TOP-IX seminars
Theories of Practice – Interdisciplinary Exchange
Social theories of practice are of increasing interest across a range of disciplines and within the public and private sectors. This is demonstrated by recent conferences in organization studies (2006), geography (2006), by calls for papers e.g. in Human Affairs, growing interest in Practice Oriented Product Design, and in the contribution of practice theory to consumption (Warde 2005), and to science and technology studies (Shove and Pantzar 2005).
This multidisciplinary seminar series, organised by Elizabeth Shove (Sociology), Luis Araujo (Marketing), James Faulconbridge (Geography) and Shumei Wang (PhD candidate, Sociology) examines practices involved in the design, production, use and after-use of products, services and tools. More specifically, our aim is to examine the ways in which concepts of practice have been, and are being, developed and mobilised across different disciplines – for instance, in philosophy, sociology, organisation studies, marketing, geography and anthropology. Rather than rely on essentialist and fixed distinctions between producers and consumers, the seminars provide an opportunity to ask a range of questions, for example:
How do users, individual and organisational, appropriate and generate products and services?
How do constellations of products, services and skills co-evolve?
How do objects, competences and images interact – prospectively and retrospectively?
How are new practices formed and how do existing practices disappear and become fossilised?
The seminars will take place in B65, County South. Forthcoming events are listed below:
Luis Araujo: 9th May 2007, 5pm: 'Practice-based Approaches to Market Studies'
James Faulconbridge: 23rd May 2007, 5pm: 'Negotiating practice-based spaces of learning in professional service firms’
Will Medd: 20th June 2007, 5pm: tba
Fossilisation by Elizabeth Shove and Mika Pantzar is a short paper on the fossilisation of practices.
