The Social Theory of Practices: Tradition, Tacit Knowledge, and Presuppositions by Stephen Turner

Abstract

652 Book Reviews TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE The Social Theory ofPractices: Tradition, Tacit Knowledge, and Presupposi­ tions. By Stephen Turner. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994. Pp. x+145; notes, index. $39.95 (cloth); $14.95 (paper). Stephen Turner has written a dense and well argued book. It is a critical philosopher’s deconstruction of a whole tradition—perhaps the most central one—within the social sciences and humanities: the tradition that falls back on superindividual entities like “prac­ tice” and “culture” to explain habits and actions. Turner’s con­ tention is that “we cannot do anything to get behind the notion of practice, either in a causal or a justificatory way, because practices are not objects, but are rather explanatory constructions that solve specific problems of comparison and unmet expectations” (p. 123). For historians, it seems to be a troublesome book. If we were to accept its main argument, then we could no longer use cherished concepts like “custom,” “tradition,” “ Weltanschauung,” “para­ digm,” or “ideology” as explanatory tools. At best, we would be al­ lowed to apply them descriptively or metaphorically. According to Stephen Turner’s methodological individualism, the reason for these limitations is that it is impossible to prove the existence of any causal links between such structures and individual action. Ac­ cording to his nominalism, nothing meaningful can be said about collective phenomena. For example, it would be wrong to say that a person’s habits are governed by tradition; we could only say that “tradition” may help us heuristically to bring order into a dia­ chronic analysis of several people’s actions. On closer scrutiny, however, it might prove to be a constructively sobering book. Turner is certainly right in criticizing many scholars for playing around with structural concepts in an unreflective man­ ner. There are many historians, historians of technology among them, who succumb to the temptation to explain observed action by applying the above-mentioned concepts in a straightforward man­ ner. Think, for instance, about concepts like “technological style,” “engineering practice,” “technological paradigm,” “national tradi­ tion,” “technological culture,” or “tacit knowledge,” which are much too often given an imprecise status in our analyses. But even though Turner’s critique of sloppy scholarly practice should be taken seriously, it does seem to me that the history com­ munity need not accept the full implications of his main argument: “there are no collective objects to be accounted for . . . but only individual habits” (p. 116). If we were to follow Turner quite liter­ ally, then there would be very little space left for anything beyond mere description and causal explanation. Humanistic “skills” and “practices” (if we, after all, do believe that such creatures exist—at least individually), like interpretation and understanding, would have to go. “Traditions” like hermeneutics and Verstehen would be TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE Book Reviews 653 banned, as would intentional analysis. History as an academic field would have to be completely recast in a positivist direction. I believe that few of us would want such a development, but in order to avoid it, we should be careful with our use of explanatory concepts. Here, Turner is of great help—although he is better at criticizing others than at constructing his own positive alternative. Finally, I have to pose a question to the publisher: why bother printing a book on acid-free paper if the pages in the paper edition start falling apart immediately after the reader has opened it? Mikael Hard Dr. Hard is professor of the history of technology at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Trondheim. He recently published “Technology as Prac­ tice,” Social Studies of Science 24 (1994): 549-85. Work and Technology in HigherEducation: The Social Construction ofAca­ demic Computing. Edited by Mark A. Shields. Hillsdale, N.J.: Law­ rence Erlbaum Associates, 1995. Pp. viii+198; notes, index. $49.95 (cloth); $19.95 (paper). Work and Technology in Higher Education explores an enduring theme in the history of technology: the gap between the stated pur­ pose of a technology and the ways in which it is actually used. This gap is particularly visible in the history of educational computing, where the extravagant utopian claims that accompanied many com­ puterization projects contrast...