Pierre and everyone,
Thank you for making this an interesting thread! Like Kari and a few others on this thead, I draw on notions of practice to write about how habitual everyday activities are consequential in technology use and design work. Kari and Liam Bannon's paper [1] is great for introducing this body of thought for an HCI audience. My perception is that sociologists tend to follow a single distinct school of practice theorizing (phenomenology, praxeology, ethnomethodology, various marxisms etc.). In organization studies and increasingly CSCW and HCI a more pluralistic approach has become more common, with researchers drawing concepts from across these related schools of practice thinking to inform particular empirical studies. Nicolini's book [2] is probably the most thorough explanation of this pluralism and Kuti and Bannon follow Nicolini's approach. Feldman and Orlikowski's paper [3] is a great introduction to practice theorizing that takes this pluralism almost for granted.
In my humble opinion, if there's a limitation in Nicolini's book (and it's probably fair to say Kuti and Bannon inherit this) it's a relative neglect of pragmatism. Nicolini acknowledges as much in his introduction, noting that without a chapter on pragmatism, his work is probably better understood as a *European* history of the concept of practice rather than a general history of the concept. As Ken mentioned in his post, pragmatism has had a major influence on symbolic interactionism and the chicago school of sociology. Emirbayer and Maynard [4] have a great paper on links between pragmatism and ethnomethodology.
I'm drawn to pragmatism in part because it has long informed a tradition of social science that cares about social critique and social reform, including an interventionist agenda. One thinks of Jane Addams' Twenty years at hull house [5] or Mary Parker Follett's The New State [6] and Creative Experience [7]. This is helpful in my work, which in a practical sense is all about design for global health equity.
The other reason I'm drawn to pragmatism is that it clearly influenced Schon's classic view of designing as reflective practice [8]. I've been writing a great deal about the notion of sociomaterial practices (see Suchman [9] and Orlikowski [10]) to discuss how concrete materials make a difference in everyday life. While some describe the notion of sociomaterial practices as wholly new and others trace its history in European social theory, I've been using it to build on and extend Schon's classic view of designing as reflective practice.
I haven't published this work yet but happy to share off list if anyone is interested. Thanks again for starting this thread--I'm always happy to hear of other design researchers interested in everyday ordinary practical activity, or practices.
cheers,
Isaac
p.s. I'd second David's point that 1) so much of this work goes back to Wittgenstein and that 2) it would take to long to explain why here (Wittgenstein is prohibitively dense). For but one thread some of you may find interesting to trace, consider Schon's footnotes about Wittgenstein when he writes about "seeing-as" and generative metaphors in Chapter 6 of The Reflective Practitioner.
www.medicmobile.org
www.isaacholeman.org
Twitter @isaacholeman
My TEDx talk: http://bit.ly/1mzlh3z
1. Kuutti K, Bannon LJ. The turn to practice in HCI. In: New York, New York, USA: ACM Press; 2014:3543–3552. doi:10.1145/2556288.2557111.
2. Nicolini D. Practice Theory, Work, and Organization: An Introduction. In: 1st ed. Oxford: Oxford University Press; 2012:1–22.
3. Feldman MS, Orlikowski WJ. Theorizing Practice and Practicing Theory. Organization Science. 2011;22(5):1240–1253. doi:10.1287/orsc.1100.0612.
4. Emirbayer M, Maynard DW. Pragmatism and Ethnomethodology. Qual Sociol. 2011;34(1):221–261. doi:10.1007/s11133-010-9183-8.
5. Addams J. Twenty years at hull-house. University of Illinois Press; 1990.
6. Follett MP. The new state: Group organization the solution of popular government. Penn State Press; 1918.
7. Follett MP. Creative Experience. Longmans, Green and Company; 1924.
8. Schön DA. The Reflective Practitioner: How Professionals Think in Action. Vol 5126. Basic books; 1983.
9. Suchman L. Human-Machine Reconfigurations: Plans and Situated Actions. 2nd ed. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press; 2006.
10. Orlikowski WJ. Sociomaterial Practices: Exploring Technology at Work. Organization Studies. 2007;28(9):1435–1448. doi:10.1177/0170840607081138.
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