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individual practical understanding; they are partly autonomous actors (see Rammert 2008;
Thevenot 2002, 69). They have the ability to give meaning to their thinking and action (Jonas
2009, 18). The meaning of a practice is given by the practice itself (practice specific) and by
the actor (actor specific sense), however, the practice itself exists independent from the actor.
From this perspective, practical understanding does not mean that a rational actor holds a
normative meaning to action, but steers the action by “conferring meaning” on it (Jonas
2009, 3).
3.5 Social practices
Based on the above-introduced dimensions, which are from and contribute to social
practices, in this section we synthesize and re-conceptualize this theory from the perspective
of social practices and their key characteristics.
First, a social practice can be described as a routinized, and physical performance (see
Rasche and Chia 2009), or a spatially dispersed nexus or pattern of physical activities and
observations on these activities (Schatzki 1996, 89). Social practices are “bodily-mental
routines” (Reckwitz, 2002b, 256). These practices, or bundles of practices, are not
homogeneous, but full of contradictions. From the perspective of systems theory, we talk
about open, complex systems (Berkes et al. 2003) that are in a permanent process of
reformulation, while temporarily static (routined habits). Practices exist independent of
individuals, and constitute rules and resources. Social practices lead to material
consequences and embodiment. There is always a cognitive-mental dimension
'participating' in these practices, but the majority of the practice theorists agree that social
practices assume a leading position.
Second, practices are “ordered across space and time” (Giddens 1984, 2). They produce new
social space through practices, as individuals become member of this space. They assume
and practice rules and resources (e.g., any type of power) that exist independent of each
individual (Bourdieu 1989). The site in which actors “perform” prefigures the acting. But
actors and actants create a network of orders and practices (Schatzki 2002, 63) that is related
to specific characteristics of sites. Practice also entails a specific conceptualization of time in
which it is structured; and, each actor carries an individual interpretation and practice over
time.
Third, practices are contextualized in social fields. Social fields are more or less
differentiated and institutionalized concepts of complexes and networks of social practices
and cultural discourses (Reckwitz 2004). A field is a common space of knowledge in which
specific practices are legitimated or not; it is a “playground” in which actors become
socialized to certain rules and resources and in which actors assume positions and try to
optimize their social resources (Bourdieu 1993). Any practice and any thing also embody
morality or immorality (Jelsma 2006, 222), i.e., fixed in rules, laws or regulations or
culturally embedded as a common sense. 7
Fourth, practices can be characterized as having different features. Those which arise in
different contexts, but which always are more or less in the same form, are described as
dispersed (following rules, imagining, describing) (Schatzki et al. 1996, 98). They contrast
7 For example in organic agriculture the threat of nature through pesticides is interpreted as immoral,
something that is excluded by their regulations. Acting with pesticides is an embodied social practice in
non-organic farms and for those farmers under certain circumstances not immoral. In contrast, it
“protects” against a threat.
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