ABSTRACT
This chapter pays particular attention to the process whereby broader theoretical categories become incorporated into everyday discourse. Sociological researchers not only study practices and more general societal processes but also, as a byproduct of the discourse they use, help to produce social practices. One of the consequences is that lay people focus on and use only parts of the theories or some of the language of sociology not all. Thus, for example, when governmentality-inspired researchers talk about 'risk', their discourse also includes discussions of underlying or attendant value systems, such as neo-liberal ideas of self-control, responsibility, and self-motivation. In contrast to ethnomethodology's (EM) and conversation analysis (CA), this perspective focuses on how actors reproduce theoretically loaded categories. The use of these categories for example, risk, control, responsibility, and self-motivation in a conversation between a health consultant and an overweight person might have their origins in various different discourses.
