This book addresses key issues 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, while respecting the multiplicity and heterogeneity emphasized in recent social thought, offers new insight into the social constitution of individuals, surpassing and critiquing the existing practice theories of Bourdieu, Giddens, and Lyotard. The author thereby shows the relevance of Wittgenstein's work to a range of social theoretic issues to which it hitherto has not been applied. The book will be of particular interest to social and continental philosophers, philosophers of the social sciences, a wide range of social theorists in sociology and political science, as well as some literary theorists.

This book provides an exciting and diverse philosophical exploration of the role of practice and practices in human activity. It contains original essays and critiques of this philosophical and sociological attempt to move beyond current problematic ways of thinking in the humanities and social sciences. It will be useful across many disciplines, including philosophy, sociology, science, cultural theory, history and anthropology.

Social Change in a Material World offers a new, practice theoretical account of social change and its explanation. Extending the author's earlier account of social life, and drawing on general ideas about events, processes, and change, the book conceptualizes social changes as configurations of significant differences in bundles of practices and material arrangements. Illustrated with examples from the history of bourbon distillation and the formation and evolution of digitally-mediated associations in contemporary life, the book argues that chains of activity combine with material events and processes to cause social changes. The book thereby stresses the significance of the material dimension of society for the constitution, determination, and explanation of social phenomena, as well as the types of space needed to understand them. The book also challenges the explanatory significance of such key phenomena as power, dependence, relations, mechanisms, and individual behavior. As such, it will appeal to sociologists, geographers, organization studies scholars, and others interested in social life and social change.

Contents:
I. Practices and Social Orders 1. Practices as Collective Action Barry Barnes 2. Human Practices and the Observability of the 'Macrosocial' Jeff Coulter 3. Practice Mind-ed Orders Theodore R. Schatzki 4. Pragmatic Regimes Governing the Engagement Laurent Thevenot 5. What Anchors Cultural Practices Ann Swidler
II. Inside Practices 6. Wittgenstein and the Priority of Practice David Bloor 7. What is Tacit Knowledge H.M. Collins 8, Throwing Out the Tacit Rule Book: Learning and Practices Stephen Turner 9. Ethnomethodology and the Logic of Practice Michael Lynch
III. Posthumanist Challenges 10. How Heidegger Defends the Possibility of a Correspondence Theory of Truth with Respect to the Entities of Natural Science Huber L. Dreyfus 11. Practice and Posthumanism: Social Theory and a History of Agency Andrew Pickering 12. Objectual Practice Karin Knorr Cetina 13. Two Concepts of Practices Joseph Rouse 14. Derridian Dispersion and Heideggerian Articulation: General Tendencies in the Practices that Govern Intelligibilty Charles Spinosa Bibilography Index

This book shows that a concept of activity timespace drawn from the work of Martin Heidegger provides new insights into the nature of activity, society, and history. Although the book is a work of theory, it has significant implications for the determination and course, not just of activity, but of sociohistorical change as well. Drawing on empirical examples, the book argues (1) that timespace is a key component of the overall space and time of social life, (2) that interwoven timespaces form an essential infrastructure of important social phenomena such as power, coordinated actions, social organizations, and social systems, and (3) that history encompasses constellations of indeterminate temporalspatial events. The latter conception of history in turn yields a propitious account of how the past exists in the present. In addition, because the concept of activity timespace highlights the teleological character of human action, the book contains an extensive defense of the teleological character of such allegedly ateleological forms of activity as emotional and ceremonial actions. Since, finally, the book's ideas about timespace and activity as an indeterminate event derive from an interpretation of Heidegger, the work furthers understanding of the relevance of his thought for social and historical theory. The book combines textual interpretation, theoretical argumentation, and empirical substantiation. Many of its empirical examples are taken from the Blue Grass Horse Country around Lexington, Kentucky, where the author resides.

Social Change in a Material World offers a new, practice theoretical account of social change and its explanation. Extending the author's earlier account of social life, and drawing on general ideas about events, processes, and change, the book conceptualizes social changes as configurations of significant differences in bundles of practices and material arrangements. Illustrated with examples from the history of bourbon distillation and the formation and evolution of digitally-mediated associations in contemporary life, the book argues that chains of activity combine with material events and processes to cause social changes. The book thereby stresses the significance of the material dimension of society for the constitution, determination, and explanation of social phenomena, as well as the types of space needed to understand them. The book also challenges the explanatory significance of such key phenomena as power, dependence, relations, mechanisms, and individual behavior. As such, it will appeal to sociologists, geographers, organization studies scholars, and others interested in social life and social change.

This book addresses key issues 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, while respecting the multiplicity and heterogeneity emphasized in recent social thought, offers new insight into the social constitution of individuals, surpassing and critiquing the existing practice theories of Bourdieu, Giddens, and Lyotard. The author thereby shows the relevance of Wittgenstein's work to a range of social theoretic issues to which it hitherto has not been applied. The book will be of particular interest to social and continental philosophers, philosophers of the social sciences, a wide range of social theorists in sociology and political science, as well as some literary theorists.

Inspired by Heidegger's concept of the clearing of being, and by Wittgenstein's ideas on human practice, Theodore Schatzki offers a novel approach to understanding the constitution and transformation of social life. Key to the account he develops here is the context in which social life unfolds--the "site of the social"--as a contingent and constantly metamorphosing mesh of practices and material orders. Schatzki's analysis reveals the advantages of this site ontology over the traditional individualist, holistic, and structuralist accounts that have dominated social theory since the mid-nineteenth century.

A special feature of the book is its development of the theoretical argument by sustained reference to two historical examples: the medicinal herb business of a Shaker village in the 1850s and contemporary day trading on the Nasdaq market. First focusing on the relative simplicity of Shaker life to illuminate basic ontological characteristics of the social site, Schatzki then uses the sharp contrast with the complex and dynamic practice of day trading to reveal what makes this approach useful as a general account of social existence. Along the way he provides new insights into many major issues in social theory, including the nature of social order, the significance of agency, the distinction between society and nature, the forms of social change, and how the social present affects its future.