Abstract In recent years, there has been an increase in the number of Catholic masses celebrated regularly in the Tridentine rite in Poland. Based on material from qualitative interviews and observation of celebrations, I describe why Polish Catholics from large cities find this liturgical form valuable. The analysis employs Theodore Schatzki’s schema for the organization of practices, comprising rules, practical understandings, and teleoaffective structures. Four main motivations were identified: valuing of a proven formula over spontaneity and innovation; the Tridentine Mass as a liturgical form facilitating individual contemplation; emphasis on the experience of the sacred; and a sense of freedom accompanying the adoption of a rigorous religious technique.

Abstract This essay problematizes Theodore Schatzki’s approach to practice within organizational studies, based on how Dasein and Lichtung , two concepts from Martin Heidegger’s philosophy, are appropriated in the interpretation of the ontology of social sites. The re-reading of the philosophical link between Schatzki and the post-Heideggerian movement facilitates the appropriation of Schatzki’s ontological approach in addressing today’s major social crises. This prominent social philosopher’s contributions have led the so-called ‘Practice Turn’ at the turn of the 21st century. This essay distinguishes the field of practices from practice-based studies and introduces notions from Heideggerian phenomenology, emphasizing its significance in understanding Theodore Schatzki’s ontology. The study problematizes the translation of the philosopher’s concepts into the context of organizational studies and highlights Schatzki’s practice study methodology based on its potential in the face of the complexity of today’s social crises.

Resumo O objetivo deste ensaio é problematizar a abordagem da prática de Theodore Schatzki nos Estudos Organizacionais a partir da maneira como dois conceitos da filosofia de Martin Heidegger, Dasein e Lichtung, são apropriados na interpretação da ontologia dos sites do social. A releitura do vínculo filosófico de Theodore Schatzki com o movimento pós-heideggeriano propicia a apropriação da abordagem ontológica dos sites no estudo do enfrentamento das maiores crises sociais da atualidade. Theodore Schatzki é um importante filósofo social, cujas contribuições encabeçam a chamada “Virada da Prática” (Practice Turn) na passagem para o século 21. Ao longo do trabalho, distinguimos o campo das práticas dos Estudos Baseados em Práticas, e introduzimos noções da fenomenologia heideggeriana e sua importância na compreensão da obra de Theodore Schatzki. Problematizamos a tradução dos conceitos do filósofo para o contexto dos Estudos Organizacionais e destacamos a metodologia de estudo das práticas de Theodore Schatzki a partir de suas potencialidades frente à complexidade das crises sociais em voga na contemporaneidade.

In this article, we argue that the resourcification of wind is based on a specific entanglement of different property objects - in particular wind, land and wind turbines - and property holders. We depart from an understanding of property as a social phenomenon that is enacted through social practices and thereby becomes relevant within an arrangement of different entities (human, non-human and material) by structuring the relations between these entities. We propose a practice theoretical approach based on Theodore Schatzki's concept of practice-arrangement constellations for understanding how property becomes relevant through socio-material relations which enable the resourcification of wind. Based on this theoretical approach, we show how different entities and practices bring about chains of property objects that enable the transformation of wind into electricity. With our conceptual considerations concerning property chains we hope to deepen the discussion around the significance of property in the resourcification of renewable energy sources.

While musical practice is more often than not considered through musical repertoires, genres, and traditions, in higher music education, musical practices are further narrowed down to music profession-specific, craft-based competences and learning outcomes. This narrow understanding encompasses the intertwined social and material dimensions that—according to practice theories—constitute and determine all practices. This study seeks a new understanding for practice-based, relational, professional education in context. By “practice in context,” we refer to Theodore Schatzki’s practice theory, in which practices are understood as organized, materially mediated, spatiotemporal nexuses of activities, and in which human coexistence is inherently tied to a context and “sites” of events and entities— site-ness . The empirical material consists of interviews of 10 bigenerational, experienced contemporary composers in Finland, including both males and females. By thinking composing practice with Schatzkian practice theory, three intertwined site-nesses are unveiled, comprising emerging locations (such as small-scale venues and local festivals); wider scenes or nonspatial sites (such as digital platforms and the festival scene); and extended realms (political, economical, educational, and policy). In this theory, various elements of practice-arrangement bundles constitute the site-ness and the complex practice plenum for composing. The site-ness thus becomes part of contemporary composers’ professional practice and higher music education which challenges the musical autonomy discourse which disentangles music from people and society. By posing a critique toward higher music education as a merely transmissive mediator of musical craft, this study seeks for a new understanding for practice-based, relational, “music professionalism in context.” It advances theoretical underpinnings of Schatzkian studies in the arts, by arguing that practice theory can bridge the individualistic past- and competence-oriented higher music education with the present- and future-oriented social understanding of musicians’ changing “practice in context.”

Abstract This article explores the question of human agency in military targeting. Targeting is one of the key drivers of war. When studied by academic disciplines, much interest has been devoted to the ethics and effects of military targeting. Less debated, but focused here, is the question of the conditions of human agency within military targeting. In the literature that does exist on this topic, there is a questioning of the traditional conception of human agency but at the same time a lack of closer conceptualisation of different kinds of articulations of human agency in the targeting process. In this article, we propose a recentring of human agency in critical scholarship on military targeting. With inspiration from Theodore Schatzki's work on ‘practice’, by analytically approaching targeting as a practice, and through various examples from Operation Iraqi Freedom, the article develops and illustrates a framework for the conceptualisation of human agencies in targeting. This framework distinguishes articulations of agency based on whether they furthered the (temporary) ordering of the targeting practice or challenged its internal organising elements. The study of military targeting is significant not least since the phenomenon is one of the key ‘engines’ and drivers of war's constant becoming.

Abstract Considering the contradictions in the structured and static approaches to the nation and national identity observed world-wide and fluid trans- approaches to language in applied linguistics and sociolinguistics, the paper explores how national identity is constructed and sustained nowadays, specifically in digital spaces both discursively and non-discursively. Based on the notion of ‘practice’ by Theodore Schatzki (2002), the paper focuses on the translingual practices in relation to national issues and events in Bangladesh drawn from digital spaces through a virtual ethnography. The findings in this paper show that translingual practices and national identity may apparently seem fluid in digital spaces. However, actors nurture beliefs, values, and ideologies in their translingual practices with reference to a territory-based notion of nation, religion, and national identity. Their discursive construction of nation and national identity also seems entangled with a non-discursive bundle of activities and symbolic and material artefacts within material arrangements of spaces. Verbal violence and terrorism accentuating nationalism get immediacy and are concretized in materially mediated semiotized spaces. With an immediate focus on spatial dynamics, while acknowledging the ethos of the post-structuralist approach to language, the paper, hence, indicates the necessity of transgressing the ‘logocentrism’ in language and identity research in applied linguistics and contributing to the recent development in the post-humanist applied linguistics.

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is primarily methodological. This paper aims to complement the novel sociological argument of Hendrik Vollmer’s paper on tacit coordination of accounting practices with a more familiar theory of accounting practice nexuses that has been stimulating an emerging stream of accounting research. The intention is to suggest some ways in which Vollmer’s ideas can be given traction, especially in field studies of accounting.Design/methodology/approachThis study uses Theodore Schatzki’s practice theory to explore some of the ways in which elements of tacit coordination might be researched in accounting field studies.FindingsTacit coordination can be understood as a background practice that could operate as a dispersed practice in Schatzki’s sense. A practice theory perspective on tacit coordination is suggestive of a number of ways of studying the meaningful cultural contexts as part of which accounting operates. It emphasises, in particular, the active nature of silent, tacit coordination; attending to general knowledge practical know-how, rules and teleoaffectivity as four determinants of practices as specified by Schatzki; and the materiality of coordination.Research limitations/implicationsIt has implications for field research insofar as it heightens the researcher’s awareness of tacit coordination as a potentially important set of practices and suggests a number of approaches for studying them. The main suggestions address some of the ways in which tacit coordination can be identified in field research.Originality/valueThis study reflects on the dispersed or integrated nature of tacit coordination practices in accounting.

The truth of screen. On the practice of screenshotting The article explores the phenomenon of the popularity of screenshots and the variety of contexts in which they are used. Screenshotting is treated as a social practice, drawing on the theory of practices, primarily Theodore Schatzki's approach. On its basis, two aspects of the creation of screenshots are highlighted: bodily-material and social framework. Analysis of both results in the description of screenshotitng as a dispersed practice and a key component of integrative practices, especially those that deal with proving the truth. Finally, those reflections lead to the postulate that screenshots should be given greater recognition in the social sciences as an important source of knowledge about everyday life on the internet.

The temporal dynamics of enterprise risk management

ABSTRACT In this essay, I explore a disagreement with my friend Theodore (Ted) Schatzki about learning. Specifically, the dispute is between views of learning presented in the (2017) book edited by Peter Grootenboer, Christine Edwards-Groves and Sarojni Choy, Practice Theory Perspectives on Pedagogy and Education: Praxis, diversity, and contestation, specifically Schatzki’s ‘Chapter 2: Practices and learning’ and Kemmis, Edwards-Groves, Lloyd, Grootenboer, Hardy and Wilkinson ‘Chapter 3: Learning as being ‘stirred in’ to practices’. Schatzki thinks practice theory can accept the ‘standard’ view of learning as the acquisition of knowledge. I aim to secure an alternative view: that practice theory offers a different conception of learning as happening in the reproduction (with variation) and transformation of practices, and the production of new practices – but the argument also leads me to conclude that learning itself is not a practice.

This article engages with how religion and economy relate to each other in faith-based businesses. It also elaborates on a recurrent idea in theological literature that reflections on different visions of time can advance theological analyses of the relationship between Christianity and capitalism. More specifically, this article brings results from an ethnographic study of two faith-based businesses into conversation with the ethicist Luke Bretherton’s presentation of different understandings of the relationship between Christianity and capitalism. Using Theodore Schatzki’s theory of timespace, the article examines how time and space are constituted in two small faith-based businesses that are part of the two networks Business as Mission (evangelical) and Economy of Communion (catholic) and how the different timespaces affect the religious-economic configurations in the two cases and with what moral implications. The overall findings suggest that the timespace in the Catholic business was characterized by struggling caused by a tension between certain ideals on how religion and economy should relate to each other on the one hand and how the practice evolved on the other hand. Furthermore, the timespace in the evangelical business was characterized by confidence, caused by the business having a rather distinct and achievable goal when it came to how they wanted to be different and how religion should relate to economy. There are, however, nuances and important resemblances between the cases that cannot be explained by the businesses’ confessional and theological affiliations. Rather, there seems to be something about the phenomenon of tension-filled and confident faith-based businesses that causes a drive in the practices towards the common good. After mapping the results of the empirical study, I discuss some contributions that I argue this study brings to Bretherton’s presentation of the relationship between Christianity and capitalism.

Abstract. This paper develops three analytical categories – range, supporting capacity, exigency/notability – to capture how supra-individual phenomena affect the people studied by empirical research. Researchers face a tension between constructivist and realist perspectives as the examined phenomena are simultaneously social constructs, in the way people perceive and understand them, and social facts in their consequences. Taking a critical perspective on the notion of large social phenomena – popularized by Theodore Schatzki – the paper develops an explorative terminology that aims to facilitate practice-oriented field research. Examples of empirical research on transition and degrowth initiatives illustrate how research subjects estimate the range of a phenomenon by trying to grasp whether they are in or out of its reach; the supportive capacity of a phenomenon by exploring how far it carries certain processes; and they experience the exigency of a phenomenon and ascribe a certain notability to it. Taken together, this terminology grasps the way phenomena are matters of concern, rather than matters of fact, for the research subjects.

This article discusses the role of practices and people’s participation in practices in conceptual accounts of organizing, learning, and organizational learning. Specifically, the discussion takes its point of departure in Jean Lave and Etienne Wenger’s account of learning as legitimate peripheral participation in practices, and Theodore Schatzki’s practice theory account of organizing and organizations. Both accounts center on the role of practices as people come to know, and as changes occur in social activity and organizational settings. However, the two accounts are based on different ontologies. Borrowing the terminology of John Dewey and Arthur Bentley, Lave and Wenger instantiate a substantivist, and ultimately individualist, ontology, whereas Schatzki’s event ontology is relational. It is argued that both ontologies have merits of their own, but the article seeks to integrate the two approaches by utilizing Ole Dreier’s notion of the life trajectories of persons across social practices. In this perspective, organizational learning shows when people’s life trajectories are affected by the bundles of social practices they engage with, and when the bundles of social practices are transformed by the way people enact the practices.

This article is mainly about two things: first, exploring the gatherings of studying in the university. And second, it is about describing new relations to understand studying practices beyond the normative interventions carried out inside learning environments (e.g. learning centers, libraries) and the clearly demarcated functions imposed to their practice. In a certain sense, common assumptions about study recognize its importance for achieving learning goals and its capacity to be designed according to pre-conceived intentions. However, in an attempt to reconsider our understanding about studying, the basic arguments here is that studying practices are constituted by open-ended activities that are guided by present interests to things that matter. Based on Theodore Schatzki’s practice theory, activities of studying were observed through scenes, where students and study-materiality join together in the event of studying at the Agora Learning Centre of KU Leuven in Belgium. Adopting a particular sensibility and narrative to describe and attend to actions and material entities entangled on studying activities, the article attempts to take a look at these activities beyond their functionality. Therefore, the main purpose of this research is to take a look at ‘what is going on’ in studying practices.

This contribution discusses two different but interlinked fields of research: political theories of sovereignty and citizenship, as well as conceptualizations of emerging alternative food movements. In drawing on James Tully’s practiced-based understanding of ‘diverse citizenship’, as well as on other selected theories of postmodern political thought, it focuses on the contested political nature of the food sovereignty movement, specifically with regard to the dynamics and actions that have brought it into being. In doing so, it conceives of citizenship as materializing on the basis of multi-faceted practices of ‘acting otherwise’, which stands in sharp contrast to a conceptualization of citizenship as an institutionalized status, as it is understood in the liberal tradition. In order to deepen and to sharpen this alternative approach, this contribution additionally draws on Theodore Schatzki’s practice theory, which, despite its rather apolitical character, makes it possible to conceive of political practices as emergent and situational phenomena that are closely connected to the quotidian practices of everyday life. The combination of these perspectives bears great potential for theoretical discussions on alternative food movements as well as for their empirical investigation, since it puts emphasis on the way how practitioners and advocates for food sovereignty disclose themselves in multifaceted struggles over the imposition and the challenging of the rules of social living together.

The objective of this paper is to understand how relationships between practices and emotions configure the organizational process of a circus, located in Montréal, Canada. We conduct a theoretical approach between the concepts of practices of the Michel de Certeau and organizational processes of Theodore Schatzki, discussing a policy approach to everyday life in organizations. We combine these discussions to debates about the political effects of emotions in social life. From an ethnographic study, we propose that the practices are built on the emotional politics of everyday life resulting in the production of social spaces hybrid in mobile organizational processes, such as the circus. Thus, it is possible to understand how organizational processes circus in the relationship between the practices that produce mobility and emotions which shape the social space, the result of a political struggle in the artistic field, showing the “passion for art” as a dimension of life collective of artists that organizes different practices in recognition of the circus as art in Canada.

Abstract. In Germany each year, more than 65 000 children are born prematurely as ‚preterm infants‘ (or ‚preemies‘). Some 4500 of these are born extremely premature. Despite being sites of enormous human suffering und huge financial costs, the places of treatment of these babies are almost non-existent in societal discourse. Therefore, the aim of this article is to understand this place, the so-called ‚NICUs‘ – Neonatal Intensive Care Units, places that seem isolated from the rest of society, but are tightly connected to it. In order to reach this aim, a ‚dense description‘ of a single NICU in Germany will be given, based on a stay of 5 months by the author. The underlying perspective of that dense description is the practice theoretical approach of social philosopher Theodore Schatzki. The description of the NICU shows that corporeality, materiality, and not least emotionality are important aspects of social phenomena. As will be seen, the underlying practice theory is a relational ontology that resists the urge to draw on micro-macro-dichotomies to understand these phenomena.

What future for collaborative consumption? A practice theoretical account

Abstract. The transformations of economic structures as well as of transportation and communication means have altered neighborhood-based interaction in the last decades. Therefore most urban studies argue that local neighborhoods have lost their function as places of sociability and solidarity. But if one looks at the more semipublic local contact sites and therein on a more superficial and fluid interactional level, interactions and ties among local residents do not seem to decrease in the same way as close and intimate ties have exceeded the neighborhood boundaries. This article thus examines the neighborhood-based interactions in one example of an important neighborhood space – a café – that demands different kinds of commitments. Practice theories thereby provide a particularly advantageous set of approaches to examine these rather spontaneous and loose micro-interactions. This is why this article ethnographically analyzes a café, as one of the important social neighborhood spaces. The article elaborates on Theodore Schatzki's (2010) and Elizabeth Shove's (2012) idea of practices as linked entities of material, competence, and meanings, coupled with Erving Goffman's conceptualization of public behavior (1959, 1963) regarding why local businesses represent locational material neighborhood settings for local micro-interactions (as social practices). Furthermore, the article addresses how these interactional practices lead to a sense of belonging and community for their carriers.