Practice Theory

Anthropology, sociology, and related subfields of history have increasingly taken “practices” as their primary object of study in the last several decades of the twentieth century. Applications of the practice idiom extend from the most mundane aspects of everyday life to highly structured activities in institutional settings. Some of the patterns of performances identified as “practices” are quite localized geographically or historically, while others are of much more general extent. Practices range from ephemeral doings to stable long-term patterns of activity. Attention to practices often requires extensive examination of relevant equipment and material culture, but can also assign constitutive roles to vocabulary and other linguistic forms or performances. The range and scope of activities taken by various theorists to constitute “practices” can be made evident by a few characteristic examples from the practice theory literature. They include spatially dispersed but relatively short-lived activities such as Nasdaq stock market Internet “day trading” [Schatzki, 2002] or academic presentations on the international conference circuit [Rabinow, 1996], but also relatively stable and widespread patterns of social relations such as willfully self-interested bargaining [Taylor, 1985]. Many practices are culturally specific, such as the Kabyle gift-exchanges discussed by Bourdieu [1977] or the secret baptism of money by Colombian peasants described by Taussig [1980]. Yet some practice theorists also refer to activities which take various culturally specific forms, such as eating with specific utensils and preparing food accordingly [Dreyfus, 1991], while others identify long-standing institutionalized activities such as chess ([Haugeland, 1998]; [MacIntyre, 1981]), medicine (MacIntyre), or science. In the latter case, the practice idiom has ranged in scope from references to science generally as a practice [Pickering, 1992] to examining historically specific experimental systems and instruments ([Kohler, 1994]; [Schaffer, 1992]) experiments [Pickering, 1995], disciplinary cultures [Knorr-Cetina, 1999], pedagogical regimes [Warwick, 2003], ways of organizing experimental venues and work groups [Galison, 1996], and styles of theoretical work [Galison, 1998]. The theoretical uses of the concept of practice within social theory and philosophy of the social sciences have been as diverse as the kinds of examples employed. Heidegger’s and Wittgenstein’s work on understanding and rule-following have been prominent influences upon practice theories, but so has Foucault in each major stage of his work. Prominent sociologists such as Pierre Bourdieu or Anthony Giddens are often cited as practice theorists, while Sherry Ortner’s [1984] review article on “Theory in Anthropology Since the Sixties” proposed “practice” as the central theme of anthropological theory in the 1980’s, a trend that continues today.