The Dynamics of Social Practice: Everyday Life and how it Changes - Hardcover

Shove, Elizabeth; Pantzar, Mika; Watson, Matt

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0857020420 ISBN 13: 9780857020420

Publisher: SAGE Publications Ltd, 2012

Synopsis

Everyday life is defined and characterized by the rise, transformation and fall of social practices. Using terminology that is both accessible and sophisticated, this book guides the reader through a multi-level analysis of this dynamic. The book provides discussion of real world examples such as the history of car driving and the emergence of frozen food, bringing abstract concepts to life and grounding them in empirical case-studies and new research. Demonstrating the relevance of social theory for public policy problems, the authors show that the everyday is the basis of social transformation.

About this title

About the Author:

Professor Elizabeth Shove teaches Sociology at Lancaster University.

Review:

Recent discussions of research "impact" tend to assume that moving from theory to practice is easy. In fact, it is often very hard. Hence it is unsurprising, if apparently paradoxical, that the theory of practice usually appears abstruse and even impractical. Hence, too, the tremendous achievement of The Dynamics of Social Practice. The book not only takes us confidently through the thickets of theory. But, more importantly, with examples that are thoroughly concrete (both metaphorically and quite literally), it allows us to understand how such theory can be brought to bear directly on such pressing and practical problems as climate change
Paul Duguid
Adjunct Professor, School of Information, University of California, Berkeley

The Dynamics of Social Practice, through a series of clever and courageous analytic moves, sets out an innovative framework for understanding the complexities of contemporary social processes. Written in a clear, accessible style and illustrated with a wealth of engaging examples, Shove, Pantzer and Watson successfully accomplish that rare trick of making an important contribution to social theory while also providing a major resource for social policy
Mike Michael
Professor of the Sociology of Science and Technology, Goldsmiths

This remarkable book provides the best available analysis-theoretically trenchant and empirically illuminating-of the dynamics of social life construed as a field of practices and inaugurates the needed process of developing practice-oriented public policy
Theodore Schatzki
Professor of Philosophy, University of Kentucky

About this edition

• Publisher: SAGE Publications Ltd
• Publication date: 2012
• ISBN 10: 0857020420
• ISBN 13: 9780857020420
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 208