Practice as collective action

The first chapter of The Practice Turn is by Barry Barnes. In it, he talks about what practice is, primary in a tete-a-tete with this guy Stephen Turner. Barnes equates Turner with radical individualism, as in the dichotomy between individualism and holism/idealism. 

To be more exact, Turner's chapter is about shared practices. 

Examples. Three examples, which were put in a section up front. Vegetarianism, acupuncture, and the calvary. 

Power. "In the last analysis, talk of practices is talk of powers—and all the difficulties associated by theories of social power have to be faced by accounts of practices bearing in mind in considering the third point made above. Powers are exercised at need by active agents; they are, as it were, switched on and off as expediency or inclination or whatever else requires. Practices are enacted in the same way. Or rather, what is called the active exercise of a power may equally be called the enactment of a practice."

"Turner notes that sociological theorists are especially prone to treat shared practice as a unity, a single object. They explain other things by reference to a shared practice conceived of as a real collective entity. Durkheim and Sumner are cited as examples here, and Turner emphatically rejects their collectivist approach, which speaks of ‘society’ or ‘custom’ or ‘the mores’ as a single object with causal powers. There is neither ground nor evidence for belief in the existence of shared practice as a unitary object, says Turner, and no theory of cultural transmission and dissemination which allows us to understand how such an object could pass from person to person unchanged." Sounds like that against which CHAT would posit itself, since it's about incommensurabilities with relative coherence. 

"Turner’s argument merits detailed attention because it articulates a very widely held conception of the basic difference between individualist/ psychological and collectivist/sociological approaches to social activity. The former speaks of aggregates of separate individuals and individual actions; the latter refers to unitary collective entities. A standard exemplification of the difference is the contrast between rational choice theory and theories of societies as systems of social norms." More exact than the split between individualism and holism. Maybe the difference would be between Parsons and Durkheim, respectively?

"Indeed many theorists are likely to think of this contrast when they read Turner, and see the horns of his dilemma as akin to these two alternative forms of theory. But this very widely held conception is in truth a misconception, which fails to grasp the nature of a properly sociological approach to social life. The horns of Turner’s dilemma are merely alternative expressions of a fundamentally individualistic mode of thought. In the explicitly individualistic view of practice as diversity, there are so many independent individuals moved by habits. In the alternative allegedly ‘collectivist’ view of practice as a unity there are so many independent individuals moved by a single object or essence. Neither view can throw light on a simple collective routine like riding in formation." Oh that's interesting, both are kind of the same at the end of the day--reminiscent of Diane Davis, when she critiques rhetoric from the dichotomy between reception/hermeneutics and production. 

Also you can see in that latter quote, the recall of CHAT. Neither can throw light on, say, the collective hunt. ". What is required to understand a practice of this kind is not individuals oriented primarily by their own habits, nor is it individuals oriented by the same collective object; rather it is human beings oriented to each other. Human beings can ride in formation, not because they are independent individuals who possess the same habits, but because they are interdependent social agents, linked by a profound mutual susceptibility,5 who constantly modify their habituated individual responses as they interact with others, in order to sustain a shared practice." And then Diane Davis again, with the "a profound mutual susceptibility" 

I also wonder if this mutual susceptibility could be contrasted with Hegelian Sittlichkeit and Kantian Moralität. 

This was just a good quote. "As Zygmunt Bauman has rightly complained, far too many theorists have contrasted the individual and the societal and forgotten altogether about the social (1989 p. 179)."

Definitely explains me and teaching. "It is part of the nature of a shared practice that learning what it is and enacting it are inseparable. This is one reason why shared practices change." Note the "shared" again.

"The argument against ‘practice individualism’ in this paper parallels familiar arguments against ‘rule individualism’ and on behalf of collectivist accounts of rules (Wittgenstein 1958; Kripke 1982; Bloor 1997). Rule collectivism is a view I myself advocate, for example, in Barnes (1995). It is a view that follows naturally from a finitist understanding of the nature of rules and meanings, such as that given in Barnes et al. (1996). " Cf. Stormer and Davis on the "finite."

"In this paper it suffices to speak of the interdependence of social agents. Elsewhere I insist that this interdependence takes the form of mutual susceptibility and is causal. The link must be made causally, rather than via reason, because it is necessary to account for coordinated understanding as well as coordinated action, and links mediated by reason (i.e. verbal communications rationally addressed) presume coordinated understanding and cannot occur until it exists. See Barnes (1995, 2000). " This was in the introduction, too, the causal thing, but I don't get it. 

"It might be objected that the example cited is not an example of routine practice at all, that by definition something is routine only when it involves no active calculative intervention and proceeds automatically. But this would be a perverse definition. Scarcely anything (routinely) regarded as routine at the collective level could plausibly be made out as routine on this basis. Next to nothing of the ‘routine practice’ of a collective could be so described. (Indeed it is interesting also to reflect that scarcely anything in the way of routine individual behavior could be so described. Even at this level a distinction must be marked between the automatic/habitual and the routine: starting the day with coffee, walking down the stairs to the street, catching the bus to work, may be daily routines for an individual, but their accomplishment will require constant active modification of what comes automatically or habitually. ‘Habit’ actually faces all the problems identified by Turner as confronting ‘shared practice.’)" I think this is the Thevenot thing from the intro, that goals and propositional content is necessary for practice, that certain practices order others. 

Barnes argues against Turner's account of habit, which the former sees as too individualistic. "Practice at the collective level is not a simple summation of practices at the individual level (habits). Shared practice is, as the ethnomethodologists say, a collective accomplishment."

"The same example will serve as the basis for the discussion of the fourth and final point. Practices are often cited in order to explain things, including notably their own enactment. It may be said, for example, that something is done because it is traditionally done, or routinely done, or done because it is part of the practice of the collective. The problem of why human beings should enact the practice is thereby completely glossed over. It is as if the cavalry has to charge, twice a week perhaps, simply because it can charge, as if there is something automatic and compelling about the enactment of practices which makes it unnecessary to consider what moves or inspires the human beings involved" I was thinking tautology from Boltanski, but then I was thinking motive and justification. 

"A charge of cavalry must be understood not as the mere enactment of a practice, but as its knowledgeable, informed and goal-directed enactment. It is necessary to make reference to more than practice itself in order to understand it." Again, motive, justification. 

I guess justification in the OOW sense and motive in the CHAT sense might be related at some level. They are of course, but you were thinking of justification in the sense of a justification for action--as in, how do members of the calvary justify charging to themselves.