ABSTRACT
The aim of this chapter is to elucidate the kind of non-essentialist anti-reductionism which characterizes the hermeneutic theory of practices. The author argues that the irreducibility thesis is defended by those who claim that practice theory cannot be developed out of – and is not derivable from – normative-teleological theories of action, theories of human agency, and theories of (habitual) social behavior. The hermeneutic theory of social practices advocates the irreducibility thesis by following a radically anti-essentialist strategy. According to this theory, actions and activities – as they are situated in and entangled with interrelated practices – neither causally determine nor impose norms on the ways in which practices are interrelated in their performances. The main argument against the reductionist scenario of constructing practice theory draws on a significant (but non-dichotomous) ontological difference between any one objectified practice and the same practice as contextualized within the non-objectifiable interrelatedness of social practices. The chapter provides arguments as to why the human body cannot be taken as a privileged reference frame for theorizing social practices. Finally, the chapter argues that since any particular practice is capable of articulating meaning when (and only when) it is contextualized and fore-structured by the interrelatedness of practices, the manipulation of what is ready-to-hand within the particular practice is meaningful within the horizon of the work-world.
