Introduction to practice theory

In this introductory chapter, Schatzki reviews practice theory, specifically the contributions of the other authors in the volume. 

Some key themes in practice theory are embodiment, mediation, order, the macro-micro connection, explanation, agency, and reason. 

I was surprised that Habermas didn't count as a practice theory, although he does always get associated with the adjective "cognitive." Schatzki distinguishes between individualist and nonindividualist (sometimes wholistic) accounts. Habermas falls into the individualist account because fundamentally it's about the interactions of individuals--or at least according to Schatzki. "Accounts of what is responsible for order are as varied as conceptions of it. Individualist approaches attribute the layout of social affairs to features of individuals and their direct interactions—for example, agreements (Hobbes); shared internalized norms (Durkheim, Parsons, and Habermas)"

While the individual isn't the focus of a practice approach, that approach does lean toward individuals in order to preserve agency. "although practices, as Barry Barnes argues in his contribution, do not reduce to individuals, qua activity arrays they are much more closely tied to individuals than are the orders and order-establishing phenomena of much macro social thought."

Schatzki says that the practice approach "undermine[s] the traditional individual-nonindividual divide by availing themselves of features of both sides" As a result, "it appropriates in transfigured form a variety of individualist explanantia, while grounding these in a supraindividual phenomenon that differs significantly from those of conventional social thought (e.g., societies and systems)."

Reason. "Practice approaches also tend to reduce the scope and ordering power of reason. They do this by abandoning the traditional conception of reason as an innate mental faculty and reconceptualizing it as a practice phenomenon: as (1) a way of being dependent upon and thus varying among practices or (2) ways of operating within practices, e.g., rational procedures and argumentation (cf., Winch 1977; Toulmin 1958, 1972)."

The notion of the "the body-activity-society complex" came up frequently, which fits into the theme of mediation. Like how Bourdieu "conceives practices as selforganizing and - propagating manifolds of activity. He seeks, however, to anchor these manifolds in the individuals who perform their constituent activities, while also dismissing mental states as subjective epiphenomena. The human body, accordingly, offers itself as the point of connection between individuals and social manifolds. And therewith habitus (practical understanding) becomes the ideal determining phenomenon, sufficiently psychological to avoid physical determinism, sufficiently nonpsychological to be embodied, and adequately supple to account for much if not all human activity. Practice theory’s embrace of embodied understanding is rooted in the realization that the body is the meeting points both of mind and activity and of individual activity and social manifold."

This came up twice. "This appeal to skillful practical understanding raises the question: can an array of activity be adequately explained by shared skills alone? Practice approaches diverge on this issue. Opposing Bourdieu’s affirmation of the adequacy of habitus, for example, is Barnes’s (and Giddens’s and others’) insistence that skills be supplemented by some combination of perception, propositional knowledge, reasons, and goals. Some theorists also claim that explicit rules must be brought into the mix. This is a tricky issue because practice theorists resoundingly oppose the idea that explicit rules govern much, if not most, social activity." Thevenot comes up here. "He first challenges one familiar practice approach that attributes shared activity to nothing but individual capacities identical across people (e.g., shared skills). Without denying the significance of shared capacities, he argues (not unlike Thévenot’s and my own contributions) that accounting for practices requires invoking other phenomena, in particular, goals, propositional knowledge, and active monitoring of the setting of action." The "he" is Barry Barnes. I think this is the theme that certain practices ground other practices--that is, the issue as to "whether some practices anchor and organize others"

Good quote. "I first argue that order should not be conceived of as regularities, but instead as arrangements of people, artifacts, and things. I contend next that social practices govern both the meanings of arranged entities and the actions that bring arrangements about, and that this governance is the basis of social order."

The "‘deflationary realism’ of...Donald Davidson" was interesting to think of in terms of Kent. 

I feel like the debate between CHAT and ANT really gets at the heart of the tensions hinted at in this intro, but there are others too that I don't understand as well. 

"Laurent Thévenot similarly contests those practice theories that construe practices as customlike regularities and ground activity solely in shared habits or dispositions. Such approaches, he (not unlike Barnes) claims, ignore how the world responds to human intervention and thereby orders human activity. They also reduce, wrongfully, the conceptions of the good governing human activity to social norms which actors follow." Reduction of the good to a rule to follow. 

There was also one point at which I was really questioning whether anything is really shared. We're not sharing "beliefs" anymore. "Whereas philosophers and social investigators once cited mental entities such as beliefs, desires, emotions, and purposes, practice theorists instead highlight embodied capacities such as know-how, skills, tacit understanding, and dispositions." But are habits tacitly shared? I don't really get the sharing. Is the conception of the domestic cité the same for me as it is for you? Barry Barnes again: "He first challenges one familiar practice approach that attributes shared activity to nothing but individual capacities identical across people (e.g., shared skills)" Which approach is this? So there's just no macro at all? I bet this is conversation analysis. Or ethnomethodology. 

Game theory, bad. Set theory, good? Array.