Theory of practice in the version of Theodor Schatzki

Abstract

The article is devoted to the features of the conceptual vocabulary of the theory of practices according to the version of T. Schatzki. The study showed that practical-theoretical approaches distinguish themselves from ontological individualism, for which social phenomena are constellations of individual activities. Practices are treated as organized activities of many people (and not the activities of individuals); human actions, thoughts, motives, identities are formed under the influence of involvement in practices and should be considered in conjunction with the context of the practices. The study emphasized the importance of practical knowledge, corporality, materiality and analyzed the definition of the «practice» concept as an open, dispersed spatio-temporal nexus of doings&sayings, differences in disperse and integrative practices, concepts of «practice organizers» (practical understanding, rules, teleoaffective structures, generalized understanding). Material components, the external context of practice is explained by the term «practice-arrangement bundle». In order to explain the mechanisms of the formation of bundles of practices and arrangements, Schatzki reveals five types of relations: causality, prefiguration, constitution, intentionality, intelligibility. Binding of relations of all five types can be more or less dense, intensive. It is the concentrated density, the connection between practices and arrangements creates a bundlе. The reorientation of the analysis from the level of the individual, that is, the placement of values, motivations in the individual consciousness, to the level of practice as a constellation of elements, opens the new ways to studying cultural practices, optimizing the ways of their performance. The study showed the applicability of the Schatzki`s practice-theoretical concepts for the sociological study of cultural practices in a broad sense (as membership in a particular culture) and for applied analysis of practices in specific fields of culture (art, literature, media, leisure etc.).