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 argue that it is possible and indeed necessary to combine major elements of participatory or situated views of learning with elements of Deweyan embodied construction, together with the use of becoming as a metaphor to help understand learning more holistically.
Abstract: This paper identifies limitations within the current literature on understanding learning. Overcoming these limitations entails replacing dualist views of learning as either individual or social, by using a theory of learning cultures and a cultural theory of learning, which articulate with each other. To do this, we argue that it is possible and indeed necessary to combine major elements of participatory or situated views of learning with elements of Deweyan embodied construction. Bourdieu’s concepts of habitus and field are used to achieve this purpose, together with the use of ‘becoming’ as a metaphor to help understand learning more holistically. This theorizing has a predominantly heuristic purpose, and we argue that it enables researchers to better explain data. We also suggest that a cultural approach of the sort proposed here leads toward the asking of better questions about learning and its improvement and has high practical significance.
399 citations
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors examine the fundamental categories of geographical thought: region, locality, and place, the keywords in geographical discourse during the 1980s, and a reinterpretati on of the concept of region as a sociocultural and historical category is put forward.
Abstract: The author examines the fundamental categories of geographical thought: region, locality, and place, the keywords in geographical discourse during the 1980s. The relation of these categories to the sociocultural context and the everyday practices of individuals is discussed, and a reinterpretati on of the concept of region as a sociocultural and historical category is put forward. The region is comprehended as a historically contingent process whose institutionalisation consists of four stages: the development of territorial, symbolic, and institutional shape and its establishment as an entity in the regional system and social consciousness of the society. During the institutionalisation process a region becomes an established entity—with a specific regional identity—which is acknowledged in different spheres of social action and consciousness and which is continually reproduced in individual and institutional practices. The constitution of the local or regional consciousness of individuals is interpreted through the concept of place, which refers to personal experience and meanings contained in personal life-histories. These concepts together promote an understanding of how regions can be created and reproduced as part of the regional transformation of society and how individuals are contextualised into this process by reproducing region-specific structures of expectations. Generation is suggested as a mediating category for comprehending the relations between region and place.
398 citations
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors present the state of the art of research on management paradoxes and then explain four regularities surfaced in the literature on this topic, and conclude by arguing that taking these regularities as a whole allows them to suggest a new perspective on paradoxes - one with a positive regard for the copresence of opposites but that takes seriously the potential relationship between these.
Abstract: Paradox is gaining more and more pervasiveness in and around organizations, thus increasing the need for an approach to management that allows both researchers and practitioners to address these paradoxes. We attempt to contribute to this project by suggesting a relational approach to paradoxes. To this aim, we first present the state of the art of research on management paradoxes and then explain four regularities surfaced in the literature on this topic. We conclude by arguing that taking these regularities as a whole allows us to suggest a new perspective on paradoxes - one with a positive regard for the co-presence of opposites but that takes seriously the potential relationship between these.
398 citations
TL;DR: In this article, the authors argue that power and politics provide the social energy that transforms the insights of individuals and groups into the institutions of an organization, and that different forms of power in organizations are connected to specific learning processes.
Abstract: We argue that power and politics provide the social energy that transforms the insights of individuals and groups into the institutions of an organization. Moreover, we propose that different forms of power in organizations are connected to specific learning processes—intuition is linked with discipline, interpretation with influence, integration with force, and institutionalization with domination—and that an examination of these different forms of power provides a basis for understanding why some insights become institutionalized while others do not.
397 citations
TL;DR: The authors discuss the relationship between the discourses of inclusion, humanitarianism, and equality which informed liberal policy at the turn of the century in colonial Southeast Asia and the exclusionary, discriminatory practices which were reactive to, coexisting with, and perhaps inherent in liberalism itself.
Abstract: This essay is concerned with the construction of colonial categories and national identities and with those people who ambiguously straddled, crossed, and threatened these imperial divides.1 It begins with a story about metissage (interracial unions) and the sorts of progeny to which it gave rise (referred to as metis, mixed bloods) in French Indochina at the turn of the century. It is a story with multiple versions about people whose cultural sensibilities, physical being, and political sentiments called into question the distinctions of difference which maintained the neat boundaries of colonial rule. Its plot and resolution defy the treatment of European nationalist impulses and colonial racist policies as discrete projects, since here it was in the conflation of racial category, sexual morality, cultural competence and national identity that the case was contested and politically charged. In a broader sense, it allows me to address one of the tensions of empire which this essay only begins to sketch: the relationship between the discourses of inclusion, humanitarianism, and equality which informed liberal policy at the turn of the century in colonial Southeast Asia and the exclusionary, discriminatory practices which were reactive to, coexistent with, and perhaps inherent in liberalism itself.2
397 citations