The Social Theory of Practices: Tradition, Tacit Knowledge, and Presuppositions - Softcover

Turner, Stephen

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0226817385 ISBN 13: 9780226817385

Publisher: University of Chicago Press, 1994

Synopsis

The concept of "practices"€”whether of representation, of political or scientific traditions, or of organizational culture€”is central to social theory. In this book, Stephen Turner presents the first analysis and critique of the idea of practice as it has developed in the various theoretical traditions of the social sciences and the humanities.Understood broadly as a tacit understanding "shared" by a group, the concept of a practice has a fatal difficulty, Turner argues: there is no plausible mechanism by which a "practice" is transmitted or reproduced. The historical uses of the concept, from Durkheim to Kripke's version of Wittgenstein, provide examples of the contortions that thinkers have been forced into by this problem, and show the ultimate implausibility of the idea.Turner's conclusion sketches a picture of what happens when we do without the notion of a shared practice, and how this bears on social theory and philosophy. It explains why social the

About this edition

• Publisher: University of Chicago Press
• Publication date: 1994
• ISBN 10: 0226817385
• ISBN 13: 9780226817385
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 156