All my course outlines and PowerPoint slides can be downloaded from:

1. All my course outlines and PowerPoint slides can be downloaded from: http://www.freewebs.com/mphk2/

2. LECTURE 7: “Practice” Stephen Turner, The Social Theory of Practices: Tradition, Tacit Knowledge, and Presuppositions, University of Chicago Press, 1994

3. Preliminaries I: Practice [1] Wittgenstein: practice vs. isolated actions, individualism, rules

4. Preliminaries I: Practice [1] Wittgenstein: practice vs. isolated actions, individualism, rules [2] Marxism: Althusser: practice vs. theory, subject

5. [3] Phenomenology, Hermeneutics: practice vs. subject

6. [3] Phenomenology, Hermeneutics: practice vs. subject [4] Bourdieu, Giddens: practice vs. structure/agency

7. [3] Phenomenology, Hermeneutics: practice vs. subject [4] Bourdieu, Giddens: practice vs. structure/agency [5] Ethnomethodology: practice vs. theory

8. Preliminaries II: Marcel Mauss (1872-1950) • MM studied philosophy and comparative religion. • MM practiced later what today would be called “anthropology”. • Chair in “History of Religion and Uncivilized Peoples” at the Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes • Defended and developed the views of Durkheim.

9. Most important work: The Gift … • “What power resides in the object given that causes its recipient to pay it back?” • “…the objects are never completely separated from the men who exchange them …” • To not reciprocate means to lose honour …

10. Mauss distinguishes between three obligations: • [1] giving, the necessary initial step for the creation and maintenance of relationships;

11. Mauss distinguishes between three obligations: • [1] giving, the necessary initial step for the creation and maintenance of relationships; • [2] receiving, for to refuse is to reject the social bond;

12. Mauss distinguishes between three obligations: • [1] giving, the necessary initial step for the creation and maintenance of relationships; • [2] receiving, for to refuse is to reject the social bond; • [3] reciprocating in order to demonstrate one’s own liberality, honour and wealth …

13. Mauss distinguishes between three obligations: • [1] giving, the necessary initial step for the creation and maintenance of relationships; • [2] receiving, for to refuse is to reject the social bond; • [3] reciprocating in order to demonstrate one’s own liberality, honour and wealth … • “Inalienability” of the gift from the givers, “loaned rather than sold and ceded.”

14. Preliminaries III: Jakob Burckhardt • 1818-1897 • Studied in Basel and Berlin, taught in Basel from 1858 … • The “father of cultural history” … • Main work: • The Civilisation of the Renaissance in Italy (1860)

15. Focus: the cultural patterns of transition from the medieval period to the awakening of the modern spirit and creativity of the Renaissance.

16. Focus: the cultural patterns of transition from the medieval period to the awakening of the modern spirit and creativity of the Renaissance. • Main point: transition from a society in which people were primarily members of a class or community to a society that idealised the self- conscious individual.

17. “… both sides of human consciousness – the side turned to the world and that turned inward – lay, as it were, beneath a common veil, dreaming or half awake. The veil was woven of faith, childlike prejudices, and illusion … • … It was in Italy that this veil first melted into thin air … there arose the subjective; man becomes a self-aware individual and recognises himself as such.”

18. Practices as “Hidden Entities” (Turner, 1994) • Turner’s term “practice” covers: • “practice”, • “background”, • “tacit knowledge”, • “tacit rules”, • “tradition”, • “paradigm”, • “worldview”, • “ideology”, etc.

19. Sometimes these concepts refer more to hidden premises (unconscious intentional states), … • sometimes more to embodied knowledge (unconscious and non-intentional).

20. Practices have two elements: an individual element (a.k.a. habit) and a historical-collective element. A habit has both an internal and a behavioral element.

21. Social scientists often use these concepts as explanatory concepts that refer to theoretical entities (cf. observational vs. theoretical).

22. Social scientists often use these concepts as explanatory concepts that refer to theoretical entities (cf. observational vs. theoretical). • These entities are thought to be needed to explain: • agreement in behaviour (including linguistic behaviour), or • the inability to understand others.

23. No problems arise as long as we use these concepts in a descriptive, i.e. observational way: • “The use of the term ‘practices’ in a descriptive • way in historical writing to designate patterns of behaviour that seem to us to be similar and may be said to have been passed along among persons who live together seems like an innocuous use.” (117)

24. There is always a problem with under- determination when we ascribe habits.

25. There is always a problem with under- determination when we ascribe habits. • Moreover, habits are typically identified • only by contrast with a familiar social • phenomenon: “the Mauss Problem” (19).

26. There is always a problem with under- determination when we ascribe habits. • Moreover, habits are typically identified • only by contrast with a familiar social • phenomenon: “the Mauss Problem” (19). • This can make one feel unsure about their objectivity and causal powers.

27. Practices are often conceptualised “presuppositions”: • “One shows that a person ‘presupposes’ some- • thing by showing that, if one or more of the • person’s beliefs were made the conclusion of an explicit logical argument, premises in addition to those explicitly avowed by the reasoner would • be required to make the argument valid.” (29)

28. Practices are often conceptualised “presuppositions”: • P1 P1 • P2 P2 • --- P3 Presupposition • C --- • C • Invalid Valid

29. But: “The same conclusions may be drawn from arguments with different premises ...” (30) • And we cannot be sure that individuals with the • same public beliefs hold these because of the • same sets of presuppositions. • Here too we have again the Mauss Problem.

30. Social scientists often postulate practices • as explanatory entities when they find an “unanticipated orderliness”. • But such orderliness is again relative to a • perspective. • This is the “Burckhardt Problem”.

31. The key problem of the practice-family is the problem of transmission: • How can a practice be transmitted to a • (selected) group of individuals? • How is the same internal hidden entity passed • on to the members of the group? • The difficulty is that practice is something • hidden, invisible – behind the visible.

32. Practices cannot be transmitted through the • ordinary epistemic routes: • A practice is not a visible or linguistic object. • Our only access to it as inquirers is through inference.

33. Attempted solutions: • [a] Imitation? • No, only external behaviour can be imitated.

34. Attempted solutions: • [a] Imitation? • No, only external behaviour can be imitated. • [b] Habitualisation? • Again, only the external part is checked.

35. Attempted solutions: • [a] Imitation? • No, only external behaviour can be imitated. • [b] Habitualisation? • Again, only the external part is checked. • [c] Education and discipline? • Only act on the external behaviour.

36. [d] On the back of text? Does not solve the problem either.

37. [d] On the back of text? Does not solve the problem either. [e] Special social scenarios? Face-to-face, imitation during a specific age (=socialisation), ritual? No: transmission need not deliver sameness.

38. [f] Identical sub-intentional process? • Not plausible across all meanings and rules. • .

39. [f] Identical sub-intentional process? • Not plausible across all meanings and rules. • [g] Tests to check the sameness? • Not available. • .

40. Concepts like “tradition” and “culture” face additional problems: • .

41. Concepts like “tradition” and “culture” face additional problems: • Traditions are invoked to explain the persistence • of public phenomena. • .

42. Concepts like “tradition” and “culture” face additional problems: • Traditions are invoked to explain the persistence • of public phenomena. • But again, there is the problem of under- determination: Coincidence? Different • causes of the persistence? • .

43. Concepts like “tradition” and “culture” face additional problems: • Traditions are invoked to explain the persistence • of public phenomena. • But again, there is the problem of under- determination: Coincidence? Different • causes of the persistence? • Traditions are also invoked to make sense of the difficulty we face when trying to under- • stand certain texts. • .

44. Turner’s alternative: “If acting in accordance with a tradition is … • … acting in accordance with the way of life of • a community, and if … • … the way of life of a community includes certain observances, performances and activities, and if …

45. … individual habits and mental habits arise through engaging in the relevant perform- ances, … … nothing need follow with respect to the causal role or status of practice understood as a kind of collective fact. …

46. … All that need follow is this: by performing in certain ways, people acquire habits which lead them to continue to perform, more or less, in the same ways. … The observances, so to speak, cause individual habits, not some sort of collectively shared single habit called a practice or a way of life,…

47. If this is so, the collective or public facts about traditions or ‘cultural systems of meaning’ begin and end with the observances or public objectsthemselves. Everything else is individual – there is no collective tacit fact of the matter at all.” (99-100)

48. Many problems with “practice relativism” disappear once we move to habits.

49. §2. Habits and Connectionism (Turner 2001, 2002) • Habits fit well with recent work in cognitive • science, esp. the idea that the mind is like a • neural network with its weights, not like a • rule-book.

50. §3. Critical Comments (Barnes 2001, Lynch 1997, Pickering 1997) • Pickering insists that there remain legitimate uses of practice; those that focus only on the visible.