Description
Book SynopsisThis book presents the first analysis and critique of the idea of practice as it has developed in the various theoretical traditions of the social sciences and the humanities. The concept of a practice, understood broadly as a tacit possession that is a shareda by and the same for different people, has a fatal difficulty, the author argues.
Trade Review'This is a fresh, highly intelligent and stimulating study that should be of considerable interest to philosophers and social and political scientists alike.'
Stanley Rosen, Pennsylvania State University 'Turner's book offers a devastating critique of one of the central analytic tools of contemporary humanities scholarship. He shows how the notion of practices has become the postmodernist counterpart to traditional explanation- stoppers or first principles. More importantly, he drives home the principled inability of practice jargon to explain, or even to acknowledge,the phenomena of change of rules and concepts.'
Larry Laudan, University of Hawaii
'This is a wide-ranging, highly critical, indeed polemical book.'
Political Studies
'Provocative and intelligent book ... impressively wide in scope.'
Studies in History and Philosophy of Science
Table of Contents1. Practices and their Conceptual Kin.
2. Practices as Causes.
3. Practices as Presuppositions.
4. Transmission.
5. Change and History.
6. The Opacity of Practice.
Notes.
Index.
