Social practice

About: Social practice is a research topic. Over the lifetime, 4878 publications have been published within this topic receiving 169425 citations.

Communities of Practice: Learning, Meaning, and Identity

Abstract: This book presents a theory of learning that starts with the assumption that engagement in social practice is the fundamental process by which we get to know what we know and by which we become who we are. The primary unit of analysis of this process is neither the individual nor social institutions, but the informal 'communities of practice' that people form as they pursue shared enterprises over time. To give a social account of learning, the theory explores in a systematic way the intersection of issues of community, social practice, meaning, and identity. The result is a broad framework for thinking about learning as a process of social participation. This ambitious but thoroughly accessible framework has relevance for the practitioner as well as the theoretician, presented with all the breadth, depth, and rigor necessary to address such a complex and yet profoundly human topic.

Language and Power

Abstract: 1. Introduction: critical language study. 2. Discourse as social practice. 3. Discourse and power. 4. Discourse, common sense and ideology. 5. Critical discourse analysis in practice: description. 6. Critical discourse analysis in practice: interpretation, explanation, and the position of the analyst. 7. Creativity and struggle in discourse: the discourse of Thatcherism. 8. Discourse in social change. 9. Critical language study and social emancipation: language education in the schools. 10. Language and power 2000. Bibliography. Index.

The Ritual Process : Structure and Anti-Structure

Abstract: In The Ritual Process: Structure and Anti-Structure, Victor Turner examines rituals of the Ndembu in Zambia and develops his now-famous concept of "Communitas". He characterises it as an absolute inter-human relation beyond any form of structure. The Ritual Process has acquired the status of a small classic since these lectures were first published in 1969. Turner demonstrates how the analysis of ritual behaviour and symbolism may be used as a key to understanding social structure and processes. He extends Van Gennep's notion of the "liminal phase" of rites of passage to a more general level, and applies it to gain understanding of a wide range of social phenomena. Once thought to be the "vestigial" organs of social conservatism, rituals are now seen as arenas in which social change may emerge and be absorbed into social practice. As Roger Abrahams writes in his foreword to the revised edition: "Turner argued from specific field data. His special eloquence resided in his ability to lay open a sub-Saharan African system of belief and practice in terms that took the reader beyond the exotic features of the group among whom he carried out his fieldwork, translating his experience into the terms of contemporary Western perceptions. Reflecting Turner's range of intellectual interests, the book emerged as exceptional and eccentric in many ways: yet it achieved its place within the intellectual world because it so successfully synthesized continental theory with the practices of ethnographic reports."

Knowledge and Organization: A Social-Practice Perspective

Abstract: While the recent focus on knowledge has undoubtedly benefited organizational studies, the literature still presents a sharply contrasting and even contradictory view of knowledge, which at times is described as "sticky" and at other times "leaky." This paper is written on the premise that there is more than a problem with metaphors at issue here, and more than accounts of different types of knowledge (such as "tacit" and "explicit") can readily explain. Rather, these contrary descriptions of knowledge reflect different, partial, and sometimes "balkanized" perspectives from which knowledge and organization are viewed. Taking the community of practice as a unifying unit of analysis for understanding knowledge in the firm, the paper suggests that often too much attention is paid to the idea of community, too little to the implications of practice. Practice, we suggest, creates epistemic differences among the communities within a firm, and the firm's advantage over the market lies in dynamically coordinating the knowledge produced by these communities despite such differences. In making this argument, we argue that analyses of systemic innovation should be extended to embrace all firms in a knowledge economy, not just the classically innovative. This extension will call for a transformation of conventional ideas coordination and of the trade-off between exploration and exploitation.

Gender and power : society, the person, and sexual politics

Abstract: Preface. 1. Some Facts in the Case. Part I: Theorising Gender. 2. Historical Roots of Contemporary Theory. 3. Current Frameworks. Part II: The Structure of Gender Relations. 4. The Body and Social Practice. 5. Main Structures: Labour, Power and Cathexis. 6. Gender Regimes and the Gender Order. 7. Historical Dynamic. Part III: Femininity and Masculinity. 8. Sexual Character. 9. The Mystery in Broad Daylight: Gender Formation and Psychoanalysis. 10. Personality as Practice. Part IV Sexual Politics. 11. Sexual Ideology. 12. Political Practice. 13. Present and Future.