Lecture 12 - Practice Theory Flashcards
What is Practice Theory
Starting point of analysis: actors’ doings and sayings
Against assumed interest, identity, norms, power, etc.
Against priori, fixed assumptions of the nature of the international system or of global politics
Definition of practices
embodied, materially mediated arrays of human activity centrally organized around shared practical understandings
a ‘flat ontology’ - Break with traditional distinctions of ‘level of analysis’ - the division between agency and structure, micro and macro, subject and object, individual and society, mind and body or the ideational and the material
What is Practice Theory
The dual nature of practices: practices can “range from ephemeral doings to stable long-term patterns of activity.
Practices are dispersed, dynamic, and continuously
rearranging in ceaseless movement. But they are also reproducing, organized, and structured clusters
Continuity and change: This constellation forces practice theorists to be particularly aware of the continuous tension between the dynamic, continuously changing character of practice on the one side, and the identification of stable, regulated
patterns, routines, and reproduction on the other.
Key features of practice theory
1) Emphasis of process,
2) Practical knowledge,
3) Materiality,
4) Performativity
5) Empiricity
origins practice theory
Various social science disciplines have
begun to embrace the concept of practice since
the 1990s.
- sociology and organization studies,
- consumer behavior,
- science and technology studies
- policy studies: the practices of policy making and implementation
key features practice theory: emphasis of process
practice must entail an acceptance of its indeterminacy, unruliness and instability
there is no fixed international order, but there are constant processes and activities of following, maintaining, contesting, or reinforcing an order
order is always shifting and emerging
Practice theorists hence prefer verbs such as “ordering,” “structuring,” and “knowing” over the respective
key features practice theory: practical knowlege
Knowledge is situated in practice and not in “mental frames” or discourse.
Knowledge, its application, and
creation cannot be separated from action.
Objects, structures, or norms exist
primarily in practice. They are part of practices and are enacted in them.
the internalization of practical, tacit knowledge learned by doing, that is, from direct experience in and with the world
key features practice theory: materiality
Practices are interwoven or mediated by non-human elements and material conditions
Material objects acquire a form of agency of their own, making people do things they would not have done otherwise
Bodies, material artifacts or technologies are the main carriers of practices
key features practice theory: performativity
Practice theorists embrace a performative understanding of the world
Actors translate their skills into actual influence through performances:
- Competent or incompetent
- Contingent on the complex web of material and social relations
key features of practice theory: empiricity
Practice theorists give primacy to
the empirical, and call for a readjustment of the relation between theory and practice.
A methodological orientation which
- Takes the observation of practices as its primary basis.
- Often uses examples of everyday
practices
- The common concern is to record, to describe and to reconstruct the phenomenon
Approaches of Practice Theory
- The praxeology of Pierre Bourdieu
- Communities of Practice (Etienne Wenger)
- Actor-Network Theory
- Theodore Schatzki inspired IPT
The praxeology of Pierre Bourdieu
Key concepts from Bourdieu – habitus, capital, doxa, field – are used to study international practices of diplomacy, security policy or political economy
Habitus - Bourdieu
system of enduring dispositions shaped by past experiences which influence our perceptions / actions.
the ways we act are influenced by our past
Doxa - Bourdieu
norms and beliefs that underlie our everyday distinctions and assumptions
the common sense beliefs we have but might not realise
Field - Bourdieu
different parts of society where people have different amounts of power
