ABSTRACT

Project

In this first chapter, I begin to explore co-incidence or distance between practice theories and philosophical hermeneutics. Both argue for understanding-in-practices—or practical habituated unreflected upon understanding how—evident in our everyday ‘coping’ behaviour as fundamental. Propositional understanding that something is the case—or reflection—is secondary. I trace a threefold narrative of ‘moments’ characterising practical understanding, following its theorising through hermeneutics (Husserl to Heidegger, Gadamer to Ricoeur), seeing it finally flourish as generically configured action, embodied and equipped, embedded within habituated horizons of understanding. Tacit horizons of focussed behaviour or practical understanding (such as concern for human dignity in caring) are often distant cognitive frameworks of involvement, far from the attention of an actor. As such, they are an eminently suitable subject for research from health psychology to marketing. In this chapter, I commence constructing a hermeneutic perspective on social practices from ‘making’ meaning while watching television to our purchasing everyday products in the local supermarket.