The Practice Turn in the Social Sciences (WS 2021/22)
Endre Dányi2021
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This is an introductory course centred around the concept of practice. It aims to offer a general overview of the so-called practice turn in the social sciences, compare and contrast the most important theories of practice in sociology, and examine a series of case studies in practice research informed by recent developments in cultural anthropology, ethnomethodology, discourse analysis, and science and technology studies. After an introductory session we proceed by identifying various components of practice theory as possible focus points. Each component - 'bodies', 'texts', 'materialities', 'temporalities', 'spatialities', 'ways of knowing' - is discussed in two consecutive sessions with the help of (a) classical social scientific texts and (b) specific case studies.
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Sociology of social practices: Theory or modus operandi of empirical research? Forthcoming in: Littig, B. et al. (2017): Methodological Reflexions on Practice-Oriented Theories, Springer International
Practice sociology seeks to overcome the ingrained academic division of labour between blind empirical research without theory and 'scholastic' theory that immunises itself against being empirically questioned. To meet such demands, this chapter proposes a procedure of praxeologising, which combines empirical perspectives and theoretical tools within stimulating epistemic arrangements. This procedure closely ties in with praxeological epistemology, which subsequently is exemplified using three steps. First, by referring to Bourdieu's praxeology, this study reflects on the differences between the practices of theorising and the logic of practice within the fields of activities to be studied and theorised. Second, it is illustrated how the procedure of praxeologising can employ a heuristics of game playing to focus on the tacit, bodily dimensions of social events and participants' shared feel and sense of the game. Third, it is pointed out that to master the overtly public nature of social practices, praxeology particularly should work out applicative procedures and methods derived from observation.
The Methodological Challenges of Practicising Praxeology. In: Machiel Lamers /Gert Spaargaren / Don Weenink (Eds.): Practice Theory and Research: Exploring the Dynamics of Social Life, Routledge 2016
In recent years the debates on praxeology gradually led to a bifurcation, following the beaten pathways of the division of scientific work. On the one hand, praxeological approaches were received in social theory and comparative theoretical studies. They were seen as theoretical innovations, and assessed and classified accordingly, with regard to their intersections and differences to other theoretical approaches (Reckwitz, 2002; Schatzki, 1996). Most of the foundational approaches to praxeology are closely connected to empirical studies. This applies to Harold Garfinkel's ethnomethodology, to Erving Goffman's studies of interaction, to Pierre Bourdieu's praxeology and to Bruno Latour's actor-network-theory (ANT). This dominant theoretical strand of practice theory however hardly accounts for the practical problems linked with using praxeological approaches in empirical research. On the other hand, just recently the relevancy and the affordances of praxeology for consulting, advising and policy interventions have been called for and emphasized (Nicolini, 2012; Shove et al., 2012). In the light of this prevailing divergence between theoretical endeavors on the one hand, and applied organizational and political objectives on the other hand, we now run the risk of losing sight of the epistemological and methodological issues at the core of praxeology. To address such issues, this paper focuses on the methodology of praxeology. It suggests a procedure of praxeologizing the objects of inquiry. This procedure is depicted in three steps: Firstly the paper comes up with the empirical example of academic practices of writing, especially of writing social theory. This serves to point out the methodological tasks and empirical challenges of praxeology. It is shown how praxeologizing theoretical writing can highlight particular and novel aspects of this practical and epistemic activity. By empirically studying academic writing practices, praxeology helps to question prevailing approaches in writing studies. Secondly, the epistemological aspects of praxeology are pointed out. It is argued that praxeology, first of all, is concerned with the misrepresentations of doings and practical activities in the theoretical models designed to grasp and to explain them. Referring to Pierre Bourdieu’s discovery of the praxeological mode of epistemology in his ethnographic studies in Algeria, this ‘negative’ and reflexive perspective on social practices is highlighted. In a third step, the paper proceeds to provide a conceptual tool kit for praxeologizing.
The practice turn in contemporary theory
Scandinavian Journal of Management, 2003
Our current period has been characterized by Geertz (2000, p. 102) as a ''posteverything era''. The abundant use of the prefix ''post'' (e.g. ''post-marxism'', ''postfeminism'', ''post-structuralism'', ''post-humanism'', and so on), suggesting that we are moving on from the reigning theories and beliefs, and the tendency to keep proclaiming new ''turns'' in social theory (e.g. Witz, 2000; Alvesson & K. arreman, 2000) are indications of this perception of contemporary developments. The anthology reviewed here, The practice turn in contemporary theory represents an attempt at a critical examination and discussion of the notion of practice in social theory and-something that should come as no surprise-to announce another ''turn'' in social theory. The papers in the volume, emanating from a range of disciplines including sociology, technology and science studies and philosophy, were originally presented at a conference on ''Practices and Social Order'' at the Center for Interdisciplinary Studies at the University of Bielefeld in 1996. Practice is a manifold concept and one could envisage such orientations as Chicago sociology, Bourdieu's theory of practice, Giddens' structuration theory, or de Certeau's study of everyday life practices as complementary strategies exploiting the concept of practice as a key theoretical category. The present anthology offers a great many approaches to the concept of practice and each of the fourteen chapters in the volume makes a valuable contribution to the understanding of this most multifarious concept. Some of the fourteen chapters in the anthology, selected on a basis of my personal interests and concerns as a student of organization, will be discussed below. The first part of the anthology addresses the problem of ''Practices and Social Order'', the preeminent actor-structure topic in social theory. In this part the relationship between practice and various underlying structural assumptions and beliefs that precede practices is discussed. If practices are to be studied, we have to ask ourselves how they are shared between social actors? How do practices constitute social order? In brief, what are ''shared practices''? The contributors to Part 1 are prone to see the practices of social actors as constituting social order. In Chapter 1, Barry Barnes examines practice as collective action and addresses several of the issues relating to practice as a fundamental social form. Barnes regards practices as collective accomplishments. In Chapter 2 Jeff Coulter discusses how ''macro-social'' phenomena are produced on a basis of individual action. Coulter takes Weber's notion of the Tr. ager, the ''bearer or 'carrier' of patterned action orientation''-exemplified by the Calvinist capitalist turning religious beliefs into the production of wealth in Weber's classic analysis-as the subject underlying the ''macro-social''. A further method for the analysis of macro-social phenomena suggested by Coulter is Herbert Blumer's symbolic interactionism, which aims at a de-reification of social structure. Part 2, ''Inside Practice'', is aimed at shedding some light on the embodiment and psychological aspects of practices. Rather than speaking of mental entities such as beliefs, desires, emotions and purposes, practice theorists use concepts denoting embodied capacities such as know-how, skills, tacit understanding and dispositions.
"O the practices, they are a-changin'". Review of E. Shove, M. Pantzar and M. Watson "The Dynamcis of Social Practice: Everyday Life and How It Changes". London: Sage, 2012.
Science & Technology Studies
Conclusion: the relevance of practice theory for researching social change
Practice Theory and Research, 2016
Ethnographies of Practice—Practising Ethnography
Journal of Social Work Practice, 2005
This paper argues that acquiring competencies in different approaches and procedures in qualitative or interpretative social research provides a strong foundation for case analysis in professional social work practice. When students of social work become familiar with such research and are encouraged to engage in their own supervised projects they develop skills for a circumspect and sensitive practice with clients. The paper reports on work with students of social work in Germany, which can be described as an attempt to help them to become self-reflective ethnographers in their own affairs, of their own emergent social work practice. It spells out different phases of a process in which they learn to make their own practice strange. This process consists of developing different competencies in observing, analysing and writing, and requires a setting in which students' written observations and reflections can be shared and discussed by their peers in a critical, egalitarian and supportive manner. The author thinks that such a critical and self-critical discourse which addresses professional issues in general, as well as the individual student's (or practioner's) experiences and reflections, can have important implications for the collective development of social work and its relationship with other professions.
Introduction: The Critical Power of the `Practice Lens
Management Learning, 2009
Practice and the Theory of Practice
2012
When I first read the Practice of Everyday Life, I had just left my discipline (neuroscience) as well as my country and was struggling to find my way in intellectually and socially unfamiliar terrain. I was encouraged thus to find a book, which legitimated the ways by which a stranger might appropriate and transform the materials of another culture. Several years later I read it a second time from the position of a researcher-consultant and found its insights still relevant: this time it was his outline of the stance of the intellectual towards the object of study that deeply moved me first in its insistence on one’s obligation towards the implicit, informal, non-verbal subject matter; and second in its acknowledgement of the power axis inherent in every research project, which is all too often ignored or suppressed in the literature on methodology in the social sciences.
The Promises of Practice
The Sociological Review
Practice has become a topic of increasing empirical and conceptual concern within sociology and neighbouring fields. ‘Practice’ can refer to a location or it can refer to action. It is possible to be ‘in practice’, to ‘have a practice’ or to be ‘constituted by practice’. Practice can be a cause, an effect or an explanation. Within science and technology studies (STS), the practice orientation is simultaneously analytical – in the form of various practice theories – and empirical, in that research objects are often defined as ‘practices’. Focusing on a range of examples, especially ethnomethodological, this paper examines some implications and problems that follow when practice slides unnoticed between empirical and conceptual registers. Arguing that a reconsideration of practice thinking is important in order to retain its vigour, we outline a view of practice as a ‘factish’, at once conceptual and empirical, which facilitates analyses of practical ontologies and their transformations. This informs a final discussion of the politics and promises of practice.
The Practice Turn in the Social Sciences
Winter semester, academic year 2021/2022
Wednesdays between 14.00 and 16.00
Seminarhaus – SH 2.101
*** Please don’t forget to enrol on OLAT! ***
https://olat-ce.server.uni-frankfurt.de/olat/auth/RepositoryEntry/13271302147
Contact details
Dr. Endre Dányi
Visiting professor, ‘Biotechnologies, Nature and Society’ research group
Department of Sociology, Goethe University, Frankfurt am Main
Email: danyi@em.uni-frankfurt.de
Paula Stiegler
Teaching assistant, ‘Biotechnologies, Nature and Society’ research group
Department of Sociology, Goethe University, Frankfurt am Main
Email: stiegler@em.uni-frankfurt.de
Course description and assessment
This is an introductory course centred around the concept of practice. It aims to offer a general
overview of the so-called practice turn in the social sciences, compare and contrast the most
important theories of practice in sociology, and examine a series of case studies in practice
research informed by recent developments in cultural anthropology, ethnomethodology, discourse
analysis, and science and technology studies.
After an introductory session we proceed by identifying various components of practice theory as
possible focus points. Each component – ‘bodies’, ‘texts’, ‘materialities’, ‘temporalities’,
‘spatialities’, ‘ways of knowing’ – is discussed in two consecutive sessions with the help of (a)
classical social scientific texts and (b) specific case studies. The main requirements for taking the
course are the submission of comments on the weekly readings (25%), active participation in the
seminars (25%), and the writing of a final essay of 3000 words due 1 April 2022 (50%).
Covid note
Please follow campus regulations on COVID-19 and make sure you’re up-to-date on the safety
plan! You can find current information on the 3G rules on this website: https://aktuelles.unifrankfurt.de/news-in-brief/as-of-october-1-3g-rules-at-goethe-university/
In order to protect yourself, and us all, please wear a surgical or FFP2 mask during the entire
duration of class. We'd also like to ask you to stay at home in case you are feeling unwell or
experiencing respiratory symptoms.
Thank you!
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Course outline
1) Introduction (20 October 2021)
What’s the purpose of this course? How can one register for it? Where does one get the readings?
What are the requirements for a signature? And what are the requirements for a final mark? These
are some of the questions we’ll discuss in this introductory session.
2) What is the practice turn? (27 October 2021)
Arguably, scholarly interests in practices are as old as the social sciences themselves. And yet, in
the past few decades it has become customary to talk about a ‘practice turn’ as an important and
radical development in social research. Drawing on Andreas Reckwitz’s introductory text, in the
first session we discuss the main characteristics and implications of this turn and identify various
themes as focus points for the rest of the course.
Required reading: Reckwitz, 2002
Recommended readings: Hui et al., 2017; Schatzki et al., 2001; Schäfer, 2016; Schmidt, 2012
3) Bodies 1 (3 November 2021)
Émile Durkheim, and later Pierre Bourdieu and Erving Goffman, taught us that sociality cannot
be understood without bodies performing it. For this week’s session, we’re going to read an
empirical text by Pierre Bourdieu about French peasants and their bodies to discuss habituation as
one of the central concepts in Bourdieu’s scholarship.
Required reading: Bourdieu, 2004
Recommended reading: Bourdieu, 1977
4) Bodies 2 (10 November 2021)
Practices are habituated – but does that mean they are set once and for all? Judith Butler suggests
otherwise. In her analysis of the relationship between sex and gender she places a strong
emphasis on the iterability and performativity of practices, rather than their habituation.
Required reading: Butler, 1993
Recommended reading: Meijer & Prins, 1998; Lovell, 2000
5) Texts 1 (17 November 2021)
In most practices bodies play a central role, but there are practices that depend primarily on
making bodies invisible or insignificant. Bureaucratic rule is a good example, as it depends on
rendering various processes impersonal, machine-like, and therefore largely predictable. In this
session we will discuss Max Weber’s classical analysis of bureaucratic rule – and the central role
documents play in it.
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Required reading: Chapter 5 of du Gay, 2007
Recommended reading: Chapter XI of Weber, 1978
6) Texts 2 (24 November 2021)
Paul du Gay's analysis of bureaucracy was centred around the bureaucrat: a persona who has
been indispensable to the establishment and maintenance of impersonal rule. A practice-centred
approach, however, quickly highlights that bureaucrats can't do much without their props: suits,
desks, and – perhaps most importantly – their files and related documents. This week we'll
concentrate on text-related practices with the help of Matthew Hull's ethnographic study of a
Pakistani governmental office.
Required reading: Hull, 2003
Recommended reading: Hull, 2012
7) Materialities 1 (1 December 2021)
In Max Weber's analysis bureaucracies are often conceptualised as fine-tuned machines.
Empirical case studies have shown that the smooth running of such machines depends heavily on
the successful alignment of human bodies and a wide range of texts (documents, forms, files,
reports, etc.). But what about the machine-ness of bureaucracies and other forms of
organisations? To what extent do they determine social practices, and how much space do they
leave for change? In the next session we'll address these questions with the help of Karl Marx's
The Capital.
Required reading: Mackenzie, 1984
Recommended reading: Chapter 7 of Marx, 2001
8) Materialities 2 (8 December 2021)
One of the central concepts in Marx's account of capitalist production is labour. It's an inherently
humanist concept, which at the same time involves and depends upon a vast array of nonhuman
entities. How can we think of such human-nonhuman configurations, and how do they relate to a
Marxist understanding of materiality? We'll explore this question through Bruno Latour's text on
technical mediation.
Required reading: Latour, 1994
Recommended reading: Latour, 1999
9) Temporalities 1 (15 December 2021)
Practices take place here-and-now, in certain sequences that have taken place before and that are
about to take place again. The focus on temporality reveals basic qualities such as urgency,
contingency, uniqueness, and indexicality. This week we’ll read Grafinkel in order to sensitise
ourselves to this perspective on practices-in-time.
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Required reading: Garfinkel, 1967
Recommended reading: TBA
10) Temporalities 2 (12 January 2022)
Garfinkel's research programme called ethnomethodology has focused mostly on situations that
take place locally, here-and-now. In his chapter on technical mediation, Latour criticised
ethnomethodology for not willing to acknowledge events and processes that occur in different
times and spaces. In the next session we'll discuss Thomas Scheffer's attempt to give an empirical
response to this critique, while staying true to ethnomethodology's fascination with local
situations.
Required reading: Scheffer, 2007
Recommended reading: TBA
11) Spatialities 1 (19 January 2022)
How do practices relate to each other – not only in time, but also in space? How are they being
held together, sometimes creating the impression of a singular social order? Michel Foucault's
analysis of Jeremy Bentham's Panopticon is an exemplary study of the ways in which various
bodily practices were meant to be arranged into a regime of governance, 'all by a simple idea in
architecture'.
Required reading: Chapter 3 of Foucault, 1995
Recommended reading: Crampton & Elden, 2007
12) Spatialities 2 (26 January 2022)
Foucault's analysis of Bentham's Panopticon was meant to be an account of the emergence of a
singular social order through the spatial arrangement of diverse practices. But no social order is
ever coherent and water-tight. Its surface is everywhere punched and torn open – it is, in Michel
de Certeau's words, a sieve-order. What follows from this is that spatial practices, like walking,
have the capacity not only to strengthen panoptic schemes but also to invert them. The latter point
will be discussed with the help of a series of walks in Manhattan, NYC.
Required reading: Chapter 7 of de Certeau, 1984
Recommended reading: TBA
13) Ways of knowing 1 (2 February 2022)
In the last two sessions of the course, we return to embodiment and discuss how certain bodies
exemplify certain ways of knowing in the social sciences. First we continue with the theme of
walking and, with the help of Tim Ingold, examine how ‘the walker’ knows the world as he (sic!)
moves across the landscape.
Required reading: Ingold, 2010
Recommended reading: Ingold, 2016
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14) Ways of knowing 2 (9 February 2022)
In this session we contrast the figure of ‘the walker’ with that of ‘the eater’ and ask what ways of
knowing become visible if we take metabolism as our starting point for our social scientific
inquiries. We’ll do this through exemplary situations described by Annemarie Mol and her
colleagues.
Required reading: Mol, 2008
Recommended readings: Mol, 2021
15) Concluding session, essay topic discussion (16 February 2022)
In this final session we’ll discuss students’ outlines of their final papers and exchange good
practices of academic writing in English.
References
Bourdieu, P., 2004. ‘The peasant and his body’. Ethnography, 5(4): 579–599.
Bourdieu, P. 1977. Outline of a Theory of Practice. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Butler, J., 1993. Bodies That Matter, London and New York: Routledge.
Crampton, J.W. & Elden, S., 2007. Space, Knowledge and Power, London: Ashgate.
de Certeau, M., 1984. The practice of everyday life, Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.
du Gay, P., 2007. Organizing Identity, London: Sage.
Foucault, M., 1995. Discipline & Punish: The Birth of the Prison, New York: Vintage.
Garfinkel, H., 1967. Studies in Ethnomethodology, Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall.
Hui, A., T. Schatzki, and E. Shove. 2017. The nexus of practice: Connections, constellations,
practitioners. London: Routledge.
Hull, M.S., 2012. ‘Documents and Bureaucracy’. Annual Review of Anthropology, 41(1): 251267.
Hull, M.S., 2003. ‘The file: agency, authority, and autography in an Islamabad
bureaucracy’. Language & Communication, 23(3-4): 287–314.
Ingold, T., 2010. ‘Footprints through the weather-world: walking, breathing, knowing’. Journal
of the Royal Anthropological Institute, 16(1): 121-139.
Ingold, T., 2016. Lines: A brief history. London: Routledge.
Latour, B., 1999. Pandora’s Hope. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Latour, B., 1994. ‘On technical mediation’. Common Knowledge, 3(2): 29–64.
Lovell, T. 2000. ‘Thinking Feminism with and against Bourdieu’. Feminist Theory, 1(1), 11–32.
MacKenzie, D., 1984. ‘Marx and the Machine’. Technology and culture, 25(3): 473–502.
Marx, K., 2001. Capital, London: Electric Book Company.
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Meijer, I.C., and B. Prins. 1998. ‘How Bodies Come to Matter: An Interview with Judith Butler’.
Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society, 23, 275 - 286.
Mol, A., 2021. Eating in theory. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
Mol, A., 2008. I eat an apple. Subjectivity, 22: 28-37.
Reckwitz, A., 2002. ‘Toward a Theory of Social Practices: A Development in Culturalist
Theorizing’. European Journal of Social Theory, 5(2): 243–263.
Schatzki, T.R., Cetina, K.D.K. & Savigny, Von, E., 2001. The Practice Turn in Contemporary
Theory, London: Routledge.
Schäfer, H., 2016. Praxistheorie: Ein soziologisches Forschungsprogramm. Bielefeld: Transcript
Verlag.
Scheffer, T., 2007. ‘Event and Process: An Exercise in Analytical Ethnography’. Human Studies,
30(3): 167–197.
Schmidt, R., 2012., Soziologie der Praktiken. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp.
Weber, M., 1978. Economy and Society: An Outline of Interpretive Sociology. Berkeley, CA:
University of California Press.
Useful resources (feel free to suggest more)
Practice turn
Practice Turn Methodologies: https://practicetheorymethodologies.wordpress.com/
Practicing Place research training group, KU Eichstätt: https://practicing.place/
Academic writing in English
Howard S. Becker. 2007. Telling About Society. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
Umberto Eco. 2015. How to Write a Thesis. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Online excerpt here: https://thereader.mitpress.mit.edu/umberto-eco-how-to-write-a-thesis/
Strategies for Essay Writing (Harvard College Writing Centre):
https://writingcenter.fas.harvard.edu/pages/beginning-academic-essay
The Chicago Manual of Style Online: https://www.chicagomanualofstyle.org/
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