How to Conduct a Practice-based Study: Problems and Methods: Third Edition

This thoroughly revised and updated third edition of Silvia Gherardi’s insightful book expertly addresses the innovations, problems and possibilities in practice-based research. Through a series of examples drawn from the best-known analyses using this approach, the book provides methodological guidance on how to conduct empirical research on practices, and how to interpret them from three perspectives: practices ‘from outside’, practices ‘from inside’ and the social effects produced by practices.

Responding to the recent de-anthropocentric ‘re-turn’ of practice-based studies, Gherardi considers the search for non-rationalist and non-cognitivist approaches to the process of working and organizing. With fully updated chapters throughout, this third edition further elaborates on a posthumanist theory of practice, providing a guiding compass for understanding how humans and more-than-humans interact within working practices. Chapters highlight the sociomateriality of practicing and the role of vibrant materiality, emphasising the researchers’ bodily capacity of affecting and being affected while conducting fieldwork as insiders of the practices they study.

This is a vital resource for any scholars of practice theories, especially those interested in posthumanist practice theory, as well as management and organizational studies. Postgraduate students and early-career researchers seeking insight into the development of practice-based studies will also find this book indispensable.

Silvia Gherardi, University of Trento, Italy