Practice Theory
“Practice theory” is a theory of how social beings, with their diverse motives and their diverse intentions, make and transform the world in which they live. It is a dialectic between structure and human action working back and forth in a dynamic relationship Practice theory, as outlined by Sherry Ortner, "seeks to explain the relationship(s) that obtain between human action, on the one hand, and some global entity which we call 'the system' on the other." The approach seeks to resolve the antinomy between traditional structuralist approaches and approaches such as methodological individualism which attempted to explain all social phenomena in terms of individual actions.
Read more about Practice Theory: Pierre Bourdieu, Anthony Giddens, Michael Foucault, Key Terms, Other Important Theorists
Famous quotes containing the words practice and/or theory:
“They never consulted with books, and know and can tell much less than they have done. The things which they practice are said not yet to be known.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Everything to which we concede existence is a posit from the standpoint of a description of the theory-building process, and simultaneously real from the standpoint of the theory that is being built. Nor let us look down on the standpoint of the theory as make-believe; for we can never do better than occupy the standpoint of some theory or other, the best we can muster at the time.”
—Willard Van Orman Quine (b. 1908)