Everyday life is defined and characterised by the rise, transformation and fall of social practices. Using terminology that is both accessible and sophisticated, this essential book guides the reader through a multi-level analysis of this dynamic. In working through core propositions about social practices and how they change the book is clear and accessible; real world examples, including the history of car driving, the emergence of frozen food, and the fate of hula hooping, bring abstract concepts to life and firmly ground them in empirical case-studies and new research. Demonstrating the relevance of social theory for public policy problems, the authors show that the everyday is the basis of social transformation addressing questions such as: how do practices emerge, exist and die? what are the elements from which practices are made? how do practices recruit practitioners? how are elements, practices and the links between them generated, renewed and reproduced? Precise, relevant and persuasive this book will inspire students and researchers from across the social sciences. Elizabeth Shove is Professor of Sociology at Lancaster University. Mika Pantzar is Research Professor at the National Consumer Research Centre, Helsinki. Matt Watson is Lecturer in Social and Cultural Geography at University of Sheffield.

There has been an upsurge in scholarship concerned with theories of social practices in various fields including sociology, geography and management studies. This book provides a systematic introduction and overview of recent formulations of practice theory organised around three important themes: the importance of analysing the role of the non-human alongside the human; the reflexive nature of social science research; and the dynamics of social change. Combining a rich variety of detailed empirical research examples with discussion of the relevance of practice theories for policy and social change, this book represents an excellent sourcebook for all academic and professional researchers interested in working with practice theory.

Infrastructures in Practice shows how infrastructures and daily life shape each other. Power grids, roads and broadband make modern lifestyles possible – at the same time, their design and day-to-day operation depends on what people do at home and at work. This volume investigates the entanglement of supply and demand. It explains how standards and 'normal' ways of living have changed over time and how infrastructures have changed with them. Studies of grid expansion and disruption, heating systems, the internet, urban planning and office standards, smart meters and demand management reveal this dynamic interdependence. This is the first book to examine the interdependence between infrastructures and the practices of daily life. It offers an analysis of how new technologies, lifestyles and standards become normalised and fall out of use. It brings together diverse disciplines – history, sociology, science studies – to develop social theories and accounts of how infrastructures and practices constitute each other at different scales and over time. It shows how networks and demands are steered and shaped, and how social and political visions are woven into infrastructures, past, present and future. Original, wide-ranging and theoretically informed, this book puts the many practices of daily life back into the study of infrastructures. The result is a fresh understanding of how resource-intensive forms of consumption and energy demand have come about and what is needed to move towards a more sustainable lower carbon future.

The Nexus of Practices: connections, constellations, practitioners brings leading theorists of practice together to provide a fresh set of theoretical impulses for the surge of practice-focused studies currently sweeping across the social disciplines. The book addresses key issues facing practice theory, expands practice theory’s conceptual repertoire, and explores new empirical terrain. With each intellectual move, it generates further opportunities for social research. More specifically, the book’s chapters offer new approaches to analysing connections within the nexus of practices, to exploring the dynamics and implications of the constellations that practices form, and to understanding people as practitioners that carry on practices. Topics examined include social change, language, power, affect, reflection, large social phenomena, and connectivity over time and space. Contributors thereby counter claims that practice theory cannot handle large phenomena and that it ignores people. The contributions also develop practice theoretical ideas in dialogue with other forms of social theory and in ways illustrated and informed by empirical cases and examples. The Nexus of Practices will quickly become an important point of reference for future practice-focused research in the social sciences.

Art matters. It affects us in our daily lives and is full of meanings that are valuable to all of us. As a catalyst for social interactions, art may either cause public conflict and create dissensions or facilitate mutual understanding and strengthen collective bonds. All of this is grounded in practices that develop and change along social interaction, cultural dynamics, as well as technological and economic lines. So how is art formed and produced? What are the relevant constraints and challenges that artists experience in the creative process? And what constitutes artistic agency? This collection of contributions from international, interdisciplinary experts explores particular case studies to deeply analyse artistic practices. Comprising eleven chapters relating to different art forms, each chapter offers an original perspective conveying a comprehensive understanding of artistic practices as arrays of specific activities in contemporary art worlds. This book will be important for both researchers and practitioners in the field. It will help artists to deepen their analytical abilities, enabling them to further their own creative practice. It will allow students and researchers to gain insights into processes of artistic creation and thus into the reproduction of art, as well as innovation in the arts.

Social Dynamics: Models and Methods focuses on sociological methodology and on the practice of sociological research. This book is organized into three parts encompassing 16 chapters that deal with the basic principles of social dynamics. The first part of this book considers the development of models and methods for causal analysis of the actual time paths of change in attributes of individual and social systems. This part also discusses the applications in which the use of dynamic models and methods seems to have enhanced the capacity to formulate and test sociological arguments. These models and methods are useful for answering questions about the detailed structure of social change processes. The second part explores the formulation of the continuous-time models of change in both quantitative and qualitative outcomes and the development of suitable methods for estimating these models from the kinds of data commonly available to sociologists. The third part describes a stochastic framework for analyzing both qualitative and quantitative outcome of social changes. This part also discusses the sociologists' perspective on the empirical study of social change processes. This text will be of great value to sociologists and sociological researchers.

Climate change is widely agreed to be one the greatest challenges facing society today. Mitigating and adapting to it is certain to require new ways of living. Thus far efforts to promote less resource-intensive habits and routines have centred on typically limited understandings of individual agency, choice and change. This book shows how much more the social sciences have to offer. The contributors to Sustainable Practices: Social Theory and Climate Change come from different disciplines – sociology, geography, economics and philosophy – but are alike in taking social theories of practice as a common point of reference. This volume explores questions which arise from this distinctive and fresh approach: how do practices and material elements circulate and intersect? how do complex infrastructures and systems form and break apart? how does the reproduction of social practice sustain related patterns of inequality and injustice? This collection shows how social theories of practice can help us understand what societal transitions towards sustainability might involve, and how they might be achieved. It will be of interest to students and researchers in sociology, environmental studies, geography, philosophy and economics, and to policy makers and advisors working in this field.