Urbanity as social practice

Abstract

I would like to thank the commenters for spending their time on critical and constructive responses to my paper ‘Performing towns’. The comments add valuable insights, knowledge, viewpoints and ideas, which significantly elucidate the possibilities as well as the limitations of approaching medieval urban communities from a social-practice theoretical perspective (SPT). The commenters have pointed at theoretical questions too superficially treated, the need for a more extensive knowledge base and, most importantly, the need for a broader discussion of the methodological and empirical consequences of an SPT approach in analysing everyday life in a Scandinavian urban community based on archaeological empirical data. Rather than giving individual feedback, I instead centre my reply around four topics that the commenters have raised and which relate closely to the paper's paramount issue and development potential.