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Practice Theory

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Saved by Kelsey Ross
on November 24, 2010 at 6:53:27 pm
 

Table of Contents

 


 

 


 

Main Points

 

     The anthropological concept of Practice theory is not necessarily a defined theory, but a perspective used in collaboration with other anthropological theories, such as functionalism or symbolic anthropology.  The main ideas of practice theory are analyzing the relationship between established structures of culture and how the people in reality act within that structure.  In Sherry Ortner's description of Practice Theory, she lays out three main aspects of this relationship: the Power Shift, Historic Turn, and the Re-Interpretation of Culture. 

 

  • Power Shift

     The power shift was characterized by a shifting view of power. This shift occurred from dominance of one class over the other to power relationships between every individual.  In this way, power is viewed as a product of human agency, not as an objective force in society.  "Habitus" is a term central to the power shift as well. It refers to how people habituate their power roles, and therefore create the structure that exists.  Other founding practice theorists believe that power relationships have a certain level of consciousness and therefore people actively create resistance to society.

  • Historic Turn

     The historic turn focuses on temporality, or history as a key element to cultural structures.  It was used in short-term contexts, such as the time importance in the reciprocation of a gift.  It also served as a way to study culture's history and its effects on the current state.  

  • Re-interpretation of Culture

     In previous interpretations of culture, there was a basic concept that people had a grip on culture, and acted in response to their culture.  Anthropologists would associate human action and practice in relation to their culture.  However, this frame sometimes led to cultural stereotyping and profiling of people, to explain how they acted in relation to their culture. 

 

     One of the main points illustrated about Practice theory is the concept of habitus. This was brought up by Bordieu in the article "Structures, Habitus, Practices." Habitus is explained in the article to be, “systems of durable, transposable dispositions, structured structures predisposed to function as structuring structures, that is as a principles which generate and organize practices and representations that can be objectively adapted to their outcomes without presupposing a conscious aiming at ends or an express mastery of the operations necessary in order to attain them.” In layman's terms, habitus can be defined as being the collective set of practices and habits that an individual or collective group partakes in on a day to day basis. By looking at how habitus materializes, we can see the similarities between individuals and classes who are more likely to undergo the same experiences and understand how these have become homogenized to become a symbol of a culture.

 


 

Key Figures

 

Pierre Bourdieu (1930-2002)

 

 

     Pierre Bourdieu was French social scientist born in 1930 to a family of modest means in a province in southwestern France (Moore, 322). He obtained his degree in philosophy from Ecole Normal Superiere. Shortly after, Bourdieu was sent to Algeria for his military service in 1955 (Moore, 322). He also conducted research and taught at the University of Algiers. In addition to his stay there, Bourdieu carried many extensive fieldwork and surveys there (Wacquant 552). Some of his research consisted among the rural Kabyle and with Berber-speaking migrants to Algiers (Moore 322).  Bourdieu was strongly influenced by the relationship between culture and power in which led him to be involved in political efforts ( Moore, 323). However, in 1960, Bourdieu moved back to Paris because of the procolonial Algiers forcing him to flee. This was because he was classified as a certain type of ‘liberal’, he was under the threat of death (Wacquant 552). In Paris at the L’Ecole Practique des Hautes Etudes, he organized a group of scholars examining European educational systems (322). Bourdieu at this time also continued to analyze field data collected during sojourns in rural and urban Algeria until 1964.  Around 1970’s Bourdieu had slowly established his position in French academia through streams of publications. Some books that he wrote were Distinction (1979/1984) and The Logic of Practice (1980/1990) that propelled Bourdieu to become the chair of sociology at the College of France in 1981. (Wacquant 553).  Boudieu continued to write books and publish articles from his perspectives of intellectual fields such as art history, educational research, cultural studies and philosophy until he died in 2002 of cancer. By the end of his death, he had written forty five books and 500 articles (Moore 334).

 

     Bourdieu’s work contributed and was very influential to anthropology through his development of the theory of practice. He wrote two books, Outline of a Theory of Practice (1977) and The Logic of Practice (1990) that really explains and elaborates what the concept of the theory of practice (Moore 325). Bourdieu explained the theory of practice by arguing that culture is the exclusive product neither of free will not of underlying principles but is actively constructed by social actors from cultural dispositions and structured by previous events (Moore 321). Along the theory practice, Bourdieu introduced the terms of doxa, habitus and practice to help comprehend the rules that underlie social behavior (Moore 329).

 

Sherry Ortner

 

 


 

Key Texts

 

 

Outline of a Theory of Practice by Pierre Bordieu

Practice theory seeks to find the context of events that a structuralist theory is unable to address and/or explain. Pierre Bordieu's Outline of a Theory of Practice is centralized on habitus, unconscious behavior that is constructed and limited by an individual's previous experiences, or as Bordieu defines it "spontaneity without consciousness or will" (56).  In direct contrast to structuralism, practice theory believes social structures to be set forth and defined by the action's of the people, in particular habitus. He theorizes that, to an extent, structures also influence one's habitus, but only in regards to social "norms" that have already been set fourth by society. In this respect, habitus and institutionalization coexist in self-perpetuating cycles.

 

Anthropology and Social Theory: Culture, Power and the Acting Subject by Sherry Ortner 

Sherry Ortner’s Anthropology and Social Theory draws on Practice Theory to offer solutions to modern problems. On page 3 of the book she writes that Practice Theory suggests restoring "the actor to the social process without losing sight of the larger structures that constrain (but also enable) social action". In this book Ortner rethinks key concepts of culture, agency and subjectivity in order to apply them to anthropology in the twenty-first century. The book is comprised of seven essays, both of interpretive and theoretical nature. She argues that the concept of culture needs to be reconfigured and suggests applying elements of Practice Theory in order to do this. She stresses the notion of human agency and demonstrates how social theories must build upon one another in order to be relevant in modern contexts. 

 

 

 

 

Central Problems in Social Theory: Action, Structure, and Contradiction in Social Analysis by Anthony Gidden 

 



 

 

 

 


 

Critiques

     Though the Practice Theory of Anthropology is one that encompasses a more holistic approach by validating an individual’s agency within the context of their society, it still has its downfalls and critiques. However, given that it is one of the newest anthropological frames of thought, this theory has limited critique.

     One of the key and only authors critiquing practice theory is Stephen Turner in his book Social Theory of Practices: Tradition, Tacit Knowledge, and Presupposition[1]. In his book, Turner argues that practice theory’s focus on agency and social constructs is too limiting in the analysis of other cultures and societies. He states that although Practice Theorists may be trying to find an overarching idea that defines all cultures, this generality is actually limiting in its ability to thoroughly and specifically understand other cultures and societies. Additionally, Turner states that Practice Theory is too general in stating that all individuals of a society live under universal or shared social constructs. Essentially, since the individual is directly effecting what the social constructs are, the social constructs will never be the same for every individual, thus negating the fact that it is a universal social construct at all. This argument then goes further by stating that because of this lack of a shared or universal construct within a society, there can be no way for these "universal practices" to be transmitted to the next generation.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Footnotes

  1. Turner, S. P. (1994). The social theory of practices: tradition, tacit knowledge, and presuppositions. University of Chicago Press.

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