ABSTRACT
The ‘practice turn’ is a label Schatzki (2001a) uses to describe a shift across several social scientific disciplines to viewing practices as ‘the primary generic social thing’ (2001a, p. 10). Theorists whose research can be characterised in this way include Marx, Wittgenstein, Bourdieu, Giddens, Foucault and Canadian philosopher Charles Taylor. According to Schatzki, ‘practice approaches promulgate a distinct social ontology: the social is a field of embodied, materially interwoven practices centrally organised around shared practical understandings’. He adds that,
This conception contrasts with accounts that privilege individuals, (inter) actions, language, signifying systems, the life world, institutions/roles, structures, or systems in defining the social. These phenomena, say practice theorists, can only be analyzed via the field of practices. Actions, for instance, are embedded in practices, just as individuals are constituted within them. Language, moreover, is a type of activity (discursive) and hence a practice phenomenon, whereas institutions and structures are effects of them. Needless to say, practice theorists have different understandings of these matters.
