Outline of a Theory of Practice.
About: This article is published in Contemporary Sociology.The article was published on 1980-03-01. It has received 14683 citations till now. The article focuses on the topics: Practice theory.
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TL;DR: The authors revisited the Wisconsin model of status attainment from a life course developmental perspective, investigating the process of expectation formation back to the elementary grades yields insights not evident when analyses are limited to the high school years.
Abstract: This study revisits the Wisconsin model of status attainment from a life course developmental perspective. Fixed-effects regression analyses lend strong support to the Wisconsin framework's core proposition that academic performance and significant others' influence shape educational expectations. However, investigating the process of expectation formation back to the elementary grades yields insights not evident when analyses are limited to the high school years: (1. many youth consistently expect to attend college from as early as fourth grade; (2. the expectations of middle- and low-SES youth are less stable, and across years the preponderance of their exposure to socialization influences mitigates against sustained college ambitions; (3. long-term stable expectations are more efficacious in forecasting college enrollment than are changing, volatile expectations. As anticipated in the Wisconsin framework, family-and school-based socialization processes indeed contribute to social reproduction through children's educational expectations, but the process starts much earlier and includes dynamics outside the scope of the original status attainment studies.
183Â citations
TL;DR: The multilevel perspective and social practice theory have emerged as competing approaches for understanding the complexity of sociotechnical change as mentioned in this paper, and the relationship between these two diff erent camps has, on occasions, been antagonistic, but they are not mutually exclusive.
Abstract: The multilevel perspective and social practice theory have emerged as competing approaches for understanding the complexity of sociotechnical change. The relationship between these two diff erent camps has, on occasions, been antagonistic, but we argue that they are not mutually exclusive. Indeed, through empirical analysis of two diff erent case studies of sustainability innovation, we show that analyses that adopt only one of these theoretical lenses risk blindness to critical innovation dynamics. In particular, we identify various points of intersection between regimes and practices that can serve to prevent (or potentially facilitate) sustainability transitions. We conclude by suggesting some possible directions for further research that place these crossovers and intersections at the centre of analyses.
183Â citations
01 Jan 2001
183Â citations
TL;DR: The rise of "the body" to the status of a primary category of social and cultural theory has been one of the most salient aspects of the development of postmodern forms of cultural theory over the past two decades as mentioned in this paper.
Abstract: The meteoric rise of "the body" to the status of a primary category of social and cultural theory, replacing more collective categories of social and cultural understanding like "society" and "culture" themselves, has been one of the most salient aspects of the development of postmodern forms of cultural theory over the past two decades. The reasons for this turn to the body have remained shrouded in confusion despite the voluminous discussion it has occasioned. Even some of the main exemplars and partisans of the new body focus have been at a loss to account for it. Martin, for example, suggests that the body has come so prominently into focus because a new body, suitable to the postmodern era of "flexible accumulation," is now replacing the old, familiar body of the previous capitalist era of Fordist mass production (Martin 1992). This formulation, however, merely exemplifies the problem it sets out to solve. Why do we suddenly find it appropriate to speak of a new regime of social production in terms of a unique body it supposedly brings into being? Why did not social thinkers, cultural theorists, or just ordinary folks of the previous Fordist era conceive of their own era in such terms? Like social thinkers of most, if not all, previous historical epochs and modes of production, they would doubtless have found the characterization of their era in terms of the appearance of a new body (as distinct from a new style of representing the body) bizarre and mystifying. Martin' s formulation therefore seems to me to be part of the problem rather than part of the solution. The dimensions of the problem are suggested by juxtaposing Martin's proposition with two very different passages that express ideas and attitudes central in the turn to the body in cultural theory. The first, appropriately enough, is from an interview with Foucault, in which he suggests that his reconception of cultural and social theory in terms of a focus on the body as the site of disci
183Â citations
TL;DR: Rampton et al. as discussed by the authors studied the problem of language crossing in a multiracial peer group and found that cross-language switching involves a distinct sense of movement across social or ethnic boundaries and it raises issues of legitimacy which participants need to negotiate in the course of their encounter.
Abstract: LANGUAGE CROSSING AND
THE PROBLEMATISATION OF ETHNICITY
AND SOCIALISATION
Ben Rampton
This paper begins in Section 1 by noting two processes that have been generally overlooked in sociolinguistics. Firstly, the prevailing approaches to ethnicity have tended to neglect the processes through which individuals can either adopt someone else's ethnicity, or get together with them and create a new one. Secondly, socialization in sociolinguistics is most commonly seen as enculturation into an ingroup, not as a process of learning to like and live with social and ethnic difference. To throw some light on these two processes, the paper turns its focus towards a practice it calls 'language crossing' ('code crossing', 'crossing').
Language crossing involves code alternation by people who are not accepted members of the group associated with the second language that they are using (code switching into varieties that are not generally thought to belong to them). This kind of switching involves a distinct sense of movement across social or ethnic boundaries and it raises issues of legitimacy which, in one way or another, participants need to negotiate in the course of their encounter. A fuller account of the intricate dialectic between language, peer group belonging and ethnic otherness that lies at the heart of language crossing emerges as the paper proceeds. After some methodological preliminaries (Section 2) and an outline of some of the ways in which the multiracial peer group I studied can be considered a community (Section 3), the empirical description of crossing itself begins with an initial emphasis on the way that crossing was integrated with what was shared in peer group culture (Section 4). The following section (Section 5) turns to the way in which crossing processed ethnic division and race stratification within the peer group, and this is further elaborated in the discussion of socialisation in Section 6. Section 7 contains a conclusion which briefly links crossing's treatment of ethnicity with Bourdieu's discussion of doxa, orthodoxv and heretical discourse.
183Â citations