The Transformation to Organic: Insights from Practice Theory - Organic Food and Agriculture: New Trends and Developments in the Social Sciences - page 174

Rules stipulate how to engage different resources, how they are socially shared yet remain
anchored individually (Giddens 1992, 316). Two different types of rules can be identified:
those that are constitutive, or produce sense and significance, and are communicable; and,
those that are regulative because they limit or encourage action. Norms are reflected and
embedded in cognitive structures of knowledge (Reckwitz 2004, 315). With practice theory
the character of rules and norms is also a practical one. The reproduction of the social
practice (Giddens 1984, 21) involves a cognitive, conscious reflexivity (Collins 2000, 107);
“rules also emerge out of practices, and are often interpreted and incorporated into practices
in ways different from those originally intended” (Strengers 2010, 12, modified). Resources
can allocate, or have the power to change something, or they can be authoritative, or have
the ability to influence the acting of others.
Orders of knowledge are formed by social practices. In turn, they reproduce, reformulate
and modify practices, and empower or hinder acting. Orders of knowledge do not exist
without a social practice. They become relevant in the execution of a social practice and
these practices reproduce institutional orders (Giddens 1984). In the meantime, they support
a sense making identification and selection of social practices.
Structures are formed by materiality (e.g. things, artifacts), and they are also initiated
through cognitive-mental processes, which form orders of knowledge through discourses,
norms, rules or laws (see below). However, and this is the specific characteristic of practice
theory, structures always exist only within a context to any practice.

Medium of acting Institutional order

Rules
(shared
knowledge)

Foundation of
meaning,
communication

Constitutive
aspects

World views,
discourses, codes

Moral relation,
sanctions

Moral, legitimate
order, laws, norms

Regulative aspects

Resources
(tools)

Availability of
allocate resources

Material power of
arrangement

Economic
institutions

Availability of
authoritative
resources

Power over other
actors

Political institutions

Source: Westermayer (2007, 10, modified); Giddens (1984)
Table 2. Model of Acting based on Structuration

3.2 Materiality and embodiment
The concept of materiality and embodiment draws our attention to the materialization of the
social and the cultural in objects, the embodiment of practices, and the engagement with
things and technology and in our context also specifically with natural resource
management (Pali et al. 2011). In practice theory, things (e.g. artifacts, bodies or natural
objects) are re-conceptualized as social entities that contribute to the formation of practices
(Preda 1999, 349).
As Schatzki (1996) argues, materiality represents a constitutive element or resource of social
practices. To consider materiality conceptually means to consider natural objects and as well
as man-made artifacts, including characteristics e.g. smell, taste, odor, sound, form,
structure or function.