What Makes Knowledge Relevant? A Practice-Theoretical Perspective

Understanding comfort and senses in social practice theory: Insights from a Danish field study

<h3>Background</h3> Rapid development and uptake of digital technologies have influenced sexual lives. As part of development research for the decennial British National Survey of Sexual Attitudes and Lifestyles (Natsal–4), we aimed to understand the practices of adults in Britain using digital technologies to meet sexual and romantic partners. <h3>Methods</h3> We conducted 40 semi-structured interviews with adults in Britain on the role digital technologies played in their sexual lives. Here we draw on the accounts of 22 of those who had direct experience of online partner seeking. Informed by Social Practice Theory, we developed thematic codes encompassing the materials, skills and meanings that constitute online partner-seeking as a social practice. <h3>Findings</h3> Online partner seeking is a social practice normalised in contemporary culture, enmeshed within broader online cultures of image presentation. It is associated with multiple goals and imbued with possibilities as well as risks. Material elements we identified related to the technology, its affordances, and how these shape interactions. We found that technological, interpersonal, and self-care skills were together required to seek and progress to various relationship forms and protect the self. Distinct linguistic, sexual, harm/damage limitation and exit strategies also drew on a range of skills. Participants reflected on how they presented themselves online, on their intentions, and on the skills required to ‘read’ situations and act authentically. <h3>Conclusion</h3> While online partner seeking has often been considered individualistic, outcomes can be read through a lens of Social Practice Theory. Successful partner selection, communication and avoidance of harm depend on a complex learned constellation of the skills, materials and meanings associated with dating choices. Our findings have potential to inform survey questionnaire design and effective, nuanced health promotion interventions which consider intersecting dimensions of this social practice to build skills, develop goals and assess strategies to respond to unwanted interaction.

In this paper, I put forward an argument that sustainability science can make objectively grounded normative claims about what courses of action society should pursue in order to achieve sustainability. From a survey of the philosophy of science, social theory and sustainability science literature, I put forward an approach to justifying these normative arguments. This approach builds on the insight that social theories are value-laden and that dominant and pervasive social practices find their justification in some social theory. The approach: (i) focuses on the analysis of concrete cases; (ii) paying attention to the social practices that produce environmental problems and the theories that support those practices; (iii) examines alternative theories, and (iv) justifies a normative position by identifying the most comprehensive theoretical understanding of the particular case. Although the approach focuses on the analysis of particular cases it does not rely on value relativism. Furthermore, while the focus is on the role of science in producing normative arguments about society’s trajectory, it maintains space for the inclusion of the values of the public in environmental decision-making. However, while this approach aims to provide a rational basis to normative positions, it does not presume that this will lead to social consensus on these issues.

Much social work theorization about social work with older people concentrates on service provision and practical and emotional support of older people and their informal caregivers. In this chapter, the author draws together elements of social work practice theory with policy directions and service development trends in work with older people. It argues that, as with other client groups, the biomedical lens limits our view of appropriate responses to the needs of older people. Social identity theory proposes that people maintain a positive self-identity by valuing characteristics of youthfulness and distinguishing them from assumed negative characteristics of old age. Social work practice with and social care services for older people must recognize and contest the social environment of ambivalence about ageing and devaluation of older people in personal relations and social structures. A tradition of radical and critical accounts of social work practice theory builds on critical social policy ideas.

Social practice theory offers valuable insights for public health research, particularly in understanding how health inequalities are sustained through everyday practices. A recent increase in social practice theory scholarship has focused on the development of flexible methodologies which allow for empirical investigations of social practices. This paper introduces a flexible, practice-based approach designed to address methodological challenges in studying interconnected practices, which we call a “method menu”. The method menu allows for the adaptable selection of data collection methods, including practice-based interviews, observations of practice spaces, and explorations of material and digital elements. The approach we outline also allows flexibility for the participants, by offering choice and control over engagement within the data collection process, with considerations of their preferences, availability and consent. Using a metaphorical menu structure, participants can engage in the research project and choose to commit to only a single interview or commit to multiple courses of data collection (i.e. interviews and home visit). The method menu facilitates modification of participation over time to address barriers to research participation. The method menu was developed and tested through research examining early childhood oral health practices within naturally living families. Developed using a social practice theory perspective, it facilitates the investigation of both individual performance of practices and their relational dynamics, particularly in contexts where traditional ethnographic methods or prolonged investigations may be constrained. Even where traditional ethnographic approaches are feasible, the method menu can offer researchers a way to undertake data collection that grants participants greater agency in determining their level of research engagement. The method menu responds to calls for methodological innovation within SPT research while acknowledging the complexities researchers may encounter within broader research fields.

In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, the Polish government decided to shut down all public and private institutions, including schools, from 12 March 2020. Since then, 4.58 million students from 24,000 schools have remained in their homes and practiced distance learning. Distance learning has greatly affected children’s social practices, including domestic, everyday, specialist, and cultural practices. This paper applies social practice theory, rooted in Schatzki’s ontological theory of practices, and Shove, Pantzar, and Watson’s structure of social practices to study the changes to migrant primary school children’s social practices during distance learning in Poland. The data are derived from a subsample of a larger qualitative study of the transnational transition processes of migrant children in Poland. This paper investigates how the COVID-19 lockdown and distance learning have prompted migrant primary school children to reflect on the transformation of traditional social practices and the value of school.

Mediated Discourse (MD) reports a longitudinal study of the development of a one-year-old child, focusing on a single, narrowly defined social practice – handing, or “the simple practice of giving an object to another person” (p. 12). In this book, R. Scollon proposes a framework of mediated discourse to address social (practice) theory, which was “badly in need of an ontogenetic view of social practice” (vii).Although Ron Scollon is an author of both books under review, the second differs from the first, theoretical, work in focusing on practical application. Professional communication in international settings (PCIIS) is an excellent book that is much needed by professionals, researchers, trainers, or anyone else involved in business or professional communication across cultural boundaries. Different from many other books on the same subject, its goal is to offer a method for effective communication, and it can be used as either a textbook or a reference.

Social theory and system dynamics practice

In this paper, we explore the relational dynamics of alcohol consumption by university students, drawing on qualitative interviews with fifty undergraduates in Victoria, Australia. We argue that university drinking is a social practice comprised of a bundle of activities that operate together to reinforce excessive consumption. Drawing on a distinct version of social practice theory, we conceptualise drinking as an organising principle of university social life with interacting elements – meanings, materials and competences. The meanings of drinking include cultural conventions, expectations and socially shared meanings that alcohol is central to student life. Materials of drinking include objects and infrastructures such as, beverage choice, drinking venues and mobile phones. Drinking competences include managing bodily effects of alcohol but also social relationships while consuming alcohol. The distinct social practice perspective we utilise can assist public health to address the interrelated dynamics of alcohol consumption as a social practice, with its own trajectory into which students are recruited and become carriers of the practice while at university.

Professional discourse (PD) has come under close scrutiny for the last two-to-three decades. The discipline termed ’professional discourse’ developed side by side with the related fields of organizational discourse, workplace discourse, institutional discourse, and more recently, corporate discourse, all related to or rather subservient to specific forms of communication. From the earliest studies and continuing today, communication-related studies have been interdisciplinary, drawing on sociology, psychology, anthropology, linguistics, and any discipline that could shed light on human behaviour in particular settings. It is the purpose of the present article to show the link between professional discourse and social practice and to link it to sociological theories. The study goes out from a presentation of PD (Gunnarson 1997), the differences between the terms ‘institutional discourse’ and ’professional discourse’ as proposed by Sarangi and Roberts (1999: 15-19), Koester’s definition of ’institutional discourse’, Gotti’s notion of ’specialist discourse’, Drew and Heritage’s (1992:3) notion of ’institutional talk’. The characteristics of PD are viewed in terms of the functions it may perfom and draw on Chiappini and Nickerson (1999), Linell (1998), Mertz (2007), and Kong (2014). Social practice and social practice theory, on the other hand, build on the tenets of Bourdieu (1989), Giddens (1984), Schatzki (2002), Reckwitz (2002), Jackson (2005) and Holtz (2014). While discourse, in general, has been viewed from the social structuration perspective by SFL and CDA scholars, the PD relationship to social practice followed the social constructionist appfoach. PD is explicated through the role discourse plays in professional socialization and identity creation (Kong 2014, Smith 2005). Other notions, such as Wenger’s (1998) ’community of practice’, ’shared repertoire’ are discussed in relation to the use of PD as well. Finally, possible directions for further research inquiry are put forward.

Contingent Spaces of Collective Action: Evoking Translocal Concerns

This chapter problematizes the dominant viewpoint of sustainable consumption as a personal and voluntary act by arguing that such a conceptualization makes individuals appear responsible for complex, systemic issues and then limits individuals to respond solely as consumers. We argue that environmental policy solutions based on this dominant conception are limited and we make a case for a more promising conceptualization of green consumption: the ‘social practice approach.’ Social practices analyze patterns of behavior rather than individual acts, recognizing that individual characteristics are in constant dialogue with structural arrangements. This chapter provides commentary on the limitations of the individualistic approach, an overview of how social practice theory is an improved conceptualization of sustainable consumption, and argues that social practice theory can rejuvenate environmental political discourse.

At the heart of Rebel Angels: Space and Sovereignty in Anglo-Saxon England is a fairly straightforward but undeniably compelling question—how did the story of the angel’s rebellion against God influence systems of power in early England? Jill Fitzgerald offers a comprehensive analysis of both Latin and Old English sources that draw on the angelic rebellion, including poetry, sermons, hagiography, letters, land grants, and charters. She argues that the angelic rebellion is used to justify social and religious hierarchies through appeals to the inheritance of spiritual and physical space. These appeals draw on the replacement doctrine, which held that humans were created to repopulate the space that angels once occupied. Fitzgerald states that the replacement doctrine “assumed a status of a dominant mythos or social theory, a way of crafting meaning for the Anglo-Saxons as a Christian community” (2). According to Fitzgerald, the early English viewed themselves as especially poised to inherit the territory left empty by the rebel angels. They saw their role in the divine hierarchy as one deeply reliant on obedience, in contrast to the faithless angels, and they applied the same rules to justify their sovereignty in physical space as well. By “tethering replacement principles” (3) to spiritual and political systems of power and beliefs, the English organized their world around ideals of compensation, justice, and restoration of what has been lost.Though John Milton’s Paradise Lost perhaps offers the most well-known literary depiction of the angelic rebellion and fall of Lucifer into hell, the story was featured in Old English texts with some frequency. In fact, for years scholars have floated the possibility that texts like the Old English Genesis inspired Milton’s own characterization of Lucifer’s expulsion and the establishment of the kingdom of hell. In addition to the Old English Genesis, the tale appears in poems such as Christ and Satan, Guthlac A, and Andreas, among others. In these poems, the story generally appears as reminder that order will be restored to the divine hierarchy, meaning that those who rebel against God are expelled and punished, while the faithful are rewarded and incorporated into heaven’s divine inheritance. The angelic rebellion also appears in early English exegetical writing, monastic letters, and sermons. Scholarship about the rebel angels in early England approaches the story almost exclusively through the lens of English Christianity and popular spiritual belief. What makes Fitzgerald’s intervention important is her holistic attention to the narrative, both inside and outside of direct spiritual contexts. By engaging with the interplay of historical and religious documents, Fitzgerald demonstrates how literature shaped English social and political practice, as well as how social and political practice shaped English literature. In other words, Fitzgerald examines the stakes of spiritual rebellion in the literary imaginary in order to interpret and discuss the social, legal, and political practices in early medieval England.Rebel Angels is organized by textual genre. The first portion of the book is grounded in historical and legal contexts, while the remainder of the book is dedicated to depictions of the rebel angels in literature. However, Fitzgerald is careful to avoid discussing texts in isolation. Instead, she deploys a combination of source study, material history, and literary analysis to foreground how text and social practice interact. In the introduction, Fitzgerald establishes the correlation between the angelic rebellion and spiritual and earthly territory. She builds largely on Henri Lefebvre’s The Production of Space (trans. Donald Nicholson Smith, Oxford: Blackwell, 1991) and Jacques Le Goff’s “Discorso di chiusura” (from Popoli e paesi nella cultura alltomedievale, Spoleto: Presso la sede del Centro, 1983), both of which explore the relationships between space, sovereignty, and power. She states that “cultures imagine themselves according to distinct spatial structures and organisations, whether those spaces are in their possession or simply desired and hoped for” (11). Fitzgerald argues that English depictions of the fall of the angels is unique in comparison to Irish or Scandinavian accounts because English authors are careful to point out how “at the moment of angelic creation, there are no pre-existing legal orders in place, only systems of obligation and reciprocity” (13). After the fall, however, it became necessary to establish formal commandments and laws, and to create humankind to repair the divine hierarchy following the loss of God’s subjects. In this way, the fall of the angels acts as a model for systems of power and governance, while also justifying the existence of those structures in the first place.The fall of the angels thus also operates as a sort of origin myth that frames English systems of power within a divinely ordered hierarchy. In chapter 1, “Lands Idle and Unused,” Fitzgerald explores how this origin story is inflected in legal discourses of land ownership, inheritance, and sovereignty. She discusses proems of land charters between the reigns of Edgar and Æthelred that reference the angelic rebellion before establishing the transfer or re-granting of property. Moreover, this chapter provides insight into the legal repercussions of rebellion and treachery alongside Old English poetic accounts of the angelic rebellion. Fitzgerald’s interest in mental and physical spaces left idel ond unnut (idle and unused), as the Genesis A-poet puts it, are especially interesting in this chapter, as is her discussion of English conceptions of homeland (eðel) as they relate to the occupation and control of land. Fitzgerald asserts that “the sin of the rebel angels was frequently understood as a psychological lapse with spatial consequences” (60), illustrating how intertwined mental and physical spaces were within English conceptions of sovereignty and inheritance in this life and the next.The second chapter, “The Anxiety of Inheritance,” extends this conversation to the Old English poem Genesis B, which characterizes Satan’s rebellion as an inability to accept limitations on his own power and territorial ambitions. As Fitzgerald puts it, Satan’s desire to build his own kingdom to rival God’s is a “breach of his social, spatial, and spiritual limitations” (74). Satan’s territorial overreach subverts the narrative of inheritance through obedience, which results in the denial of his own homeland. Fitzgerald also incorporates into this chapter a discussion of the angelic rebellion in Irish apocryphal traditions. She concludes that, while Irish sources tend to depict Satan as reacting to heavenly limitations, both mental and spatial, English writers “represent heaven as a place of unspecified limits and indeterminate boundaries” (83) before the angelic rebellion.The following chapter, “Rebel Clerics, Monastic Replacements,” does similar work, this time building on Bede’s concerns about monastic lands and secular canons. As stated in his letters, Bede viewed spiritual corruption as an echo of angelic rebellion, a characterization that inspired reformers in the late tenth century to compare their ecclesiastical rivals to rebel angels. Consequently, “the fall of the angels narrative became a prism through which to view and later filter the turbulent events of this era” (117). Fitzgerald draws on the “New Minster Charter,” which served as the official royal and religious response to the conflict of secular canons. The document opens with the story of the rebel angels and paints the secular clerics at Winchester as oppositional to God and to the English religious community. The New Minster Charter interweaves royal and ecclesiastical power, forging new ideas of kingship and spiritual sovereignty. As Fitzgerald writes, “by removing the rebellious canons from the ecclesiastical hierarchy and appropriating the doctrine of replacement,” the early monastic reformers implied that the way to heaven would be jointly secured by King Edgar and a reformed monasticism (147).Chapters 4 and 5 continue this examination of the rebel angels in religious literary culture. “The Angels’ Share” discusses how rehearsals of angelic rebellion acted as a sort of talisman or charm for English Christians—a “protective ritual written across both bodies and landscapes” (160). The fusion of body and landscape in these performances reinforces Fitzgerald’s argument that the rebel angels’ narrative cemented ideas of inheritance and divine order in early English popular belief. In “A Homeland as a Possession,” Fitzgerald returns to the New Minster Charter to compare the revocation of clerical lands and removal of the secular canons to Satan’s own loss of territory after his disobedience. She frames this discussion through the Rogationtide festival, which symbolically reenacted the fall of the angels, and looked forward to the Last Judgment when Christians would occupy their place heaven. In addition to highlighting the correlation between Rogationtide and the angelic rebellion, Fitzgerald provides an intriguing analysis of transitions and movements across space in the Old English poem Christ and Satan. The language of “turning back” and “encircling” featured in this poem reflects the circuitous organization of Rogationtide and invites readers to tread the path toward redemption.In her final chapter, “A New Praedestinati in Wulstan’s Sermo Lupi ad Anglos,” Fitzgerald offers a new way to read Wulfstan’s “Sermon of the Wolf to the English.” She argues that Wulfstan appeals to the replacement doctrine to condemn the English for believing they are predestined to divine inheritance, comparing the English to the rebel angels and stating that they were actively erasing themselves from salvation. Fitzgerald also includes an afterword, in which she restates the stakes of the book and emphasizes the importance of reading across genre. She concludes that the overall impression one gains from examining these diverse works is that “the fall of the angels mythos—and the restructuring of of the heavenly and earthly politics in its aftermath—gave the Anglo-Saxons a way to imagine the construction of their own earthly society, and a means to understand how they could chart clear paths to a heavenly one” (279).Overall, Rebel Angels is a fantastic resource collating stories of angelic rebellion in early medieval England. Fitzgerald’s dedication to providing a thoroughly discussed and comprehensive record of these narratives, and the examination of historical documents alongside literary texts offers nuanced insight into the role that these stories played in both secular and ecclesiastical settings. However, a closer engagement with Lefebvre’s The Production of Space would have been beneficial to the book’s overall argument. Though Fitzgerald cites Lefebvre’s observation that sovereignty implies space, she does not offer further elaboration on why this is the case. In The Production of Space Lefebvre argues that the “space” in which sovereignty operates is “the space of the ruling class's hegemony over its people and over the nationhood that it has arrogated” (281). Moreover, he writes that state sovereignty “was constituted as an imaginary and real, abstract-concrete ‘being’ which recognized no restraints upon itself other than those deriving from relations based on force (its relations with its own internal components, and those with its congeners—invariably rivals and virtual adversaries)” (279). Lefebvre’s attention to issues of state violence and systems of power distribution among the elite can shed additional light on Fitzgerald’s own discussion of Satan’s rebellion against divine authority and his construction of a subversive, alternative kingdom in hell.Fitzgerald’s work opens the door for future studies that more fully explore the interaction of sovereignty and space in early England. Fitzgerald chooses not to critically address how many of the rebel angels narratives are couched within appeals to English origin myths, English exceptionalism, and English as God’s chosen heirs—conversations that continue to be crucial within studies of early English literary and political histories. Bringing her work into conversation with recent scholarship on white heritage politics and early English texts would bring a fruitful and necessary dimension to this conversation about power, territory, inheritance, and dissent. Rebel Angels also presents numerous opportunities to examine Satan’s subversion of God’s territorial sovereignty through the lens of queer theory and queer modes of production and creation. Overall, the book will be valuable to any student or scholar researching early English history and religious culture. The close readings of Old English poetry also present valuable insight into literary culture’s interactions with spiritual and secular systems of power and governance.

Yoga has gained popularity in the West as not only a method of physical exercise, but also for many, as a source of healing, social transformation and a way of life. Despite this, little literature exists examining the utility of yoga and its philosophical roots for social work. This paper explores the first two limbs of the eight-limbed ashtanga yoga system, the yamas (ethical restraints) and the niyamas (spiritually conducive practices), discussing their relevance to social work practice, particularly in the context of social work ethical theory. The yamas are the ethical restraints of ahimsa (nonviolence), satya (truth), asteya (non-stealing), brahmacarya (sensual abstinence or restraint), and aparigraha (non-avarice, non-possessiveness). The niyamas are practices conducive to spiritual development: sauca (purity), santosha (contentment), tapas (persistence), svadhyaya (study of sacred scriptures), and isvara pranidhana (contemplation of the divine). The yamas and niyamas are an example of the coalescence of deontological, consequentialist, virtue, and feminist ethics. This piece explores each yama and niyama, describing both their traditional roots and their implications for social work ethical theory and practice.

All social work students study theory and undertake practice placements. Integrating the two – so that each informs the other – is both essential and notoriously tricky. This accessible book demystifies the process and offers helpful evidence-based strategies for doing it successfully. Structured around different approaches to learning, Integrating Social Work Theory and Practice covers: Adult and student centred learning Learning and teaching techniques and assessment methods How to locate and identify theory How to critically analyse theory Key theoretical concepts in social science Issues surrounding anti-oppressive theory and practice Methods of intervention Integrating theory and practice in academic work and on placements. This essential text helps students to identify, critically analyse and apply theory appropriately, enhancing their practice. It will be useful to all social work students struggling with the theory-practice gap.