (...) paper, I argue that, to understand when and why it’s possible to dog-whistle unintentionally (and indeed, intentionally), we’ll need to recognize the structure of our linguistic practices. For dog whistles and for covertly coded speech more generally, this structure is a pair of practices, one shared by all competent speakers and the other known only to some, but deployable in the same contexts. In trying to identify these enabling conditions, we’ll discover what existing theories of communicated content overlook by focusing on particular utterances in isolation, or on individual speakers’ mental states. The remedy, I argue, lies in attending to the ways in which what is said is shaped by the temporally extended, socio-politically structured linguistic practices that utterances instantiate. (shrink)

Institutions can be strong or weak. But what does this mean? Equilibrium theories equate institutions with behavioural regularities. In contrast, rule theories explicate them in terms of a standard that people are supposed to meet. I propose that, when an institution is weak, a discrepancy exists between the regularity and the standard or rule. To capture this discrepancy, I present a hybrid theory, the Rules-and-Equilibria Theory. According to this theory, institutions are rule-governed behavioural regularities. The Rules-and-Equilibria Theory provides the basis (...) for two measures of institutional strength. First, institutions that pertain to coordination games solve problems of information. Their strength is primarily a matter of the expected degree of compliance. Second, institutions that concern mixed-motive games solve problems of motivation. Their strength can be measured in terms of the weight people attribute to its rule. (shrink)

This article works out the main characteristics of `practice theory', a type of social theory which has been sketched by such authors as Bourdieu, Giddens, Taylor, late Foucault and others. Practice theory is presented as a conceptual alternative to other forms of social and cultural theory, above all to culturalist mentalism, textualism and intersubjectivism. The article shows how practice theory and the three other cultural-theoretical vocabularies differ in their localization of the social and in their conceptualization of the body, mind, (...) things, knowledge, discourse, structure/process and the agent. (shrink)

Social ontology is the study of the nature and properties of the social world. It is concerned with analyzing the various entities in the world that arise from social interaction. -/- A prominent topic in social ontology is the analysis of social groups. Do social groups exist at all? If so, what sorts of entities are they, and how are they created? Is a social group distinct from the collection of people who are its members, and if so, how is (...) it different? What sorts of properties do social groups have? Can they have beliefs or intentions? Can they perform actions? And if so, what does it take for a group to believe, intend, or act? -/- Other entities investigated in social ontology include money, corporations, institutions, property, social classes, races, genders, artifacts, artworks, language, and law. It is difficult to delineate a precise scope for the field (see section 2.1). In general, though, the entities explored in social ontology largely overlap with those that social scientists work on. A good deal of the work in social ontology takes place within the social sciences (see sections 5.1–5.8). -/- Social ontology also addresses more basic questions about the nature of the social world. One set of questions pertains to the constituents, or building blocks, of social things in general. For instance, some theories argue that social entities are built out of the psychological states of individual people, while others argue that they are built out of actions, and yet others that they are built out of practices. Still other theories deny that a distinction can even be made between the social and the non-social. -/- A different set of questions pertains to how social categories are constructed or set up. Are social categories and kinds produced by our attitudes? By our language? Are they produced by causal patterns? And is there just one way social categories are set up, or are there many varieties of social construction? -/- The term ‘social ontology’ has only come into wide currency in recent years, but the nature of the social has been a topic of inquiry since ancient Greece. As a whole, the field can be understood as a branch of metaphysics, the general inquiry into the nature of entities. (shrink)

This second companion volume on engineering studies considers engineering practice including contextual analyses of engineering identity, epistemologies and values. Key overlapping questions examine such issues as an engineering identity, engineering self-understandings enacted in the professional world, distinctive characters of engineering knowledge and how engineering science and engineering design interact in practice. -/- Authors bring with them perspectives from their institutional homes in Europe, North America, Australia\ and Asia. The volume includes 24 contributions by more than 30 authors from engineering, the (...) social sciences and the humanities. Additional issues the chapters scrutinize include prominent norms of engineering, how they interact with the values of efficiency or environmental sustainability. A concluding set of articles considers the meaning of context more generally by asking if engineers create their own contexts or are they created by contexts. -/- Taken as a whole, this collection of original scholarly work is unique in its broad, multidisciplinary consideration of the changing character of engineering practice. (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)

Koopman’s book revolves around the notion of transition, which he proposes is one of the central ideas of the pragmatist tradition but one which had not previously been fully articulated yet nevertheless shapes the pragmatist attitude in philosophy. Transition, according to Koopman, denotes “those temporal structures and historical shapes in virtue of which we get from here to there”. One of the consequences of transitionalism is the understanding of critique and inquiry as historical pro...

The actions of affect are prominent in the philosophy of Gilles Deleuze and can be broken down for the purposes of education into two roles. The first alludes to the history of philosophy and the ways in which affect has been used by Spinoza (Deleuze, 1992) Nietzsche (Deleuze, 1983) or Bergson (Deleuze, 1991). In this role, Deleuze reinvigorates and challenges definitions of affect that would place them into systems of understanding that could take paths to metaphysics or to becoming paradigms (...) for capture in any further theorisation of affect. For example, scholars might attest to the use of affect as defined by Spinoza in the Ethics. Deleuze (1983, 1991, 1992) attends to the ways in which scholarly understanding of affect has been broached in order to free the idea up for empirical studies and also to show that the power of didactic language may be subsumed and subverted. The second role of affect in the work of Deleuze comes about in his first two co-authored books that he produced with Félix Guattari (Deleuze & Guattari, 1984, 1988). These publications have a distinct purpose from the scholarly work, which this article shall examine in terms of educational activism, group identities and the sociology of education. This level imbues the use of language in pedagogic acts with an intense affective resonance and the multiple traces of becoming that might be present in any teaching and learning context. (shrink)

Originating from philosophy and science, many different ideas have made their way into educational policies. Educational policies often take such ideas completely out of context, and enforce them as general norms to every aspect of education; even opposing ideals make their way into school’s curricula, teaching techniques, assignments, and procedures. Meanwhile, inside the actual classrooms, teachers and students are left in limbo, trying to comply with, techniques, evaluation forms and a growing technical educational vocabulary. Here I would like to propose (...) an antidote to this absurdity by reminding us what teachers and students already know. Such an antidote can be found in J. L. Austin’s speech act theory. In this paper, I propose we revisit speech act theory and treat it as an educational theory. That might help us dismantle false dichotomies troubling education for decades. The point is not that the discussion over educational policies and priorities should stop, but that it should be kept in appropriate perspective. A modified speech act theory can help us facilitate such a perspective. (shrink)

Choreography and Ceremony: The Artful Side of Action "Actions" are normally thought of as taken by individuals. But to understand their quality, it is not enough to classify them from the perspective of individual psychology (rational vs. emotional, technical vs. artistic, etc.). We need to grasp their relation to those forms of collective life which have a historical existence independent of specific individual action (institutions, the conventions of social gathering, the organizing principles of games, architecture, music, ritual, etc.). This paper (...) focuses on what characteristics such forms of collective life share, not what seems to separate them (eg. into sacred vs secular, technology vs creative art). The main features emphasized are their choreography, that is their enactment within commonly understood patterns of a spatial and temporal kind, as well as rules of interactive movement; and their ceremonial character, something which can be found in simple situations such as a conversation or a meal, though much more intensely in major religious ritual. A particularly resonant image for these enactments of social life is the dance. Because there is a ceremonial aspect to all social interaction, the paper argues that individual action, necessarily oriented to the social context, always has an "artful" side (however habitual or technical). The paper draws on the writings of Wittgenstein on action, and those of Collingwood on language and art, to shape the argument. Illustrations are provided of the "artful" employment of language (especially by actors on the stage), the "artful" side of material culture, and from the author's own ethnographic studies, the significance of dance among Sudanese refugees in Ethiopia. (shrink)

Any complete account of morality should be able to account for its characteristic normativity; we show that enactivism is able to do so while doing justice to the situated and interactive nature of morality. Moral normativity primarily arises in interpersonal interaction and is characterized by agents’ possibility of irrevocably changing each other’s autonomies, that is, the possibility of harming or expanding each other’s autonomy. We defend that moral normativity, as opposed to social and other forms of normativity, regulates and, in (...) some cases, constitutes this very possibility. Agents are thus morally responsible for caring about their own and others’ autonomies in interaction. In our conception, moral normativity is embodied, situated, and deeply affective, and is constituted in social practices and maintained in interaction. We identify at least two necessary conditions for moral normativity to arise as a social practice. The first is our embodied constitution as living beings who are precarious and therefore vulnerable and in need of interaction with others and with the environment. The second is our sociolinguistic nature, which allows us to exponentially expand our possibilities for action and normatively distinguish among them. We finish by drawing a distinction between moral character and the moral content of interactions, which allows us to universally recognize the ethical dimensions of all human interaction while doing justice to the situated character of morals. (shrink)

Resumen: Este artículo presenta una visión crítica de la Teoría de las Prácticas Sociales, etiqueta con la cual se agrupan aquellas teorías que definen las prácticas como el componente fundamental del mundo social. El artículo discute y presenta de modo sintético un conjunto de trabajos teóricos recientes asociados a esta teoría. Concretamente, se describe la Teoría de las Prácticas Sociales como un intento por evitar el tradicional dualismo de la teoría social en base al concepto de práctica, la cual es (...) definida como el entrecruce de materialidades, sentido y conocimiento práctico. En este contexto, se discute críticamente la forma en que la Teoría de las Prácticas Sociales entiende las dinámicas de cambio social en relación a las trayectorias de las prácticas y sus componentes. El artículo ilustra las posibilidades y limitaciones de la Teoría de las Prácticas Sociales, presentando las aplicaciones de esta teoría en el ámbito de la sociología del medioambiente y el consumo sustentable.: This article presents a critical review of Social Practices Theory, a label that group works that consider the practice as the fundamental component of the social world. The article discusses and presents in a synthetic way a set of recent theoretical works associated to this theory. Social Practices Theory is described as an attempt to avoid the traditional dualism of social theory based on the concept of practice which, following the work of Elizabeth Shove, is defined as the intersection of materialities, meaning and practical knowledge. The article discusses how Social Practices Theory accounts for the dynamics of social change by focusing on examining the trajectories of practices and their components. It illustrates the possibilities and limitations of this theory by describing how Social Practices Theory has been used in environmental sociology and sustainable consumption. (shrink)

Sociologists of education often emphasize goods that result from a practice (external goods) rather than goods intrinsic to a practice (internal goods). The authors draw from John Dewey and Alasdair MacIntyre to describe how the same practice can be understood as producing “skills” that center external goods or as producing habits (Dewey) or virtues (MacIntyre), both of which center internal goods. The authors situate these concepts within sociology of education’s stratification paradigm and a renewed interest in the concept of alienation, (...) contrasting the concepts of skills, habits, and virtues to capital, credentials, and habitus. They close by connecting the argument to broader critiques of procedural liberalism and the ideology of meritocracy, then giving suggestions for an expanded sociology of education beyond the stratification paradigm. (shrink)

Additional theorizing about mathematical practice is needed in order to ground appeals to truly useful notions of the virtues in mathematics. This paper aims to contribute to this theorizing, first, by characterizing mathematical practice as being epistemic and “objectual” in the sense of Knorr Cetina The practice turn in contemporary theory, Routledge, London, 2001). Then, it elaborates a MacIntyrean framework for extracting conceptions of the virtues related to mathematical practice so understood. Finally, it makes the case that Wittgenstein’s methodology for (...) examining mathematics and its practice is the most appropriate one to use for the actual investigation of mathematical practice within this MacIntyrean framework. At each stage of thinking through mathematical practice by these means, places where new virtue-theoretic questions are opened up for investigation are noted and briefly explored. (shrink)

Debates regarding theory and practice in social work have often avoided detailed discussion regarding the nature of knowledge itself and the various ways this can be created. As a result, positivistic conceptions of knowledge are still assumed by many to be axiomatic, such that context-dependent and practitioner-oriented approaches to knowledge creation and use are assumed to lack epistemological rigor and credibility. By drawing on epistemology, this theoretical paper outlines the case for a renewed approach to knowledge definition, creation and use (...) within social work by reference to pragmatism. Pragmatism has the potential to act as an organizing theoretical framework, taking account of the role of both ontology and epistemology, acting as a functional methodology for the further enhancement of practice-based knowledge. (shrink)

There is a tendency, a bad tendency, to make epistemic agency the central focus of epistemology. In brief, epistemologists have traditionally elevated epistemic agency as the crucial issue to be addressed, and ask all other epistemological questions in light of that issue. This is not surprising given the Cartesian influence on epistemology, but I argue that epistemic agency should not always be the central focus of epistemology. There are times when giving central place to epistemic agency gets in the way (...) of good epistemology. In this paper, I show how one approach to a communitarian epistemology falters precisely because of the primacy given to epistemic agency. Specifically, I take a close look at Lynn Hankinson Nelson?s notion of epistemological communities in terms of epistemic agency and analyze both its merits and its shortcomings. This is an important analysis for general consideration given the trend in non-traditional epistemologies to look towards social complexes as the real seats of knowledge. But this is also important because my analysis pushes one to consider an alternative framing concept for epistemology?that of epistemic practises instead of epistemic agency. (shrink)

This article delineates a new type of social ontology—site ontology—and defends a particular version of that type. The first section establishes the distinctiveness of site ontologies over both individualist ontologies and previous societist ones. The second section then shows how site ontologies elude two pervasive criticisms, that of incompleteness directed at individualism and that of reification leveled at societism. The third section defends a particular site ontology, one that depicts the social as a mesh of human practices and material arrangements. (...) The article concludes by outlining what is involved in giving site-ontological analyses of social things. Key Words: social ontology • sociality • individualism • wholism • social facts • Heidegger • social practices. (shrink)

Die breite Einführung nicht-invasiver pränataler Tests sowie die Ausweitung der Testziele über Trisomien hinaus machen es notwendig, Sinn und Ziel der pränatalen Diagnostik als emergente soziale Praxis grundsätzlich zu diskutieren. Wenn, wie angenommen wird, PND nicht zu eugenischen Zwecken, sondern zur Stärkung der Autonomie dienen soll, muss gefragt werden, welche Bedeutung die Entscheidungen haben, ein bestimmtes zukünftiges Kind zu gebären. Stephen Wilkinson hat vorgeschlagen, PND als eine Form „selektiver Reproduktion“ zu verstehen. In diesem Paper wird geprüft, ob die Charakterisierung der (...) Entscheidung nach PND als „Selektion“ zutrifft und welche moralischen Vorannahmen ihr zugrunde liegen.Es zeigt sich, dass das Konzept der „selektiven Reproduktion“ die Handlungen der PND inakkurat repräsentiert. Es beinhaltet zudem sowohl eine Abstrahierung als auch eine Distanzierung. Es nimmt an, dass Frauen und Paare entweder falls nötig mehrere Schwangerschaften planen, um ein gesundes Kind zu erzeugen, oder sich als Ausführende einer selektiven Strategie auf der Populationsebene verstehen. Die Einschränkung der ethischen Diskussion auf das Problem der Selektion verdeckt zwei wichtige Problemfelder, die die konflikthaltige Situation der PND aus der Perspektive der Frau oder des Paares charakterisieren: die Schwangerschaft als persönliche Beziehung und den Akt des Abbruchs der Schwangerschaft. Aufgrund seiner impliziten Normativität wird „selektive Fortpflanzung“ als sinnvolle Bezeichnung für die Praxis der PND zurückgewiesen. (shrink)

Praxis, Language, Dialogue Human engagement with the world develops and evolves into increasingly social, complex, and explicit modes. This essay examines the evolution of meaningful human engagement from simple embodied activity, to language-less social praxis, and then to praxis incorporating increasingly rich forms of linguistic action, culminating in theory. Each mode of meaningful engagement creates a space in which new modes of meaning can develop. These new ways of experiencing, acting, and communicating create their own meaning contexts, which provide the (...) settings for the further evolution of humans' phenomenological, hermeneutic, and practical involvements. Each mode of meaning gives rise to its successors, allowing humans to acquire new powers to understand and manipulate their environments and each other. This increase and refinement of human power raises ethical issues that we address using the Gadamerian concept of dialogue. (shrink)

durante el siglo XX, particularmente en la segunda mitad, la sociedad y la cultura a nivel planetario sufrieron importantes transformaciones, en gran medida como resultado del impresionantedesarrollo científico y tecnológico. Las formas de producción económica también se transformaron profundamente, al grado que la mayor riqueza, desde el punto de vista económico, es ahora generada por sistemas de producción que, se dice, están “basados en conocimiento”. Parareferirse a estos fenómenos se ha forjado el concepto de “sociedad del conocimiento”. Sin embargo, es (...) un hecho que la ciencia y la tecnología han provocado grandes transformaciones, por lo cual es urgente desarrollar estrategias para fortalecer la cultura científica y tecnológica en los países latinoamericanos. En este texto se discutirán los conceptos aludidos, así como posibles estrategias para fortalecer la cultura científica y tecnológica. Pero se sostendrá, más aún, que un modelo de sociedaddel conocimiento adecuado para nuestros países debe considerar su amplia y rica diversidad cultural, lo cual plantea dificultades adicionales. (shrink)

ABSTRACTHow self-evident is a colonial rationality today? This paper begins by tracing a ‘text trajectory’ about nineteenth century imperialism and colonialism through several educational spaces: curricular guidelines, textbook, teachers’ reflections on history education, material discursive classroom interactions and pupils’ communication about the topic. In a first step, we observe how entrenched and common sensical a great-power discourse about imperialism and colonialism is in current educational practices. We suggest that pupils ‘hyperstate’ a discursive position on colonialism which appears shocking when stated (...) explicitly, but which is already subtly entextualised in curricular and media discourse. However, in a second step, the analysis orients to the molecular lines and foldings, the unexpected intra-connections and unplanned ‘lines of flight’. In this way, the apparent stability of the colonial rationality begins to wobble. The memory practices enacted by pupils, curricula, teachers, authors and the material affordances of textbooks repeat entrenched colonial hierarchies and racisms, ‘and also’ exceed any overly simple understanding of how colonial rationality plays out in contemporary discourse. (shrink)

The article tells the story of the rise and fall of the organic store Yggdrasill in Iceland. That story features humble founders, caring customers, dedicated staff, as well as anonymous investment funds, and it describes the conversion of organics from a niche market to mainstream consumption. Through an ethnographic account of everyday life at the organic store, the article analyzes how intimacy within the modern food chain is established through emotional practices. Staff and customers share feelings of reciprocity, not only (...) towards organic producers, but also towards each other through acts of selling and buying organic products, forming intimate attachment and creating trust to counter the fears and anonymity of the modern food chain. Drawing on theories of affect and emotional practices and combining ethnography with narrative analysis, the article explores the role of emotions and how the doing of emotions makes organic food consumption meaningful within the industrial food system. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to provide a characterization of ability theories of practice and, in this process, to defend Pierre Bourdieu’s ability theory against Stephen Turner’s objections. In part I, I outline ability theorists’ conception of practices together with their objections to claims about rule following and rule explanations. In part II, I turn to the question of what ability theorists take to be the alternative to rule following and rule explanations. Ability theorists have offered, and been ascribed, (...) somewhat different answers to this question, just as their replies, or positive accounts, have been heavily criticized by Turner. Due to this state of the debate, I focus on the positive account advanced by a single—and highly famous—ability theorist of practice, Pierre Bourdieu. Moreover, I show that despite Turner’s claims to the contrary, his arguments do not refute Bourdieu’s positive account. (shrink)

This article offers new theoretical and empirical insights into decision-making with regard to the domestication and incorporation of home energy efficiency artefacts. These items, such as insulation and heating systems, are currently of high social, political and environmental importance. Researchers investigating energy consumption and related topics have recently turned to theories of practice — especially that proposed by Shove and colleagues — which treat humans as ‘carriers’. In contrast, this article uses realist social theory to afford a pivotal role to (...) reflexivity in practice. Individual case studies, derived from in-depth interviews, are used to explore Archer's communicative, autonomous and meta-reflexive modes. And, at the same time, Archer's distinction between natural, practical and social orders of reality is used to show the importance of embodied and practical knowledge in HEE practices. As such, this article takes the theoretical focus in this research area beyond dispositions and.. (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)

Practice Then and Now "Practice theory" has a long history in philosophy, under various names, but current practice theory is a response to failures of projects of modernity or enlightenment which attempt to reduce science or politics to formulae. Heidegger, Oakeshott, and MacIntyre are each examples of philosophers who turned to practice conceptions. Foucault and Bourdieu made similar turns. Practice accounts come in different forms: some emphasize skill-like individual accomplishments, others emphasize the social character or presupposition-like character of the tacit (...) conditions of activities. The Social Theory of Practices problematized the idea of sameness, the idea that participants in an activity had the same tacit possessions, which undermined the idea that practices were collective objects in which individuals participated. Later critics, such as Schatzki and Rouse, emphasized the normative coherence and character of practice, which has a collective aspect. Pickering and others suggested a notion of practices that was de-mentalized and focused on the objects that were part of the practical activity, which provided for the continuity and sociality of practice without collectivizing its mental content. The discovery of mirror neurons suggested a non-collective mode of transmission of practices. The implications of these developments can be seen in connection with ethics, where the conflict between the ethical and the practical can be understood in terms of the intrinsic conflict between the need to behave successfully and our learned ethical intuitions. (shrink)

The purpose of this article is to develop and illustrate an approach for making the commonplace visible in a natural, as opposed to manipulated, social setting. The key research task was to find a way of capturing the ongoing production or enactment of the self that provides some insight into the way in which it is produced in a routine, matter of fact way. The article takes a number of steps to develop a research approach to the task. First, gender-identity (...) was selected as a more specific aspect of self-production. Second, the concept of "flashpoints" was used to refer to a particular moment in the routine which achieves some significance or salience as a result of the participants seizing upon some otherwise unremarkable action or statement and twisting it to their purpose. In this study, the purpose was gender-identity creation. Primary school children in the classroom and their teachers were the participants of the study. Through the use of flashpoints, the article demonstrates how gender-identity production of these children can be caught in flight. The article concludes that this approach can be added to the researcher's toolkit. (shrink)

In regard to the explanation of actions that are governed by institutional rules, John R. Searle introduces the notion of a mental “background” that is supposed to explain how persons can acquire the capacity of following such rules. I argue that Searle’s internalism about the mind and the resulting poverty of his conception of the background keep him from putting forward a convincing explanation of the normative features of institutional action. Drawing on competing conceptions of the background of Heidegger and (...) Wittgenstein, I propose to revise Searle’s conception. The background of institutional agency can only provide a convincing explanation if it includes the context of actions and intersubjective structures of a shared life-world. I suggest that a further development of this idea would lead to the identification of the background with a web of social recognition. (shrink)

Unentwegt werden neue technische Produkte gestaltet. Doch was macht die technische Gestaltung aus? Wie lässt sich ihr Gegenstand - (noch) nicht existierende Artefakte - adäquat auf den Begriff bringen? Michael Kuhn begreift technische Ideen vor ihrer Realisierung als Fiktionen. Er bietet eine fiktionstheoretische Rekonstruktion der Gestaltungstätigkeit und entwickelt hieraus eine Ethik der Gestaltung. Der stark interdisziplinäre Zugang zwischen Technikphilosophie und Ingenieurwissenschaften liefert neue Erkenntnisse für beide Fachrichtungen und stellt wertvolle Grundlagen bereit.

Institutions are often regarded either as rules or as equilibria sustained by self-interested agents. I ask how these two theories can be combined. According to Philip Pettit’s _Virtual Control Theory_, they explain different things: rules explain why regularities persist; self-interest why they are resilient. Thus, his theory reconciles the two theories by adjusting their domains of application. However, the available evidence suggests that rules and self-interest often combine as sources of motivation. Because of this, it is better to integrate the (...) theories rather than to reconcile them. Inspired by Cristina Bicchieri’s theory of social norms, I incorporate the notion of rule-following into a game-theoretic account of institutions. According to the resulting _Rules-and-Equilibrium Theory_, institutions are rule- or norm-governed social practices. The theory does not only explain their persistence and resilience, but also their fragility, which provides another reason for preferring the proposed integration to Pettit’s reconciliation. (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)

Community engagement is increasingly defended as an ethical requirement for biomedical research. Some forms of community engagement involve asking the consent of community leaders prior to seeking informed consent from community members. Although community consent does not replace individual consent, it could problematically restrict the autonomy of community members by precluding them from research when community leaders withhold their permission. Community consent is therefore at odds with one of the central principles of bioethics: respecting autonomy. This raises the question as (...) to how community consent can be justified or even required. This paper aims to provide an answer to this question by arguing, based on the work of Taylor and Kymlicka, that community practices are important for the identity and autonomy of community members. When these practices are incompatible with a solitary focus on individual informed consent, they need to be protected by making these decision‐making practices (including asking permission to community authorities) part of the consent process. Since these decision‐making practices are important for the autonomy of community members, community consent with the goal of protecting these practices is not necessarily in conflict with autonomy. (shrink)