The role of teleoaffective profiles in practice adaptation

Consumer research is interested in the way consumers navigate consumption in the face of disruption, often using practice theory to focus on how practitioners creatively realign practice elements in order to carry on. Although recognising their significance, this research undertheorizes the significance, role and characteristics of 'meanings' in practice adaptation, presenting them as constraining and yet easy to adapt. We explore and theorize meanings in practice adaptation by mobilising the theoretical leverage of Schatzki’s (2002) concept of ‘teleoaffective structures’. Through our empirical material, we illuminate how multifaceted teleoaffective components constituent of teleoaffective structures are integrated differently into routinised practice performances in relatively stable ways; incorporated via ‘teleoaffective profiles’ that are unique to practitioners but properties of practices. Furthermore, we propose that teleoaffective profiles have different characteristics that condition practice adaptation, as teleological orientations and affective engagements afford different pathways towards integration with available materials and competences. We use our empirical material, based on interviews with loyal gym-based resistance training practitioners during COVID-19 gym closures, to illuminate our argument that practitioners can have ‘rigid’, ‘elastic’ or ‘fluid’ teleoaffective profiles. The characteristics of these profiles, which are unique but remain the properties of the practice, mean that adaptation processes and experiences unfold differently. This perspective advances from accounts of adaptation that are centred on binary outcomes of success or failure. Furthermore, our theorization advances from practice-oriented consumption adaptation research that foregrounds practitioner creativity and fails to adequately incorporate understandings of how practice elements condition adaptation processes. Yet, we retain practitioner experiences in our analysis. Teleoaffective components, profiles and properties provides further theoretical leverage to the practice turn in consumption research and advances the burgeoning focus on the significance of teleoaffective structures in the topographies of practices

Nursing Theory Makes a Practice Turn in the 21st Century

The author assumes that practice became prominent in nursing theory in the first two decades of the 21st century. The end of the last century saw a burgeoning of literature on what is known as grand theories, their implementation, and evaluation. The era of healthcare quality research began when the Institute of Medicine issued a report on building a safer health system. At this time, the 21st-century literature in nursing took a distinct turn toward practice, influencing nursing theory. The movement to individualize care acted to further this influence. The nurse and patient relationship is the source of data for knowledge development. Established research approaches such as grounded theory and new approaches such as story theory were being used to create nursing theory from practice. Grand theory work moved to the development of instruments to measure the effects of theory in practice, such as that of Watson and Roy. The middle-range theories were developed and seen as closer to and easier to use in practice. The evidence-based practice movement also contributed to the role of theory in practice. These knowledge developments led to nurses having expanded roles in nursing.

Toward Nonbinary Theories of Practice in Teacher Education Research

This essay argues that contemporary debates about the role of practice in teacher education run the risk of reproducing mind/body, thought/action dualisms. Absent these binaries, practice is understood as always theoretical, principled, and contextualized and knowledge and identity are understood as always embodied and enacted. The author discusses nonbinary theories of practice and their application in teacher education scholarship within both historical and political contexts. The essay argues that the practice turn in teacher education might be leveraged to enhance the field’s intersectional imagination and to eschew the polarities and linearities the field has inherited from Western enlightenment philosophy.

Pretense as alternative sense-making: a praxeological enactivist account

The project of this paper is to synthesize enactivist cognitive science and practice theory in order to develop a new account of pretend play. Pretend play is usually conceived of as a representationalist phenomenon where a pretender projects a fictional mental representation onto reality. It thus seems that pretense can only be explained in representationalist terms. In this paper, we oppose this usual approach. We instead propose not only new explanatory tools for pretend play, but also a fundamental reconceptualization of the phenomena of pretend play, that is, of the very explanandum of theories of pretense. To do so, we suggest combining the turn to action and embodiment in the cognitive sciences with the practice turn in the humanities. From our point of view, pretend play has to be seen in its role in human life as a whole, which is to help children to learn to master the complex sociocultural contingencies of the manifold social practices that make up social reality. Pretend play should therefore be conceived as alternative sense-making that is always related, in varying ways, to ordinary social practices. Pretenders do not need to project mental representations onto reality, but make sense of their surroundings in different ways than encultured adults in ordinary practices. In the paper, we spell out this view and show how it enables an enactivist reconceptualization of imagination, intentions and knowledge, which are usually thought of as being available only to representationalist accounts of pretense.

Practice Theory and Postsocialist Civil Society: Toward a New Analytical Framework

When discussing postsocialist civil societies in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE), scholars have predominantly focused on the nonparticipatory and advocacy-oriented activities of nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), effectively narrowing the concept of “civil society” to that of the “civic sector.” This actor-focused and normative approach has resulted in a systematic obfuscation of less structured forms of everyday resistance, civic engagement, active citizenship, contentious politics, and social movements, giving only a partial view of civil societies in the region. Through a critical dialogue between state-of-the-art research on postsocialist civil society and the practice turn in international political sociology (IPS), this article postulates an analytical distinction between contentious and compliant practices in order to arrive at a more comprehensive and nuanced understanding of the ways in which postsocialist civil societies are manifested, enacted, and actualized. On the one hand, the proposed practice turn moves the research agenda away from abstract, universalist, and normative assumptions of what civil society should be in favor of an embedded, contextual, and critical understanding of what it actually is; on the other hand, this shift opens venues for theorizing not only about, but also from the “postsocialist condition” of civil societies in the transnational space of CEE.

Praxistheorien und Religionswissenschaft

Im Anschluss an den practice turn, der zu Beginn des Jahrtausends vor allem von Arbeiten im Bereich der Science and Technology Studies getragen wurde, hat das theoretische Vokabular der Praxistheorien weitläufig Prominenz erlangt. In der Religionswissenschaft wird es dagegen nur zögerlich rezipiert. Die Beitragenden des Bandes nehmen sich dieses Zögerns an und liefern neben theoretischen Überlegungen, die nach den Implikationen und Potenzialen praxistheoretischer Konzepte für die Religionswissenschaft fragen, auch Beiträge, die Wege der Anwendung von Praxistheorien in empirischen Projekten aufzeigen.

Taking the Wrong Turn? Re-examining the Potential for Practice Approaches in Archaeology

Is the ‘material’ or ‘ontological’ turn a major new paradigm in archaeological theory? Or is it another iteration of the cycle of piecemeal innovation which has created a very fragmented discipline? While there are insights from recent scholarship in this vein which are certainly important, this paper will err toward the latter view. Even though ‘symmetrical’ and other object-agency approaches are still growing in mainstream archaeological debate, much of the source literature upon which they draw has been around for several decades, and accumulated a fair amount of critique. At the very least, therefore, we need to learn from the way the materiality debate is playing out in other sub-fields. Beyond that, I will argue, we should go back to the turn before this one—the practice turn—and explore that road a bit more thoroughly, if we are to find the most useful approaches to develop in the future.

Praxis. Ausüben. Begreifen

In den letzten Jahren ist vermehrt von einem »practice turn« in den Kultur-, Kunst- und Sozialwissenschaften sowie in der Philosophie die Rede. Die Beiträge des vorliegenden Bandes nehmen dazu aus unterschiedlichen disziplinären Blickwinkeln eine weiterführende Verschiebung der praxisanalytischen Reflexion vor. Anstatt Praxis aus einer Position der objektivierenden Distanz zu untersuchen, wird ein Verständnis der Praxis von ihrer Ausübung her entwickelt, aus einem in ihrem Vollzug stets mitlaufenden sie und sich Selbst-Begreifen. In dieser Perspektive findet Praxis ihren Grund im Tun selbst, das als kontingent und fortsetzungsoffen aufgefasst wird. Mit Beiträgen von Kathrin Audehm, Marie-Cécile Bertau, Gregor Bongaerts, Lucilla Guidi, Andreas Hetzel, Franziska Ipfelkofer, Melanie Pierburg, Jens Schmidt, Robert Schmidt, Volker Schubert, Friedrich Weltzien, Katrin Wille.

In the midst of theory and practice

This cross-disciplinary symposium on Friedrich Kratochwil's The Status of Law in International Society engages with the interconnections between social knowledge (theory) and action (practice). Each contributor reflects critically on one of Kratochwil's nine meditations. These co-meditations cover not only Kratochwil's work, but they deepen discussions on the role of legal norms in international society, the practice turn, pragmatism, the production of knowledge, and human action. Kratochwil's reply to his co-meditators pushes the limits of prevailing thought on praxis. As a whole, the symposium exemplifies how we find ourselves always in the midst of theory and practice.

Introduction to the Special Issue: Renewing Theories of Practice and Reappraising the Cultural

This short article introduces the Special Issue ‘Renewing Theories of Practice and Reappraising the Cultural’. We first discuss the ‘practice turn’ in the sociology of consumption. We introduce three lacunae that advocates have identified in contemporary theories of practice that animate the contributions of the Special Issue: around the theorisation of culture, economy and the reflexive individual. We go on to discuss the place of culture in the ‘practice turn’, and its relations to cultural sociology. We then appraise some recent attempts at resolution. Lastly, we summarise the individual contributions to the Special Issue.