Suicide has long been the subject of philosophical, literary, theological and cultural–historical inquiry. But despite the diversity of disciplinary and methodological approaches that have been brought to bear in the study of suicide, we argue that the formal study of suicide, that is, suicidology, is characterized by intellectual, organizational and professional values that distinguish it from other ways of thinking and knowing. Further, we suggest that considering suicidology as a “social practice” offers ways to usefully conceptualize its epistemological, philosophical (...) and practical norms. This study develops the idea of suicidology as a social practice and considers the implications for research, practice and public discourse. (shrink)

The present contribution describes the nature of social practices based on habitual behavior. The first part concerns the notion of “habit” from a perspective that crosses philosophy and science. Habits structure our daily life and possess a social nature, as shown by informally shared habits and institutionalized rituals. After a brief reference to the philosophical debate, we point out the fundamental dimensions of habitual behavior, i.e., routine and goal-directed behavior. They also characterize shared social habits like (...) rituals because we need to: (a) simply follow social institutional practices and (b) actively cooperate to reach a certain goal. Our descriptive strategy aims at promoting the aspect of “control” in habitual behavior, namely, the possibility of accepting or refusing to do something. This control does not work in many pathological cases and cases of auto-illusion. The second part of the article will illustrate the interesting but disregarded case of the epistemic and moral embubblement, explaining it as an individual cognitive process and as a specific social practice that once followed or institutionalized becomes a shared practice routinely performed. The main features of an epistemic bubble concern the widespread situation in which the cognitive agents always resolve the tension between their thinking that they know _P_ and their knowing _P_ in favor of knowing that _P_”. The related case of the moral bubble indicates the situation in which agents are potentially or actually violent and unaware of it. This cognitive process expresses how difficulties in recognizing one’s own violence leads to disregarding the possible or actual inflicted harm: in this case, a process of what can be called “autoimmunity” is at play. We will contend that the concept of moral bubble can provide an integrated and unified perspective able to interpret in a novel way many social practices in which morality and violence are intertwined. (shrink)

ABSTRACT In this paper, I analyse Rahel Jaeggi’s socio-ontological account of forms of life. I show that her framework is a two-sided one, since it involves an understanding of forms of life both as inert bundles of practices and as having a normative structure. Here I argue that this approach is based on an a priori argument which assumes normativity as the condition of intelligibility of social criticism. I show that the intimate tension between these two sides is (...) reflected in the socio-ontological model of the constitution of social phenomena, which on the one side is understood in terms of habituation and materialization, and on the other side in terms of constitution through norms. The second side in the end prevails and leads to some sort of normative essentialism which involves a prescriptive meta-theoretical understanding of normativity combined with a socio-ontological model of constitutive rules. I then analyse two arguments that Jaeggi offers in support of her assumption that normative constitution is the deep structure of social practices. I name these the functional-teleological argument, and the crisis developmental argument, and argue that neither succeeds in proving that practices are not normatively underdetermined. (shrink)

This paper clarifies why and how Wittgenstein’s animating idea of social practices should be considered as expressing a fundamental pragmatist commitment.To this end, I do not take the retrospective perspective, which traces “pragmatism” back to the criteria of use fixed by the inventor of the word, C. S. Peirce, but rather replace Wittgenstein in the context of contemporary debates. I focus in particular on R. Brandom’s attempt to understand Wittgenstein’s second philosophy as belonging to an intellectual tradition from (...) which his own rationalist pragmatism derives. A confrontation follows between Brandom and Wittgenstein, whose aim is to highlight the specific tactics of Wittgenstein’s pragmatism as a refusal of Brandom’s idealist rationalism. First, I present and defend R. Brandom’s reading of Wittgenstein’s argument on rule-following as a decisive clarification of the general idea of social practices. Second, I criticize Brandom’s narrow Kantian framework, explaining why it prevents us from understanding Wittgenstein’s conception of rules and concepts, and, therefore, of the very normativity of concepts. In light of the distinction between two kinds of conceptual norms, empirical and grammatical, I finally show, through a reading of On certainty, that the function assigned by Wittgenstein to social practices is to account for the conditions of possibility of conceptual contentfullness as expressed in rational activity. (shrink)

Human beings engage works of the arts in many different ways: they sing songs while working, they kiss icons, they create and dedicate memorials. Yet almost all philosophers of art of the modern period have ignored this variety and focused entirely on just one mode of engagement, namely, disinterested attention. Nicholas Wolterstorff asks why this might be, and proposes that almost all philosophers have accepted the grand narrative concerning art in the modern world. It is generally agreed that in the (...) early modern period, members of the middle class in Western Europe increasingly engaged works of the arts as objects of disinterested attention. The grand narrative claims that this change represented the arts coming into their own, and that works of art, so engaged, are socially other and transcendent. Wolterstorff rejects this claim, and offers an alternative framework for thinking about the arts. Central to his alternative framework are the idea of the arts as social practices and the idea of works of the arts as having different meaning in different practices. (shrink)

This book addresses key topics in social theory such as the basic structures of social life, the character of human activity, and the nature of individuality. Drawing on the work of Wittgenstein, the author develops an account of social existence that argues that social practices are the fundamental phenomenon in social life. This approach offers insight into the social formation of individuals, surpassing and critiquing the existing practice theories of Bourdieu, Giddens, Lyotard and (...) Oakeshott. In bringing Wittgenstein's work to bear on issues of social theory the book shows the relevance of his work to a body of thought to which it has never been applied. The book will be of particular interest to philosophers of the social sciences, a wide range of social theorists in political science and sociology, as well as some literary theorists. (shrink)

Kinship terminologies are basic cognitive semantic systems that all human societies use for organizing kin relations. Diversity in kinship systems and their categories is substantial, but constrained. Rácz, Passmore, and Jordan explore hypotheses about such constraints from learning theories and social pressures, testing the impact of a community‐size driven learning bottleneck against the social coordination demands of different kinds of marriage and resource systems.

The book integrates humans’ biological lives as animals with acculturation and interaction within diverse social worlds. Recent work in evolutionary biology, the social theory of practices, and cognition as embodied and enactive shows how aspects of human life often treated as social or cognitive are integrated “naturecultural” phenomena. Human evolution enables people’s varied biological development in practice-differentiated environments sustained by ongoing niche reconstruction. These naturecultural aspects of human life include language and other expressive repertoires; cultivated bodily (...) skills; differentiated practical and cultural domains and their associated settings and equipmental complexes; critical assessment of lives and practices; and power and resistance. This interdependent, practice-differentiated way of life explains how humans are accountable and responsive to diverse normative concerns. Our moral, social, practical, skillful, epistemic, conceptual, aesthetic, and other normative concerns are evolved, “two-dimensional” transformations of other animals’ one-dimensional biological success or failure in sustaining their lineages. These diverse normative concerns are not already-determinate norms, however. They indicate what is at issue and at stake in the ongoing development of various practices and their mutual interdependence, including how people express and reason about those issues discursively. Social power is thereby also a normative phenomenon, expressing how causal capacities and actions reconfigure the normative significance of other people’s situations. The book primarily addresses the biological significance of people’s situated involvement with one another. It nevertheless also highlights the social-ecological interdependence of people’s practice-differentiated ways of life with many non-human companion species, from microbial symbionts and pathogens to domesticated or commensal plants and animals. (shrink)

This article offers a definition of microaggressions that picks out a distinct injustice, and defines the injustice in question as structural. The article also argues that to be a relational egalitarian requires considering our social norms and social practices: the kinds of things that produce microaggressions and so structure socially unequal relations.

This book reports on cutting edge research concerning social practices. Merging perspectives from various disciplines, it discusses theoretical aspects of social behavior along with models to investigate them, and also presents key case studies. Further, it describes concepts related to habits, routines and rituals and examines important features of human action such as intentionality and choice, exploring the influence of specific social practices in different situations.

Theories of cognition and theories of social practices and institutions have often each separately acknowledged the relevance of the other; but seldom have there been consistent and sustained attempts to synthesize these two areas within one explanatory framework. This is precisely what my dissertation aims to remedy. I propose that certain recent developments and themes in philosophy of mind and cognitive science, when understood in the right way, can explain the emergence and dynamics of social practices (...) and institutions. Likewise, the view I construct explains how social practices and institutions shape the character of cognition of their constituent agents. Moreover, I explain both cognitive and social agency under the single explanatory framework provided by Dynamic Systems Theory. Drawing upon the phenomenological tradition, "embodied, "extended", "embedded", "enactive", and "ecological" approaches to cognition, as well as the conceptual resources of Dynamic Systems Theory, I construct a theory of agency that sees cognitive and social agents as far-from-equilibrium, open, recursively self-maintenant dynamic systems. Depending on the specifics of concrete circumstances, such systems, which I call "Dynamic Embodied Agents", may develop and possess emergent capacities for error-detection, flexible learning, normative behavior, representation, self-reflection, various modes of pattern-recognition, a temporal sense of self, and even moral responsibility. Some such systems are also sensitive to perceived social influences ; while reciprocally constituting and causally affecting them. (shrink)

The ethical features of citizenship in democratic societies have been explored from several perspectives. This account is based on the analysis of our condition as co-practitioners in civil society and aims to address the public role of religions and to include multiple forms of citizenship. Under conditions of pluralism, one’s involvement in cooperative practices is shaped and unsettled by the presence of co-practitioners who carry different self-understandings about the relationship between their beliefs and their social agency. Social (...) cooperation is threatened when these self-understandings come into conflict. The notion of postsecularism provides a valuable clue for better understanding this kind of conflict, thanks to its focus on how the self-understanding of religious and secular actors is affected by their co-implication in the same public space. Within this framework, I suggest that a reflective consideration of the practical cooperative relationships that ordinarily characterize our agency as actors of civil society may adequately ground a normative ethics of citizenship. This reflective awareness affects the self-understanding of both religious and secular citizens, and normatively points towards a disposition to cooperatively re-arrange and re-formulate one’s own beliefs and arguments in the light of the structural co-implication of one’s own belief with the beliefs of others. The basic duties of citizenship emerge from the implications of participating in a body of social practices that extends to different communities of practice at a local, national and global level. This ethics of citizenship is therefore not bound to membership in a specific political entity. (shrink)

The principal aim of this article is to examine the capacity of existential analytic to suggest alternatives to entrenched dichotomies and dilemmas in practice theory, and more generally, in social theory. In this regard, the doctrine of trans-subjective existentialism is developed. The underlying aim is to inform hermeneutic engagement with social practices’ potentiality-for-being in order to illuminate a possible existential ontology of practices. It is argued that the concept of chronotope should be central in this ontology. (...) Thus, the possibility of hermeneutic realism about social practices becomes open to scrutiny. (shrink)

Contrary to the popular assumption that linguistically mediated social practices constitute the normativity of action (Kiverstein and Rietveld, 2015; Rietveld, 2008a,b; Rietveld and Kiverstein, 2014), I argue that it is affective care for oneself and others that primarily constitutes this kind of normativity. I argue for my claim in two steps. First, using the method of cases I demonstrate that care accounts for the normativity of action, whereas social practices do not. Second, I show that a (...) social practice account of the normativity of action has unwillingly authoritarian consequences in the sense that humans act only normatively if they follow social rules. I suggest that these authoritarian consequences are the result of an uncritical phenomenology of action and the fuzzy use of “normative”. Accounting for the normativity of action with care entails a realistic picture of the struggle between what one cares for and often repressive social rules. (shrink)

The history of modern innovation is primarily that of the industrial research laboratory, but the demise of the independent inventor —like that of the entrepreneur —has been much exaggerated. Independent inventing, in fact, continues to flourish as a cultural and technical practice in the contemporary United States. There are, however, a number of structural and cultural impediments in the way of independent inventors who seek to translate their invention into a commercial innovation. By drawing a comparison with the art world, (...) this article explores these impediments and argues that their existence is revealing of the deep social embeddedness of the invention and innovation process. (shrink)

Between the 1970s and the 1980s social practices were the object of theoretical research in some areas of sociology and cultural anthropology, to meet the need to integrate structuralist, functionalist or Marxist objectivist theories of society by using more sensitive types of approach to social actors, who were viewed as subjects capable of individual decisions, actions and interpretations. In particular, the role of reflexion on social practices became more relevant in the critique of society as (...) an organic, unified whole, also stressing an alternative to liberal outlooks and describing society in the basic terms of relationships between individuals. Social practices are constituted by an organic set of base elements usually applicable also outside structured practices but assuming a peculiar network of relationships within them. This studies is an attempt to show the distinct traits that rationality criteria take while operating inside social, cooperative practices, also pointing to the consequences that this configuration has in the relationship between practictioners and institutions. (shrink)

This paper provides an account of social practices that reveals how they are constitutive of social agency, enable coordination around things of value, and are a site for social intervention. The social world, on this account, does not begin when psychologically sophisticated individuals interact to share knowledge or make plans. Instead, culture shapes agents to interpret and respond both to each other and the physical world around us. Practices shape us as we shape them. (...) This provides resources for understanding why social practices tend to be stable, but also reveals sites and opportunities for change. (shrink)

Articles by Lyn Horn and Alison Thompson highlight several points crucial to understanding how our theory figures in wider debates about social justice as well as the particular relevance of our theory for assessing the overall practice of public health (Horn, 2013; Thompson, 2013). We begin with these two articles, first to respond to and concur with many of their central points, and second to set the stage for dealing more efficiently with some points raised in the other articles.

This paper suggests that the stories that thoroughbred breeders tell about racehorse reproduction can contribute to an understanding of their ideas about relatedness between humans. It examines the thoroughbred pedigree as it is presented in the English sales catalogue as a locus of complex ideas about heredity, fertility, and procreation. It argues that resistance within the industry to new reproductive technologies, including artificial insemination, can be understood in terms of ideas about relatedness between horses and, by implication, between people.This paper (...) is based upon extensive participant observation conducted within the horseracing industry based in the town of Newmarket, England. (shrink)

In order to understand the economy in a wider sense we should conceive of the economy as a set of social practices. To conceive of a ‘practices-oriented’ foundation for our thinking about economy a...

In general, offers a good discussion of Dworkin's theory of interpretation. Postema is critically concerned with whether Dworkin commits himself to individualistic and privatistic sense of interpretation and how Dworkin articulates the logical independency of pre-interpretive paradigm instances or social facts which form the object of interpretation and the end which is interpretively posited in the act of interpretation. Criticisms, for the most part, appear to be compatible with Dworkin's overall theory and may simply be additional explication of the (...) character of interpretation. "There is nothing in Dworkin's meta-theory of interpretation of social practices that requires attention to the interpretive activities of fellow participants. Herein lies the strong "protestantism" of Dworkin's theory. Not only is each participant encouraged to take up the interpretive enterprise...but each individual participant also has access to the truth, as it were, about what the practice is and requires, though private interpretation of the practice-text. While Dworkin seems to recognize that the practice is common, he counsels participants to live as if each had a private understanding of his own." "It is problematic because it makes interpretation of social practices insufficiently practical, insufficiently intersubjective, and thus insufficiently political." Notes that the interpretive attitude when acting in a practice is relatively rare, usually becoming part of a practice is more like learning a discipline or technique. "[I]t may not be possible intelligibly to separate that point from the activies and rules in which it is expressed. The same meaning may, conceivably, be expressed in some other way, but this does not imply that the meaning is logically independent of the medium of expression." "That is, the behavior is logically separable from its interpretation only on pain of denying that the practice is common activity yielding common principles." "Often an agent may only come to understand his actions long after he has performed them, or may later come to see his actions in a very different light...First, on this view meaningful action is a primitive. Action is expressive of its meaning or purpose, but not resolvable into distinct behavior and purpose. But, since this purpose or meaning may not be fully or clearly articulated, interpretation can be seen as the activity of re-formulating and articulating it. Second, the 'meaning' of an action cannot be regarded as a private matter for the agent alone.". (shrink)

A collection of essays which explore aspects of the myriad relationships (meta-theoretical, conceptual, epistemic, institutional and normative) between law, values and social practices.

Energy has an ambivalent status in social theory, variously figuring as a driver or an outcome of social and institutional change, or as something that is woven into the fabric of society itself. In this article the authors consider the underlying models on which different approaches depend. One common strategy is to view energy as a resource base, the management and organization of which depends on various intersecting systems: political, economic and technological. This is not the only route (...) to take. The authors develop an alternative approach, viewing energy supply and energy demand as part of the ongoing reproduction of bundles and complexes of social practice. In articulating and comparing these two positions they show how social-theoretical commitments influence the ways in which problems like those of reducing carbon emissions are framed and addressed. Whereas theories of practice highlight basic questions about what energy is for, these issues are routinely and perhaps necessarily obscured by those who see energy as an abstract resource that structures or that is structured by a range of interlocking social systems. (shrink)

The Social Theory of Practices effectively criticized conceptions of social practices as rule-governed or regularity-exhibiting performances. Turner’s criticisms nevertheless overlook an alternative, "normative" conception of practices as constituted by the mutual accountability of their performances. Such a conception of practices also allows a more adequate understanding of normativity in terms of accountability to what is at issue and at stake in a practice. We can thereby understand linguistic practice and normative authority without having to (...) posit stable meanings, rules, norms, or presuppositions underlying the manifest diversity of social life. Key Words: normativity • practices • rules • language. (shrink)

© British Society of Aesthetics 2017. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the British Society of Aesthetics. All rights reserved. For Permissions, please email: [email protected] exists, according to Nicholas Wolterstorff in this deeply engaging and exemplary study, a Grand Narrative that runs through much of our thinking about art. That narrative, emerging from and solidified since the eighteenth century, is in essence that art is created for, and remains in museums and galleries as occasions for, abstract and transcendent (...) contemplation of a kind disconnected from life and from the rather messy social practices and embodied interactions that lie far beneath that lofty aesthetic realm. It is Wolterstorff’s chosen task here to identify that narrative, root it out, and rid us of it once and for all. He reports that his moment of realization that art needed... (shrink)

In this paper, I show how idealizations contribute to social activities in science, such as the recruitment of experts to a research project. These contributions have not been explicitly discussed by recent philosophical accounts of scientific idealization. These accounts have focused on how idealizations influence activities like scientific theorization, explanation, and modeling. Other accounts focus on how idealizations influence policy-making and science communication. I expand these accounts by exploring the uses of idealized phylogenetic trees in science. Trees are not (...) only useful for improving our understanding and public communication of evolutionary history, but they also help with the organization of laboratories and collaboration among scientists. Attending to the relation between idealizations and these social practices in science matters. It can help us understand why idealized models become entrenched and why certain social practices change over time. (shrink)

In discussion about basic theoretical approaches in a non-Cartesian psychology several candidates for a key concept were proposed, such as action, activity, relation, dialogue and discourse. None of these concepts, however, sufficiently grounds psychological theories of individual psychology in social practice. To accomplish this we need to conceptualize subjects as participants in structures of ongoing social practice. In this paper I argue why and address issues of subjectivity as encountered by persons in their participation in complex structures of (...) social practice. I introduce the concept of personal conduct of life and life-trajectory as elaborations of my theory. And I discuss this theoretical approach and show what is at stake in developing it by comparing it to similar approaches in the current literature on the person, self, and identity. (shrink)

In this essay I scrutinize the challenge Paul Hirst set to educational philosophers in rejecting rational autonomy as the central aim of education and proposing initiation into social practices instead. Although I disagree with some dimensions of Hirst’s argument, I find his main idea of utmost importance in answering some burning challenges of contemporary democratic education. Contrary to Hirst’s thinking, I argue that this theoretical development can be best done within the framework of philosophical pragmatism, on which appropriate (...) interpretations of the concepts of democracy, social practices and habits can be based. In this framework, it is also possible to preserve as educational ideals the pragmatist interpretations of the notions of rationality and autonomy. Based on my theoretical development relying both on early pragmatist and contemporary thinkers, I argue that education for democracy should start from the aim of providing children with emotionally rewarding experiences of participation, membership and belonging. (shrink)

Instances of natural beauty are widely regarded as counterexamples to practice-based theories of aesthetic value. They are not. To see that they are not, we require the correct account of natural beauty and the correct account of social practices.

The Dynamics of Social Practice -- Introducing Theories of Practice -- Materials and Resources -- Sequence and Structure -- Making and Breaking Links -- Material, Competence and Meaning -- Car-Driving: Elements and Linkages Making Links -- Breaking Links -- Elements Between Practices -- Standardization and Diversity -- Individual and Collective Careers -- The Life of Elements -- Modes of Circulation -- Transportation and Access: Material -- Abstraction, Reversal and Migration: Competence -- Association and Classification: Meaning -- Packing and (...) Unpacking -- Emergence, Disappearance and Persistence -- Recruitment, Defection and Reproduction -- First Encounters: Networks and Communities -- Capture and Commitment: Careers and Carriers -- Collapse and Transformation: The Dynamics of Defection -- Daily Paths, Life Paths and Dominant Projects -- Connections Between Practices -- Bundles and Complexes -- Collaboration and Competition -- Selection and Integration -- Coordinating Daily Life -- Circuits of Reproduction -- Monitoring Practices-as-Performances -- Monitoring Practices-as-Entities -- Cross-Referencing Practices-as-Performances -- Cross-Referencing Practices-as-Entities -- Aggregation -- Elements of Coordination -- Intersecting Circuits -- Representing the Dynamics of Social Practice -- Representing Elements and Practices -- Characterizing Circulation -- Competition, Transformation and Convergence -- Reproducing Elements, Practices and Relations between Them -- Time and Practice -- Space and Practice -- Dominant Projects and Power -- Promoting Transitions in Practice -- Climate Change and Behaviour Change -- Basis of Action -- Processes of Change -- Positioning Policy -- Transferable Lessons -- Practice Theory and Climate Change Policy -- Configuring Elements of Practice -- Configuring Relations between Practices -- Configuring Careers: Carriers and Practices -- Configuring Connections -- Practice Oriented Policy Making. (shrink)

Social reality is configured and permanently re-configured from the meaning societies give to the world. From these meanings, people shape their social order; their ways of being, doing, represent in the world, organizing in this framework their daily lives. It is established as a social practice as far as it acquires enough roots, significance and objectification to give a transformative sense to its social actors and their environment. The purpose of this article is to question some (...) perspectives from which social practice has been set up, departing decisively from the functional dimension, showing the power of the concept of social practice in the human configuration as an expression of humanity from the social imaginary. The article analyses some trends in social practice, seeking to establish a synthesis as an expression of humanity; it confronts theories and support its proposal in the logic of social imaginary to overcome the practice as mere activity and place it as socio-historical and psychosomatic stage. La realidad social se configura y re-configura permanentemente a partir del sentido que las sociedades dan al mundo. Desde estas significaciones las personas configuran su orden social; sus formas de ser, hacer, representar en el mundo, organizando en este marco su vida cotidiana. Ella se establece como práctica social en la medida que adquiere el suficiente arraigo, significación y objetivación que les da un sentido transformador a sus actores sociales y su entorno. El objeto del presente artículo es abordar algunas perspectivas desde las cuales se ha configurado la práctica social, que se salen decididamente de la dimensión meramente funcional, y que evidencian la potencia de este concepto en la configuración de seres humanos como expresión de humanidad desde los imaginarios sociales. En el texto se propone un análisis de algunas tendencias de la práctica social buscando establecer una síntesis de consideraciones por las cuales esta adquiere una dimensión como expresión de humanidad; confronta teorías que la apoyan y soporta su propuesta en la lógica de los imaginarios sociales para superar la práctica como mera actividad y situarla como escenario socio-histórico y psicosomático. (shrink)

Allen Buchanan’s ‘The Heart of Human Rights’ addresses the moral justification of the international legal human rights system. Buchanan identifies two functions of the ILHRS: a well-being function and a status egalitarian function. Because Buchanan assumes that the well-being function is sufficientarian, he augments it with a status egalitarian function. However, if the well-being function is utilitarian or prioritarian, there is no need for a separate status egalitarian function, because the status egalitarian function can be subsumed by the utilitarian or (...) prioritarian well-being function. (shrink)

Agent-regret seems to give rise to a philosophical puzzle. If we grant that we are not morally responsible for consequences outside our control (the ‘Standard View’), then agent-regret—which involves self-reproach and a desire to make amends for consequences outside one’s control—appears rationally indefensible. But despite its apparent indefensibility, agent-regret still seems like a reasonable response to bad moral luck. I argue here that the puzzle can be resolved if we appreciate the role that agent-regret plays in a larger social (...) practice that helps us deal with bad moral luck. That agent-regret is a component in a social practice limits the questions that we can reasonably ask about it. While we can ask whether an experience of agent-regret is rational given the norms of this practice, we cannot ask the question that motivates the puzzle of agent-regret, viz. whether agent-regret is rationally defensible according to the Standard View. (shrink)

Practices – specific, recurrent types of human action and activity – are perhaps the most fundamental "building blocks" of social reality. This book argues that the detailed empirical study of practices is essential to effective social-scientific inquiry. It develops a philosophical infrastructure for understanding human practices, and argues that practice theory should be the analytical centrepiece of social theory and the philosophy of the social sciences. -/- What would social scientists’ research look (...) like if they took these insights seriously? To answer this question, the book offers an analytical framework to guide empirical research on practices in different times and places. The author explores how practices can be identified, characterised and explained, how they function in concrete contexts and how they might change over time and space. -/- The Constitution of Social Practices lies at the intersection of philosophy, social theory, cultural theory and the social sciences. It is essential reading for scholars in social theory and the philosophy of social science, as well as the broad range of researchers and students across the social sciences and humanities whose work stands to benefit from serious consideration of practices. (shrink)

It is often taken for granted that Paul Hirst’s switch from emphasis on liberal education to a social practices view of education is a radical one. This depends on how we understand the relation between the two views. From the perspective of a ‘weak’ interpretation I argue that Hirst’s later position differs little from his earlier one in the light both of the relation between the forms of knowledge and social practices, and of the rationalistic character (...) of Hirst’s conception of social practices in their connection with education. (shrink)

Glenn Langford; Teaching as a Social Practice: a reply to S. B. Brooke-Norris, Journal of Philosophy of Education, Volume 20, Issue 2, 30 May 2006, Pages 235–24.

Scholars of Late Antiquity have explored rhetorical constructions of the Christian life from many different angles, yet they have not done so in the context of public bathing culture. This article explores the polyvalent ways in which baths and bathing culture were used in rhetorical constructions of the Christian life in Late Antiquity, and how, in turn, this discourse structured Christian communities ideologically and affected the attitudes and practices of the laity. Since bathing culture was intimately associated with the (...) Roman body, self, and personal appearance, it was implicated in rigorist Christian discourse quite commonly. Ultimately, this article demonstrates that Late Antique Christians, especially rigorists, wrote about baths and bathing because it was an important element in constructing a framework for an idealized Christian life and maintaining meaningful divisions within the Christian oikoumene based on ascetic practices and spirituality. But these writings should not be taken as an accurate reflection of social practice or mentalities concerning bathing in Late Antiquity, although certain changes, which reflect the importance of the ideal among the laity, are notable. In the end, Late Antique Christians emerge here as quite Roman in the manner in which they cared for their bodies, personal appearance, and health. And public bathing culture allows us to glimpse the rich social mosaic of Late Antiquity vividly. (shrink)

In some views, knowledge cannot exist except against the background of certain social practices. Thus, in Davidson's view, there are no beliefs, and thus no knowledge, except in creatures that use and interpret language. In other views, such as Brandom's, belief, and thus knowledge, cannot exist except in creatures that have a social practice of giving and asking for reasons. Finally, there are views in which it is possible to have beliefs without social practices, but (...) it is not possible to have justified beliefs, and hence knowledge, without some relevant social practice, such as holding individuals responsible for the beliefs they have. These views are examined in detail. It is argued that knowledge does not require social practices of any sort whatsoever. (shrink)

Combating homophobia, racism, sexism, and other forms of discrimination and violence in our society requires more than just focusing on the overt acts of prejudiced and abusive individuals. The very intelligibility of such acts, in fact, depends upon a background of shared beliefs, attitudes, and behaviors that together form the context of social practices in which these acts come to have the meaning they do. This book, inspired by Wittgenstein as well as feminist and critical race theory, shines (...) a critical light on this background in order to show that we all share more responsibility for the persistence of oppressive social practices than we commonly suppose—or than traditional moral theories that connect responsibility just with the actions, rights, and liberties of individuals would lead us to believe. First sketching a nonessentialist view of rationality, and emphasizing the role of power relations, Peg O’Connor then examines in subsequent chapters the relationship between a variety of "foreground" actions and "background" practices: burnings of African American churches, hate speech, child sexual abuse, coming out as a gay or lesbian teenager, and racial integration of public and private spaces. These examples serve to illuminate when our "language games" reinforce oppression and when they allow possibilities for resistance. Attending to the background, O’Connor argues, can give us insight into ways of transforming the nature and meaning of foreground actions. (shrink)

Research in multi-agent systems typically assumes a regulative model of social practice. This model starts with agents who are already capable of acting autonomously to further their individual ends. A social practice, according to this view, is a way of achieving coordination between multiple agents by restricting the set of actions available. For example, in a world containing cars but no driving regulations, agents are free to drive on either side of the road. To prevent collisions, we introduce (...) driving regulations, insisting that everyone drives on the left hand side of the road. We accept this limitation on our freedom because it lowers the probability of a collision. -/- This paper describes AI systems that are based on the constitutive view of social practice. According to this alternative view, there are certain actions that are only available to the agent because he is participating in a practice of a certain sort. For example, you can swing a peculiarly shaped piece of wood without participating in any particular practice - but this action will only constitute a strike if you are participating in a game of baseball. I can raise my hand whenever I like, but this only counts as voting for the motion within the institution of voting. But not all the examples are from frivolous, optional or institutional activities. Sellars and Brandom argue that even the fundamental act of assertion is only possible within the context of a particular social practice: the Game of Giving and Asking for Reasons. -/- The constitutive view, which is familiar to philosophers, is relatively unknown within the AI community. -/- The central aim of this paper is to show how the constitutive view of practice can be put to use in AI applications. (shrink)

In this paper, I argue that principles of justice, contrary to what John Rawls and Thomas Nagel believe, do apply transnationally. I start with a debate about the proper scope of justice and defend the view according to which social practices, apart from the structure of the state, ought to be included in the purview of justice. However, I hold that there is no need to include individual behaviour, alongside social practices, opposing G. A. Cohen’s view (...) on this matter and agreeing with Aaron James. I then argue for a relational account of equality, understood as a central principle of justice, whose application is feasible at the transnational level. Finally, I briefly discuss two examples of international social practices that could (and in my view ought to) be assessed in terms of social justice and respond to two objections to my position. -/- . (shrink)

In the framework of the current revival of Wittgenstein’s later philosophy as well as American pragmatism, social practices are seen as determining the conceptual content of our beliefs. This position amounts to an inferential semantics with inferential relations supervening on social norms and these norms, in turn, supervening on normative attitudes. The paper elaborates on the distinction between social practices and social behaviour. Three conceptions of social practices are considered: (1) social (...) practices as being reducible to social behaviour; (2) social norms as constituting some sort of a link between physical and intentional states because the normative sphere has a wider scope than the conceptual sphere; and (3) the self-sufficiency of social practices in the sense that the normative and the conceptual sphere are identical and selfcontained. Key words: social practices, norms, beliefs, social behaviour.. (shrink)

In his work, Jules Coleman has held that the rule of recognition, if conceived of as a shared cooperative activity, should be the gateway through which to incorporate moral constraints on the content of law. This analysis, however, leaves unanswered two important questions. For one thing, we do not know when or even why morality becomes a criterion of legality. And, for another thing, we still do not know what conception of morality it is that we are dealing with. In (...) this article, we will attempt to clarify in greater depth what relations there are between the social practice of law and morality. We will thus see how the cooperative nature of social practices imbues law with a moral force, and how this makes it possible to establish a "weak" connection between law and morality: To see this, we will need to single out some basic features of cooperative social practices, thus setting out a suitable framework for the view just mentioned. (shrink)