From ‘practice theory methodologies’ to ‘methodologies-in/as-practices’

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.  

Interview with Bhavna Middha

There are rich examples of practice theory-informed research that addresses bundles of professional/organisational practices, leisure practices, or everyday practices related to, for example, pressing concerns such as sustainability. Yet considerations of the nexus of practices invite researchers to continue creatively investigating links that may cross over different sub-disciplinary literatures or methodological discussions. In this interview, Allison Hui talks with Bhavna Middha about how her research, on topics such as eating and community engagement, has engaged with varied everyday and governance practices through a grounding in Schatzki’s site ontology. Our discussion highlights how digital and online methods can be integrated as forms of co-production.

Nicola Spurling – Lancaster Lines

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.

Intersections and Meetings between Practice Theory and STS: EASST 2018 Cfp

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/

Practice Theory: Connections and Methodologies BSA Regional Postgraduate Event

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.

Lenneke Kuijer & Ron Wakkary – Practices-oriented design: how theories of practice are shaping design (research) methodologies

We are both design researchers, working within the field of human-computer interaction (HCI). Design research is a fairly young discipline, the formalization of which is generally traced back to a series of essays published in Design Studies under the theme ‘Design as a Discipline’ [1, 3, 9]. The aim of these essays was to position ‘designerly ways of knowing’ as a distinct way of generating knowledge about the world. There is much debate around what design research is and does, but in our interpretation of it, we build on the idea that the making and deploying of new artefacts in the everyday world, in order to purposely inquire and ask questions, forms a distinct way of gaining knowledge about the world.

Encountering theories of practice in different ways, we have both drawn on it in our design research. We published separate articles in a special issue on ‘practice-oriented approaches to sustainable HCI’ [10] that can be said to be the first comprehensive introduction to theories of practice within HCI. In 2016, we found ourselves working in the same group at the Department of Industrial Design of Eindhoven University of Technology, where we aim to continue pursuing the relations between theories of practice and HCI. In this blog post, we reflect, from our own experiences, on how theories of practice have shaped methodologies in design research. We thereby engage with propositions 1, 4, 5 and 7.

Jo Mylan & Dale Southerton – Following the Action: An Approach for Studying the Coordination of Practice

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?

Photo by Leslie Marinelli via http://www.thebeardediris.com/2011/05/01/floordrobe-makeover/

Elizabeth Shove – Practice theory methodologies do not exist

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 8^th 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.

Katherine Ellsworth-Krebs & Louise Reid – Digital/virtual/online methods and studying domestic energy practices

This blog reports on a workshop in St Andrews this October and the development of a network of researchers interested in using digital/virtual/online methods to study domestic energy practices. Our contribution is different from other posts on this site contributing to proposition 4 (i.e. inventive and multiple methods, units, samples, etc. are particularly useful for exploring practices at different scales, in relation to changing social patterns and variably interconnected actors). Others on this website have previously commented on the effectiveness of multiple and mixed methods (Browne, 2016), which may be dependent on shifting focus between local, contemporary performances and historical trends and wider populations (Morley, 2016), but we are pinning ourselves to articulating the utility (and challenges) of online methods for exploring practices.