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What is a Social Practice?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 July 2018

Sally Haslanger
Sally Haslanger*
Affiliation:
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
*
shaslang@mit.edu
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Abstract

This paper provides an account of social practices that reveals how they are constitutive of social agency, enable coordination around things of value, and are a site for social intervention. The social world, on this account, does not begin when psychologically sophisticated individuals interact to share knowledge or make plans. Instead, culture shapes agents to interpret and respond both to each other and the physical world around us. Practices shape us as we shape them. This provides resources for understanding why social practices tend to be stable, but also reveals sites and opportunities for change. (Challenge social meanings! Intervene in the material conditions!)

Type
Papers
Information
Royal Institute of Philosophy Supplements , Volume 82: Metaphysics , July 2018 , pp. 231 - 247
Copyright
Copyright © The Royal Institute of Philosophy and the contributors 2018 

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References

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2 In some cases, the term ‘coordination’ is used as a success term when we have achieved a solution to a coordination problem, defined in the game-theoretic sense (e.g., where the outcome of an action depends on others, there is uncertainty about the other's course of action, and more than one equilibrium). I am not assuming in my use of the term that coordination is always a solution to such a problem.

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24 This remains very vague and needs development. I want to avoid saying, however, that the members of the community ‘follow’ a rule or ‘draw’ the inferences. The kind of information processing in question should be available also to non-human animals. Dogs, for example, are capable of communicating and coordinating with humans by processing learned signals and signs in ways that reflect inferential patterns. One way of spelling this out is in terms of an enhanced intentional stance (Zawidzki, Mindshaping, 14–15, 38). See also Brandom, Robert B., Articulating Reasons: An Introduction to Inferentialism (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2001)Google Scholar; Williamson, Timothy, ‘Blind Reasoning’, Aristotelian Society Supplementary Volume 77 (2003): 249–293CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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41 Sewell, ‘A Theory of Structure: Duality, Agency and Transformation’, 13 (my italics). The quoted part from Sewell is his definition of structure, that I have previously employed in an effort to analyze the practices that make up the structures. It seemed to me plausible not only that practices are self-sustaining, but that once we have this notion of practice, structures can be easily understood in terms of networks of practices.

42 This point was raised in a discussion of this paper at Stanford University in May 2017. Unfortunately, I cannot recall who raised the question. Nevertheless, thanks to the questioner!

43 Sterelny, The Evolved Apprentice, 174–177; Zawidzki, Mindshaping, 17–18

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45 For helpful input and discussion, special thanks to Amalia Amaya, Lanier Anderson, Axel Barceló, Michael Bratman, Ruth Chang, Angeles Eraña, Maite Ezcurdia, Kit Fine, Fernando Rudy Hiller, David Hills, Rachel McKinney, Anthony O'Hear, Carlos Pareda, Faviola Rivera, Miguel Ángel Sebastían, Kenneth Taylor, Moisés Vaca, and many others, including audiences where material in this paper was presented at the Royal Institute of Philosophy, Stanford University, the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM) Institute of Philosophy. Thanks also to Adam Ferner for his help and patience.