Around the 2000s there has been a ‘re-turn’ to practice theory, and the number of special issues of main journals in different disciplines testify its promise of a deep renovation in social sciences, after what has been called the ‘practice turn’ or the turn to practice. After twenty years we can track the effects of such a promise, keeping in mind that there is no such thing as a unified ‘practice theory’, only a body of highly diverse writings by thinkers who adopt a loosely defined ‘practice approach’.

The lecture and workshop propose to explore ‘practice-based studies’ as an umbrella concept and to retrace the way in which, over the years, I have developed a post-humanistic approach to social practice on the basis of an Actor-Network sensibility and the way in which the concept of practice appeared in the literature on learning and knowing in organizations. From this background, I illustrate an epistemology of practice grounded on relationality, multiplicity, and transformation, and I approach practice as an empirical phenomenon from the perspective of knowing as an activity situated in working and organizing practices. From this point of view the central interest in practice theories is how to bring forward a methodological framework to investigate the social, material, discursive, bodily, affective, aesthetic and ethical dimensions of practices.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Literature:

• Practices and knowledges (2018 forthcoming)
• Gherardi S, Rodeschini G. (2016), Caring as a collective knowledgeable doing: about concern and being concerned, Management Learning, 47(3): 266-284.
• Corradi, G., Gherardi, S., Verzelloni, L. (2010) Through the Practice Lens: Where Is the Bandwagon of Practice-Based Studies Heading? Management Learning, 41(3): 265-283.