ABSTRACT
According to Jean-Michel Salanskis, action is an essential conceptual key to give a relevant account of practices, be they scientifi c or not. He writes: “. . . something deserves to be named practice only if we are able to understand some action in it. Action is the general and simple category that is at stake” (p. 44). However, a brief survey of works in science studies for the past forty years shows that action is probably not an explicit central feature, neither in their developments, nor in their conclusions. This observation should not be considered as an objection against the perspective Salanskis suggests we should adopt. Salanskis’ aim is to clarify the word “practice” by fi nding some defi nitional foundations. 1 According to him, this is a necessary step in order to better grasp the meaning of “practice” and the sense of the “practice turn”.
