ABSTRACT
References to "what people do" make it clear that practices are intimately bound up with actions. In fact, it is useful to start with a simple, even prosaic, preliminary definition of "practices": practices are specific kinds of regular action. In fact, one may often say that the object is what gives the practice its form and indeed its nature. The kind of "raising" that is at issue in the practice of "raising the interest rate" is profoundly and complexly different from that involved in "raising her hand", "raising a good point", "raising a monument" or "raising his bid". One crucial way in which concepts affect action and practices is by orienting or organising them. Historical constitution also entails that like other social phenomena, human practices are historical entities. Practices are indeed kinds, but they are kinds that are constituted historically.
