ABSTRACT
The issue of specificity underscores an important ambiguity in the identification of practices. The context – the circumstances – of an action is integral to its very being or "identity"; that is, at least, to its being an action of a particular kind. Yet there is with practices, and indeed with virtually any social phenomenon, a certain blurring of the boundary between "inside" and "outside", between entity and environment; what an action is depends to a substantial extent on its surroundings. Practices and their interrelations partly, but crucially, determine the regular uses and functions of instruments and artefacts – in part by establishing their very point. A common orientation towards an object or set of objects is normally characteristic of a practice and indeed constitutes one of its most important individuating features. One of the ways in which a domain's practices are typically linked to one another is through a common orientation to one or more prevailing problematisations.
