It seems to me that “practice” is a predominant notion upon which much ethnographic and human-centered design work in industry sits. Theories of practice have provided ethnographers in industry a theoretically nuanced yet empirically resonant object of analysis by which to frame and ground their work. I think it grounds the work of human-centered designers too. Even when practitioners themselves may not draw explicitly (or knowingly) on this trajectory, the general framing of the applied ethnographic research, design and strategy enterprise in industry centers attention on the “everydayness’ of what people do, on the apparent messiness and, sometimes at the same time, sublime order of what they do (or say or think), on the way things “actually” transpire.

So, what have we learned about “practice” in the context of this corporate encounter? We may have different maps of the field of practice, but its likely Bourdieu and de Certeau, perhaps Goffman, and maybe Knorr-Cetina would appear on many of those maps. Likely Suchman, for some Schon, and more recently perhaps Postill and Schatzki would too.

So what does our work offer to this illustrious mix?  Can we name things, specifically, that dispute or advance the ideas that emerge from these trajectories? Does the practice frame remain a generative one for advancing conceptualizations and understandings of what we do?

But lets keep this simple:

• Do you (still) like the notion of practice for conceptualizing what you do?  Why (or not)?
• Where does it have limits?
• Is there some other concept(s) that you find yourself drawing on that approximates a similar terrain, but does more work for you?

I don’t have a pat answer.  I think that thinking about thinking in an open-source sort of way does entail some risk of a form of idea piracy.  That’s not without basis, given the fact that a great deal of work in the design/research intersection has been ‘citation-free,’ largely, I think, due the perception among all kinds of practitioners that they need to be able to claim uniqueness in order to offer value, and that uniqueness has been understood as pure invention.  Differentiation is seen as the offer of value to clients.  In a  practitioner-heavy field, that becomes the dominant ethos.

We started pulp because we think the field will grow more robustly if it is more open, if the contest of ideas happens with the ideas rather than in marketing claims.  But if the zeitgeist of the space is going to change toward an everyday comfort with saying, “We got this idea from Dr. X, and man is it cool”  two things have to happen:  Dr. X has to put his idea out beyond the margins of his own practice, where it may have huge holes poked into it, and the folks who use it, build on it, have to be willing to say that Dr. X works for their arch-competitor, Xcorp.

I think that’s worth it if I get to see more of Dr. X’s stuff in return.  And if I’m Dr. X (which really, I’m not.  Honest.  But I’ve met him), I would like to be able to tell my next prospective customer that the model or the method I’m suggesting for their work has been raked over the intellectual coals and turned inside out by the entire field, and remains standing.  My apologies for the terribly mixed metaphors, a habit I picked up from John Cain.

Here’s why I’m putting this up as a strand:  I may well be wrong about the idea of having readers, as well as writers and critics.  Maybe the only way to get the kind of depth of engagement, quality of interaction over work in progress is to wall the garden, to make the space only available to folks who have put something in.  I’m trying to avoid a game/sports analogy here, folks.  I’ll leave it at that.  I’ve gone back and forth on this a thousand times during the floating of the idea for pulp and the building of it, and have come down on the side of thinking that the folks out there who read, but don’t contribute are for the most part not pirates but instead nascent writers and thinkers themselves.  And the best thing to do is set the example of being open about the work and equally committed to citation, acknowledgment.

So I’d like to open it up.  Get comments, points of view.  It’s early in the life of pulp, and we could change the way it works.   Or see where it goes, how it goes.

I think that there is a connection in that notion to Bourdieu’s ‘doxa’ description (from Outline of a Theory of Practice) in that the use of a ’single register’ implies either a choice or an unawareness of the full range of possible registers.  So, the producers of “America’s Got Talent,” for example can really think that there is good material there, or they can be conniving bastards, just in the same way that the author of “Mutant Message from Down Under” may be either as limited in her understanding of culture(s) as say, Carlos Castaneda (or as Ayn Rand’s unsubtle political economics) (admission: part of this is motivated by trying to understand why I, at 17 or 18, found Castaneda and Rand brilliant and am now somewhat shamed by that)), or that she is just working in cartoon to hit as much of an undiscriminating audience as possible.  In any case, complexity and flexibility come in as values.  In a sort of disturbingly absolute way.

Anyway, “No Logo” and its sisters come to mind.  And William Gibson’s character Cayce Pollard’s allergic revulsion to major icons.  It would be nice to find something a bit deeper than Klein, some better than average thinking about desire and discrimination.

I’ve got an outline of this idea, below.  but it may be completely outdated.  So pointers would be appreciated.