Practice theory

Within less than a decade piracy has been turned from a marginal economic problem into a global security problem. A surprising array of international actors addresses piracy and coordinates their activities. In this contribution we interrogate this astonishing story of international cooperation. We argue that what we observe here is a global security governance arrangement under construction. We conduct a praxiographic analysis of the current counter-piracy governance arrangement. A praxiographic analysis takes as the main unit of analysis practice, that is, collective patterns of action which entail speech and doings. Based on this evidence we carry out what can be called an “informed speculation” about the future of the arrangement. Based on the notion of macro-securitization we develop three different forms of expectations (or scenarios) of what characterizes the piracy governance arrangement: 1) an interest based “alliance” or “coalition of the willing”; 2) as a forming “security community” of cosmopolitan or regional scale; or as a 3) hybrid “global security assemblage”.

 Purpose: This paper considers the role that theories of social practice can play in offering new insights into policymaking and practical interventions for behavioural and social change.  Design/methodology/approach: This is a conceptual paper. It provides a brief overview of the key features of practice theories pertinent to the field of behavioural and social change and critically reviews practice theoretical literature relevant to the field.  Findings: The paper argues that a social practice perspective offers more robust accounts of how social and behavioural change comes about than conventional approaches and offers novel insights and targets for interventions. Practice theories have made the most direct contribution to behaviour change in the context of sustainable consumption but offer insights to a range of empirical domains relevant to social business, including health promotion and organisational change.  Limitations: The efficacy of a social practice approach to behaviour change has yet to be empirically established and will require the development of a new evidence base.  Implications: Ongoing dialogue is needed between theoretical development, empirical research and practical interventions utilising practice theories. 2  Contribution: The paper's contribution is to review recent developments in practice theory, acknowledge the limitations of existing approaches and suggest potential routes to overcome them.

The article addresses the complex relationship between practice theory and actor-network theory (ANT). It closely examines the similarities and differences between the two and asks how the ANT perspective can be beneficial for practice theory. Drawing on Pierre Bourdieu, Anthony Giddens and Theodore Schatzki's work, this study briefly identifies the theoretical and methodological standpoint of practice theory. It then turns to Bruno Latour's ANT, discussing his methodological approach towards the social. Next, it identifies the differences between the two approaches, offering a critique of ANT from the perspective of practice theory. In the conclusion, the contribution identifies the potential of ANT approaches for practice theory at the methodological level. It argues that the methodological principles of ANT can integrate with practice theory to form what I call a 'transitive methodology'. This analytical perspective does not locate sub-jectivity and agency at a single spot. Instead, it situates them in a heterogeneous network of practices and materialities.

In management research, theoretical abstractions, which are traditionally derived based on economic and individualist ontological assumptions, are limited in the ability to produce practically relevant insights and increase the divide between organisational practitioners and scientists. This paper argues that contemporary theory of practice, which jointly considers agency, structure and materiality, overcomes the confrontation and integrates scientific rigour with the richness of organisational practice. The author thereby introduces the origins of practice theory, analyses the definition of practice and explores the areas of management research where practice theory is currently adopted.

In recent years the debates on praxeology gradually led to a bifurcation, following the beaten pathways of the division of scientific work. On the one hand, praxeological approaches were received in social theory and comparative theoretical studies. They were seen as theoretical innovations, and assessed and classified accordingly, with regard to their intersections and differences to other theoretical approaches (Reckwitz, 2002; Schatzki, 1996). Most of the foundational approaches to praxeology are closely connected to empirical studies. This applies to Harold Garfinkel's ethnomethodology, to Erving Goffman's studies of interaction, to Pierre Bourdieu's praxeology and to Bruno Latour's actor-network-theory (ANT). This dominant theoretical strand of practice theory however hardly accounts for the practical problems linked with using praxeological approaches in empirical research. On the other hand, just recently the relevancy and the affordances of praxeology for consulting, advising and policy interventions have been called for and emphasized (Nicolini, 2012; Shove et al., 2012). In the light of this prevailing divergence between theoretical endeavors on the one hand, and applied organizational and political objectives on the other hand, we now run the risk of losing sight of the epistemological and methodological issues at the core of praxeology. To address such issues, this paper focuses on the methodology of praxeology. It suggests a procedure of praxeologizing the objects of inquiry. This procedure is depicted in three steps: Firstly the paper comes up with the empirical example of academic practices of writing, especially of writing social theory. This serves to point out the methodological tasks and empirical challenges of praxeology. It is shown how praxeologizing theoretical writing can highlight particular and novel aspects of this practical and epistemic activity. By empirically studying academic writing practices, praxeology helps to question prevailing approaches in writing studies. Secondly, the epistemological aspects of praxeology are pointed out. It is argued that praxeology, first of all, is concerned with the misrepresentations of doings and practical activities in the theoretical models designed to grasp and to explain them. Referring to Pierre Bourdieu’s discovery of the praxeological mode of epistemology in his ethnographic studies in Algeria, this ‘negative’ and reflexive perspective on social practices is highlighted. In a third step, the paper proceeds to provide a conceptual tool kit for praxeologizing.

"Table of content:

1: Introduction
2: Praxis and Practice Theory: A Brief Historical Overview
3: Praxeology and the Work of Giddens and Bourdieu
4: Practice as Tradition and Community
5: Practice as Activity
6: Practice as Accomplishment
7: Practice as the House of the Social: Contemporary Developments of the Heideggerian and Wittgensteinian Traditions
8: Discourse and Practice
9: Bringing it All Together: a Toolkit to Study and Represent Practice at Work



"

This article discusses the role of practices and people's participation in practices in conceptual accounts of organizing, learning, and organizational learning. Specifically, the discussion takes its point of departure in Jean Lave and Etienne Wenger's account of learning as legitimate peripheral participation in practices, and Theodore Schatzki's practice theory account of organizing and organizations. Both accounts center on the role of practices as people come to know, and as changes occur in social activity and organizational settings. However, the two accounts are based on different ontologies. Borrowing the terminology of John Dewey and Arthur Bentley, Lave and Wenger instantiate a substantivist, and ultimately individualist, ontology, whereas Schatzki's event ontology is relational. It is argued that both ontologies have merits of their own, but the article seeks to integrate the two approaches by utilizing Ole Dreier's notion of the life trajectories of persons across social practices. In this perspective, organizational learning shows when people's life trajectories are affected by the bundles of social practices they engage with, and when the bundles of social practices are transformed by the way people enact the practices.

Optimization in sports is a field of increasing interest. Com- binatorial optimization techniques have been applied e.g. to game schedul- ing and playoff elimination. A common problem usually found in sports management is the assignment of referees to games already scheduled. There are a number of rules and objectives that should be taken into ac- count when referees are assigned

The growth of an economy depends upon entrepreneurial activities leading to the formation of new businesses and the production of new goods and services. In turn, institutions influence entrepreneurial activity. Public policy is an attribute of the institutions under which ...

From this analysis we conclude with a definition of middle leading that includes positional, philosophical and practice dimensions. This could then be used to inform the domains of higher education, policy development and school education globally where middle leading practices are well established.

Prohtiino uienje je zo prihodnje socialne delavhe pomembno podpora pri integrociji teoretshego znonja in prohtiinego delouanja. Magistrshi progrom >sodalno delo zdruiino<, hi pomeni dodatno letoizobraieuanja, je pripomogel h premislehu o noiinu izuajanja prohse zo itudenthe z ie uspeino honianim dodiplomskim izobroievanjem socialnega delo. Kaho zagotouiti hontekst prahtiinego uienja, hi bo podprl Etudenthe, da bi imele znanje in besede, da bi delo poimenouole, uporabnihom ubesedile, hoj delajo, in s tem pripomogle h soudeleienosti u procesu dela? Prahtitno utenje, hot smo go zosnouali u ohuiru projehta fiomoi druZinam u shupnosti: soustuarjanje ielenih sprememb za zmanjieuonje socialne izhljuienosti in krepiteu zdrovjoo, je itudenthom omogoiilo, do so ob intenzivni podpori mentoric honcepte sociolnego dela lahho samostojno preizhusile u prahsi in pridobile izhuinje za hompetentno uodenje pogouora z druiino. Spoznole so, do je teorija uporobna u prohsi in do pomeni pomembno oporo za socialno delo z druiino. Prahtiino uienje je pouetolc .reflehsiuno uporobo znanja u prahsi.

Sylvia Holla 'Haha! Tsja, je weet wel, schuren […] Ja, een jongen komt dan achter je staan en dan… ja, dans je samen. Het is gewoon iets wat iedereen doet, weet je wel' -Rachel (V), 14 jaar, vwo. Seks speelt een enorm belangrijke rol in het leven van Nederlandse tieners. Aan de hand van kwalitatieve data verkregen uit etnografisch onderzoek maakt dit artikel zichtbaar hoe tieners ontdekken wat ze leuk en lekker vinden aan seks, maar ook welk seksueel gedrag leidt tot roddel en achterklap onder klasgenoten. Dit 'seksuele leren' is fundamenteel voor de vorming van het seksuele zelf van tieners.

This paper presents a programming language which includes paradigms that are usually associated with declarative languages, such as sets, rules and search, into an imperative (functional) language. Although these paradigms are separately well known and are available under various programming environments, the originality of the CLAIRE language comes from the tight integration, which yields interesting run-time performances, and from the

In this article I provide the first systematic investigation of the justification of Somali pirates. Drawing on a practice theoretical perspective I show how piracy is justified by a grand narrative that projects piracy as quasi-state practice of the protection of sovereignty against foreign intruders. Paying attention to narrative provides an explanation for the persistence of piracy and assists us in understanding the phenomenon. Relying on publicly available interviews with pirates, I deconstruct this grand narrative, show which elements are aligned and detail the different functions of the narrative in the light of the situation in which it is told. The article develops an alternative perspective on piracy based on the study of practice, narrative and situation which will also be useful to understand other forms of illicit or violent practices.

Who has the authority to assign responsibility for international crimes? There is a simple answer: international tribunals, in particular the International Criminal Court (ICC). Yet this obvious response obscures further questions regarding where the political authority to create international tribunals comes from, as well as the vital moral question regarding how courts are constituted as actors with the capacity to assign blame. In modern international politics authority has traditionally rested with states, meaning that rightful legal institutions were created and justified by the consent of states. The ICC is granted authority in this way, as it was created through a treaty negotiated and signed by states. Such a procedural response, however, obscures as much as it reveals about the politics and morality of assigning responsibility for international crimes. Asking how a new international authority is constituted and justified as an actor with the political power to try state officials and other international criminals, and to embody and defend supposedly emergent norms of global justice, is a more contentious and difficult question that takes us beyond questions of positive law.

In the current AIDS pandemics, equipping health professional students with adequate knowledge and positive attitude is necessary to produce graduates who can deliver appropriate intervention to patients infected with HIV or who have developed AIDS. The purpose of this study was 1) to investigate the Nigerian physiotherapy students' knowledge, attitude, and their willingness to provide care for patients living with AIDS (PWA) and to 2) determine the sociodemographic variables that could influence the students' attitude and willingness to provide care for PWA. Physiotherapy students (N ¼ 104) in four training programs in Nigeria were surveyed using a two-part questionnaire. Part I elicited sociodemographic and previous AIDS encounter information, and Part II assessed knowledge, attitude, and willingness to provide care to PWA. Nigerian students showed unsatisfactory knowledge, harbored negative attitude, and many of them were unwilling to render care for PWA. Religious affiliation, training programs, long-term career goals, and previous instructions on AIDS influenced the students' attitude. The study identified the need for a comprehensive AIDS curriculum and recommend that all programs in Nigeria include clinical clerkship, small group discussions, and seminars on ethical and medico-legal issues on AIDS in their curriculum.

The focus of this study is the investigation of the relation between patients' interpersonal problems, therapists' attachment representations, and the development of the therapeutic alliance over time. The authors investigated weekly alliance ratings of 281 psychotherapy inpatients, treated by 12 psychotherapists. Alliance quality was measured with the Inpatient Experience Scale. Multilevel regression models showed that patients' interpersonal problems were associated with the level of alliance quality. Therapists' attachment security was not related to alliance development, but higher attachment preoccupation of therapists was associated with lower levels of alliance quality. In addition, an interaction effect between therapists' degree of attachment preoccupation and patients' interpersonal problems explained varia-tions of the alliance development curve over time. Limitations of the study are discussed.

Dumpster diving for food implies using discarded edibles found in
waste containers behind supermarkets, for example. People who
voluntarily engage in this activity suggest that it is a form of
hands-on social critique. In this article, we use interview materials
to describe and conceptualize this practice. The main question
we pose is: in what way is voluntary dumpster diving a ‘critical
practice’? Drawing on the pragmatic sociology of critique, we
show how it is a question of an entangled practice in multiple
ways: first, dumpster diving is at once a means of contestation
and experimentation on the limits of the contemporary form of
life and yet simply a way of getting food for free or having fun
with friends; second, while being a thoroughly rational endeavour
for its practitioners, the activity is simultaneously rife with affect;
finally, although dumpster divers are fully aware that they are
dependent on the capitalistic form of food supply, the practice
allows them to challenge its institutional self-evidences and
distance themselves from it.

Recently, the field of second language acquisition (SLA) has seen the growing impact of social context on second language learning, which has been called by Block a "social turn" (2003). This increasing interest in social context and SLA has resulted in a need to theorize two notions, "social" and "context," which have been defined differently across language-related fields. Similarly, the concept of "discursive practice" has started to appear more. Yet, despite its frequent use, this latter term has not been explored in detail. Discursive Practice in Language Learning and Teaching, the sixth volume in the Language Learning monograph series, fills this gap by unpacking and analyzing these key concepts. According to Lourdes Ortega, the series editor, Young, a scholar at the center of research on context and SLA, presents "a highly personal, deeply synthetic, and remarkably organic treatment of the social context of additional language learning" (p. vii) and attempts to map out an approach to second language learning theory that has implications for second language teaching and testing. In this book Young significantly expands the scope of SLA by introducing practice theory to the field. While he covers both written and spoken discourse, the latter is more dominant.

KünstlerInnen erleben immer wieder die Kluft zwischen dem, was sie wissen und dem, was sie können, was sie sich vorstellen und was sie imstande sind zu realisieren. Diese Differenz bedarf einer wissenstheoretischen Erklärung-und hier entstanden die ersten grundlegenden Fragen für unsere Untersuchung: Wie läuft der Schaffensprozess ab? Was befähigt manche Personen, künstlerische Herausforderungen zu bewältigen, bestimmte Dinge besser, geschickter als andere auszuführen? Wie wird vorhandenes Wissen wirksam und neues Wissen generiert? Um solchen Fragen systematisch nachzugehen, haben wir im Rahmen eines empirisch angelegten Forschungsprojekts neun Monate lang literarische Schreibprozesse-damit meinen wir die Organisation des gesamten Schreibprojekts von den ersten Impulsen und Ideen bis zu den letzten Korrekturen, und das impliziert unterschiedliche Tätigkeiten, die nicht immer einen textuellen Niederschlag finden-in actu beobachtet und zahlreiche Interviews durchgeführt. Eine besondere Herausforderung bei der Interpretation des empirischen Materials bestand darin, den Blick simultan auf das einzelne Individuum und auf das Kollektiv zu richten, da eine Praxis zwar individuell realisiert wird, aber zugleich das Ergebnis kollektiver Bemühungen ist. Hinter jeder künstlerischen Form gibt es also ein Praxiskollektiv, das die individuelle Kreativität und Anstrengung konstitutiv ermöglicht-ohne diese Einsicht verfällt man leicht und unmerklich der Genieverklärung. Unsere Motivation für die Auswahl dieses Themas hängt unter anderem mit Bestrebungen vieler (Kunst-)Universitäten zusammen, das künstlerische Handeln an eine Konzeption von Forschung und Wissensproduktion anzuknüpfen. Die Natur-, Formal-, Geistes-, Sozial-, und Kulturwissenschaften haben ihre Selbstreflexion bereits in die Form spezifischer Wissenschaftsund Erkenntnistheorien gegossen. Aber welche Art von Wissen und experimenteller Forschung wird im künstlerischen Prozess gewonnen? Gibt es analog zu den tradierten Wissenschaftstheorien überhaupt eine eigene Epistemologie, also eine Wissenstheorie der künstlerischen Praxis? Unsere Antwort dazu fällt bejahend aus-darüber gibt dieses Buch Auskunft-, aber wir sind der Auffassung, dass eine solche Epistemologie gegenwärtig, auch wenn in den letzten Jahrzehnten einige Publikationen vor allem über MusikerInnen, wenige über SchauspielerInnen und SchriftstellerInnen erschienen sind, eher ein Desiderat darstellt. Eine zentrale Annahme wissenstheoretischer Untersuchungen ist die These, intelligente und komplexe Handlungen-künstlerisches Handeln inbegriffen-seien wissensgeleitet. Mit diesem Postulat wird eine Abgrenzung zu einfachen, alltäglichen Vorkommnissen und Gewohnheiten hergestellt. "Wissen" und "wissensgeleitet" werden jedoch in der Wissenschaftsgemeinschaft unterschiedlich verstanden, sodass dieses Postulat weiter auslegungsbedürftig ist. Mentalistische Handlungstheorien setzen Bewusstseinsfunktionen (wie Absicht, Wille, Planung, Entschluss,. . .) in den Vordergrund und schreiben dem intelligenten Handeln eine bestimmte Struktur zu-pointiert gesagt: vor dem Handeln kommt die Kopfarbeit. Aktionen ohne klare Absicht, expliziten Plan und vor allem ohne Aufsicht des Verstandes wurde das Attribut "intelligent" meist verweigert-mit einer großen Ausnahme: dem künstlerischen Handeln. Der Geniebegriff legitimiert den seit dem 18. Jahrhundert philosophisch postulierten Sonderstatus des künstlerischen Schaffensaktes: Die Kritik an den verschiedenen Versionen des mentalistischen Paradigmas hat sukzessiv die Emergenz anderer Konzeptionen des Handlungsprozesses ermöglicht. So wird intelligentes Handeln nicht mehr notwendigerweise mit kognitiven Repräsentationen (wie etwa Plänen, explizierbaren Entscheidungen) verknüpft. Selbst dann, wenn Handelnde einen Plan haben, tauchen in der Umsetzungs-und Realisierungsphase oft neue Aspekte auf, die die Relevanz planerischer Vorgaben relativieren. Nichtstandardisierte Tätigkeiten, auch wenn sie sehr planvoll organisiert sind, bestehen folglich aus vielen kleinen und großen situationsspezifischen Improvisationen, die später in der Folge eines externen Rechtfertigungsdrucks durch rationale Handlungserklärungen häufig ausgeblendet werden. Die Forschungsfrage "Was passiert im Schaffensprozess?" zieht einen Kreis weiterer

This paper distinguishes between two main questions regarding the notion of privacy: “What is privacy?” and “Why do/should we value privacy?”. In developing a social-ontological recognitional model of privacy (SORM), it gives an answer to the first question. According to the SORM, Privacy is a second order quality of roles within social practices. It is a function of who is or should be recognized as a “standard authority”. Enjoying standard authority means to have the right to interpret and contest role behavior and role obligations within a specific practice (first level), as well as evaluate the normative structure, the fundamental practice norms as well as the roles and their status (second level). The SORM utilizes the concept of standard authority to explicate privacy with regard to two categories that capture the rele-vant phenomena of privacy: decisional and informational privacy. Within a practice, an actor is said to have decisional privacy if she as a BCR does not (or does not have to) recognize bearers of accidental roles as standard authorities. Vice versa, an actor is said to enjoy in-formational privacy if all other BCRs (and especially data collecting actors) recognize her as a standard authority. Additionally, the requirement of mutual recognition by the practice participants as standard authorities introduces a “weak normativity” into the theory, which can be used to identify deficient privacy arrangements within practices.

This paper investigates the contribution that securitization and praxiography can make to the study of maritime security. It investigates the concept of maritime security, its history and reference objects and provides a discussion of counter-piracy practices. While not offering detailed empirical results, the chapter outlines a research agenda on maritime security.

[published in Routledge's "Philosophy and Method in the Social Sciences" series]

This study starts from a simple premise:  human practices are a fundamental constituent — arguably “the” fundamental constituent — of social reality.  It then poses the following question:  What would social scientists’ research look like if they took this insight quite seriously?

That, of course, would depend on what practices are in fact like:  what their generic features are, how they are constituted, how they might be identified and characterised and explained, how they function in concrete contexts, how they might change across time and space.  These are the kinds of questions that this book tries to tackle, insisting that their answers hold important implications for the effective practice of social science.

The book thus attempts to build a philosophical infrastructure for the empirical study of practices in the social sciences and humanities.  At the same time, it also tries to explore the implications of this ontology of human practices for issues in social theory and in the philosophy of the social sciences.  The book thus stands at the intersection of the philosophy of social science, social theory, and the social sciences.

This research assesses two individual differences-general self-efficacy and regretful thinking-in the context of technological innovation. Results, obtained from a random sample of 217 patent inventors show that both general self-efficacy and regretful thinking distinguish inventors who started a business (i.e., technological entrepreneurs) from inventors who did not start a new business (i.e., technological nonentrepreneurs). More to the point, patent inventors, who at the time of our survey were actively involved in new business formation, tended to have significantly higher self-efficacy. Also, while technological entrepreneurs tended to have stronger regrets about business opportunities, technological nonentrepreneurs tended to have stronger regrets regarding career and education decisions. The two groups did not differ in terms of the quantity of these regrets. Implications for theory, practice, and future study of individual differences in entrepreneurship are discussed.

Rasant verbreitet sich im Zuge der Digitalisierung der Wille, alltägliches Geschehen nicht nur im Spektrum der Worte, sondern in Form von Zahlen zu dokumentieren. Im Kontext von Diabetes und Quantified Self analysiert Lisa Wiedemann in dieser Studie das sogenannte Self-Tracking als medizinisch indizierte und als „selbstinitiierte“ Praxis. Dabei werden die Vermessungspraktiken empirisch als veralltäglichte, selbstbezogene und verkörperte Praxis in den Blick genommen. Zur Diskussion steht, wie Self-Tracking in den Alltag übersetzt und in Interaktivität mit technisch-materiellen Akteuren im (in)stabilen Vollzug bedeutsam gemacht wird.

Springer VS

This paper presents ethnographic data on the use of learning materials in science education at the secondary school level. In science classes teachers and students transform ambiguous things into clearly defined and independent objects. This objectification of things is achieved in the course of three distinct phases: first, learning materials are pre- pared in an experimental set-up in designated rooms; second, they are put into practice when experiments are con- ducted; and, third, they are transferred to language and signs on the blackboard and in notebooks. This practical achievement is stabilized via an asymmetric distribution of activities and the design of learning materials. In relying on an epistemological paradigm that emphasizes visual appraisal at a distance science classes perpetuate a perspective in which cultural subjects and material objects are clearly distinguished.

The question of when and how international orders change remains a pertinent issue of International Relations theory. This article develops the model of pragmatic ordering to conceptualise change. The model of pragmatic ordering synthesises recent theoretical arguments for a focus on ordering advanced in-practice theory, pragmatist philosophy, and related approaches. It also integrates evidence from recent global governance research. We propose a five-stage model. According to the model, once a new problem emerges (problematisation), informality allows for experimenting with new practices and developing new knowledge (informalisation and experimentation). Once these experimental practices become codified, and survive contestation, they increasingly settle (codification) and are spread through learning and translation processes (consolidation). We draw on the rise of the maritime security agenda as a paradigmatic case and examine developments in the Western Indian Ocean region to illustrate each of these stages. The article draws attention to the substantial reorganisation of maritime space occurring over the past decade and offers an innovative approach for the study of orders and change.

La relación teoría-práctica es uno de los temas más relevantes y recurrentes en el campo de la didáctica porque es tan amplio, complejo y difuso que es imposible darle una respuesta definitiva. En este artículo se examinan las posibilidades y límites del mismo en el nuevo marco definido por el Espacio Europeo de Educación Superior que ha provocado cambios significativos en aspectos relevantes de la formación inicial del profesorado. De éstos,  los más destacados son  el aumento del tiempo de prácticas en centros escolares y la formación por competencias. Se concluye que este proceso de reforma debe ir acompañado de procesos de cambio en las aulas universitarias y su profesorado, y se ofrecen posibles líneas de trabajo para facilitar este cambio.

The Hesychastic system of spiritual practices leads to an enlightenment "experience" that involves the transcendence of the canons of rationality, liberation from conventional morality, and the cessation of emotions, passions, and thoughts (hesycheia). These transformations mark the beginning of theosis or divinization, practices including silent union with God, the paradoxical experience of divine light/darkness, and ineffability. These transformations, exceeding as they do the conditions of natural subjectivity, would seem to preclude any kind of artistic production. After all, how can any sensory experience lead to, follow from, or express theosis? However, theosis includes a further moment, the practice of reintegration, when the previously transcended elements of subjectivity become capable not only of expressing themselves artistically, but in such a way as to reveal the divine, and to elicit the possibility of transformation in others. In order to place the practices of reintegration in their proper context, we have to examine the nature of Hesychastic practices themselves. Analysis of the spiritual practices of the Hesychastic system reveals the functioning, scope, and purpose of individual practices, and of the system of practices generally. Once we have sketched out these characteristics, we will be able to see the ways in which reintegration both resembles, and goes beyond, them.

“As we know, well-led groups provide many member benefits: feelings of universality, a sense of hope, altruism, acquisition of knowledge and skills, and mutual support...This text is affordable, easy to use, and very suitable for providing group work material in BSW or MSW practice courses.”

— Greg Tully, West Chester University



AN EXPERIENTIAL APPROACH TO GROUP WORK
Second Edition

Rich Furman, University of Washington, Tacoma
Kimberly Bender, University of Denver
Diana Rowan, University of North Carolina, Charlotte

An Experiential Approach to Group Work is not your typical group work text! Using dozens of exercises that build practice-tested skills, the authors' approach is in perfect step with CSWE's competence-based education requirements. The book is organized into three sections—the first addresses stages of group practice, the second looks at major types of groups, and the final section looks at examples of group work practice with special populations.

Features of the Second Edition

    Expanded! Discussion of the theory of group process and dynamics
    New! Content regarding Canadian, British, and Australian group work practices
    New! Chapters on anti-oppressive practice, group work with immigrants, and macro-practice group work
    New! Content on the use and development of technology to aid group work
    Contains customized exercises for each group work topic, designed to build the student and practitioner’s skills for use in group work sessions
    Special emphasis on how to bring individual sessions or groups to closure
    Provides examples of group work in specialized settings: conflict resolution groups within elementary schools, pregnant teens, Latinos, and HIV/AIDS clients

The book is structured into three parts with the purpose of giving prominence to both the concepts and methods of practice-based studies. The first part consists of five chapters which illustrate what is meant by practice-based theorizing. The second part, which consists of a further six chapters, highlights the key concepts with which to describe and interpret situated practices. The third part of the book comprises four chapters which contain methodological reflections on how to conduct empirical research in workplaces using a practice-based approach.

In this article, we present the findings of a longitudinal study of coerced implementation of a practice in the face of a low degree of fit between the practice and an organization’s culture. Contrary to current predictions stating that a lack of cultural fit
will eventually be resolved through adaptation of new practices, our findings portray the implementation of culturally dissonant practices as an ongoing process involving the mutual adaptation of organizational practices and culture. Our emerging model
describes the cultural changes induced by the coercive implementation of new practices as involving a partial change in shared beliefs and behavioral patterns and a more general enrichment of the cultural repertoire of organization members.

This paper contributes to the recent 'practice turn' in management accounting literature in two ways: (1) by investigating the meshing and consequently the 'situated functionality' of accounting in various private equity (PE) practices, and (2) by experimenting with the application of Schatzki's 'site' ontology. By identifying and describing the role and nature of accounting and associated calculative practices in different parts of the PE value chain, we note that the 'situated functionality' of accounting is 'prefigured' by its 'dispersed' nature. A particular contribution of experimenting with Schatzki's 'site' ontology has been to identify theoretical concerns in relation to the meaning and role of the concept 'general understandings' and to clarify the definitional issues surrounding this concept. We also identify the close relationship between 'general understandings' and 'teleoaffective structure' and note their mutually constitutive nature.