ABSTRACT
This chapter presents a concept of practice that includes intellectual activities. It shows that everything humans do is a kind of a practice, and in particular, a kind of social practice, because human being is both practical, in the sense that it includes doings, as well as social, in the sense that it always includes social aspects. The chapter explores two paradigmatic understandings of practice and theory: the classical and the modern, each with their own variations. It explains that contemporary practice theory, which avoids the dichotomous structure/agent explanatory scheme, should also transcend this practice/theory dualism. The traditional understanding of practice is no longer tenable. It is necessary to go beyond dualism and reductionism—beyond fixing the difference between practice and theory as clear and given, but also beyond blurring this difference as if it were nonexistent. In order to produce any kind of a theory, a real social agent and social action are needed.
