A question, what is new with practice?  I don’t mean “our” practice (whoever the ‘we’ of that is), but I mean the notion of practice as a conceptual, theoretical or methodological object.

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?