The charge that practice theories are only or perhaps especially good for studying small scale and typically bounded activities like showering, smoking, playing floorball or cooking dinner has been repeatedly and I would say effectively rebuffed. Behind the scenes, and sometimes up front, those who claim that practice theories are incapable of engaging with large and important questions about politics, economy, climate change, power and inequality make one or more mistakes about what practice theories offer, and about the core ideas on which they are based (Schatzki 2016; Nicolini 2017). Proponents of transitions theories (Geels et al. 2016; Schot et al. 2016)are, for instance unwilling to accept that practices exist on a single plane. Others adhere to incompatible forms of conceptualization, analysis and interpretation, hankering after big explanations and abstracted laws of markets and political, economic processes. Although related, these critiques are not of a piece and neither are the responses to them.
If only I had got round to responding to these propositions earlier! If I had contributed in April 2016 – as was my plan – this task would have been so much easier: 4 lines and not 4 pages. In April, I knew what I wanted to write. Having read the blog and been part of discussions at the DEMAND conference, I simply wanted to add an 8th proposition which went as follows:
Taking “practice” as a central conceptual unit of enquiry generates a range of distinctive questions. The choice of methods depends on which of these questions you want to take up and pursue. Using practice theory is thus not directly tied to certain methods, but the choice of methods is – as always – dependent upon your specific research question.
At that point, that was all I had to say.
I still hold this view (with some qualifications… see below) – but in explaining what I mean and why, it is useful to back track a bit and also take stock of how this position fits (or doesn’t) with the contributions that others have made to this blog.
Continue reading “Elizabeth Shove – Practice theory methodologies do not exist”
How could those working with practice theories engage with efforts to decolonise methodologies? How could those decolonising methodologies benefit from understanding methodologies-in/as-practices?
This pair of questions informs my recent paper in the Sociological Review entitled ‘Situating decolonial strategies within methodologies-in/as-practices: a critical appraisal’. The paper provides an argument responding to both questions that you can, and I hope will, read. But in this post, I want to draw out additional reflections around the history of ‘practice theory methodologies’, and implications of my discussion for the community engaging with practice theories.
Continue reading “From ‘practice theory methodologies’ to ‘methodologies-in/as-practices’ “
As a practice theorist, I engage with Heideggerian and Wittgensteinian arguments that practice is the source of meaning and human action (cf. Schatzki, 1996), broadly sustained by practical understanding and intelligibility, normativity, and teleo-affectivity. I am particularly fascinated by expertise as a form of social, normative, and relational mastery, as “skill, know-how and technique” (Shove, Pantzar, and Watson, 2012: 14) inscribed in bodies and minds, that practitioners must possess to competently engage in a certain practice.
In my research, I look at expertise in labour practices, to understandhow the internal organisation of different types of work shapes conditions of expert conduct, and how this conversely affects practitioners’ relations and engenders conflicts and inequality. I consider here the case of ‘conference interpreting’. This is an exceptionally complex professional practice, based on multilingual communication services performed in high-stake settings (e.g. supra-national organisations, business…), and positioned in labour markets as part of the language industry. (If you cannot visualise it, think about that film with Nicole Kidman doing headphones-and-microphones simultaneous ‘live’ translations for the UN…).
In response to the aims of a workshop on Connecting Practices in Lancaster during April 2019, this short experimental piece explores lines in Lancaster and their multiple relationships with and forms of connection to practice. It therefore addresses the theme of ‘processes of connection’ and explores line-making as such a process. The piece of thought has two starting points. The first is Ingold’s ‘comparative anthropology of the line’ (2016:1) in which he argues that the production and significance of lines should be a topic for anthropological study, and in which he provides some conceptual starting points for such a project. His focus on different forms and classes of line across practices including walking, weaving, storytelling, drawing and writing drew my attention to painted lines in the first place, and raised a question ‘how do painted lines do work in the world?’. In this paper I am interested in how practice theory might offer conceptual starting points for answering this question. Continue reading “Nicola Spurling – Lancaster Lines”
The 2018 EASST conference will be held in Lancaster 25-28 July 2018, and includes a call of relevance to this blog. The deadline for abstract submissions is 14th February 2018. For more information, visit: https://easst2018.easst.net/call-for-papers/
Continue reading “Intersections and Meetings between Practice Theory and STS: EASST 2018 Cfp”
For those in the UK, there is an exciting British Sociological Association Regional Postgraduate Event on 26 March 2018 at Lancaster University that features many contributors to this blog and will hopefully develop some new posts as well. Please consider joining us and spread the word.
Continue reading “Practice Theory: Connections and Methodologies BSA Regional Postgraduate Event”
You can use the links below to browse through blogs by author:
- Ben Anderson: 1
- Alison L. Browne: 1, 2
- Johannes Coughlan: 1
- Katherine Ellsworth-Krebs: 1
- Deborah Giustini: 1
- Frank Hillebrandt: 1
- Stefan Hirschauer: 1
- Russell Hitchings: 1, 2
- Allison Hui: 1
- Dennis Krämer: 1
- Lenneke Kuijer: 1
- Stefan Laube: 1
- Cecily Maller: 1
- Anna-Lisa Müller: 1
- Jo Mylan: 1
- Louise Reid: 1
- Tobias Röhl: 1
- Sarah Royston: 1
- Franka Schäfer: 1
- Hilmar Schäfer: 1
- Theodore Schatzki: 1
- Larissa Schindler: 1
- Elizabeth Shove: 1, 2
- Dale Southerton: 1
- Nicola Spurling: 1
- Yolande Strengers: 1
- Frank Trentmann: 1, 2
- Susann Wagenknecht: 1
- Ron Wakkary: 1
A principle methodological challenge for any research is the identification of the core unit of analysis and the ‘entry point’ for empirical enquiry. Both depend on the research questions to hand. For the study of practices these challenges are particularly acute. Studies of practices can range from relatively discreet bundles of activities (such as showering or cycling) to compounds of practices as described by Warde (2013) in relation to eating, which, depending on the question being asked, might or might not encompass cooking, shopping, or entertaining. Where the practice begins and ends is both a theoretical and a methodological problem. Within the conceptual repertoire of practice theories the term ‘coordination’ is often evoked, as something representing the binding together of ‘entities’ (e.g. Shove et al, 2012), of people performing practices (Southerton, 2006), or of actions in time and space (Schatzki, 2010). Despite the critical conceptual role in theories and studies of practices, coordination raises sets of methodological conundrums: what exactly is being coordinated and over what spatial, temporal and societal scales is this coordination occurring?
Researchers in the field of STS convincingly state that studying infrastructures also means to deal with questions of social order (see, for example, the very active blog Installing (Social) Order. Building on this, I propose to replace, or at least supplement, the classical concept of the (supra-)structure with that of infra-structuring. As with other ‘discoveries’ this one was rather coincidental and serendipitous: In April 2016 I became part of the newly founded Collaborative Research Center (SFB) Media of Cooperation. For the researchers gathered there, the concept of infrastructure is one of the central concepts employed to investigate how cooperation between various actors is made possible. In this context I soon began wondering whether the concept of infrastructure could not replace the classical sociological notion of structure and reconcile practice theory with phenomena usually considered to be macrosociological problems. This blog entry is a tentative attempt to discuss this idea.
Practice Theory Methodologies 