Reflecting on Practices

New Directions for Spatial Theories

Edited by Dr. Friederike Landau-Donnelly, Dr. Hanna Carlsson, Arnoud Lagendijk

Publication date:

18 January 2024

Publisher

Agenda Publishing

Dimensions:

234x156mm
6x9"

ISBN-13: 9781788215749

This collection of essays aims to better understand what researchers do when they practice research. The team of contributors – which includes human geographers, urban planners and environmental scientists – expose various epistemological, ontological and methodological challenges to pin down what practices "are".

The essays showcase how practice theory can help spatial scientists generate new and future-oriented insights on debates such as mobility, relationality, and forms of critical spatial practice. In this way, the book reinforces a specifically geographic and spatial account that is needed for the development of practice theory while also shining new light on current debates within practice theory on power, politics and space. The book positions practices as the point of departure to study and conceptualize socio-spatial life.

1 Introduction, Hanna Carlsson, Arnoud Lagendijk and Friederike Landau-Donnelly

Part I Struggling empirically towards transformation

2 Sports and space invaders: practice theoretical tools to understand change towards inclusion, Hanna Carlsson

3 Practices and power in processes of transformative change: the example of “Recognition and Rewards” at Dutch universities, Arnoud Lagendijk and Mark Wiering

4 Transnational developmental practices of diasporas in postwar Sri Lanka, Mohamed Munas and Lothar Smith

Part II Essays on practicing contested everyday life

5 Practicing post-foundationalism: encountering conflict and contingency in pandemic everyday life, Friederike Landau-Donnelly and Lucas Pohl

6 Emergent and stranded practices: infrastructuring parental spaces as anti-deportation protests, Joris Schapendonk

7 Practicing Covid quarantine, Olivier Thomas Kramsch

Part III Theorising new phenomena and practices

8 Counter-actualizing privacy: from metric panopticons through boundary interpretations to “veillance practices”, Freek de Haan

9 Praxeological field research: analysing the co-production of social phenomena and individual agency, Klaus Geiselhart, Simon Runkel, Susann Schäfer and Benedikt Schmid

10 A practice for the “perpetual pursuit of unknowable novelty”, Peter Ache

11 The practice of practice theories: a critically reflexive contribution to the debate, Huib Ernste

12 Concluding thoughts, Friederike Landau-Donnelly, Hanna Carlsson and Arnoud Lagendijk

The radically diverse contributions to this collection provide so much to think with. From essayistic reflection through dedicated analysis of generally dynamic and contested empirical topics, to theoretical exposition, the volume overall confronts tensions and gaps in current work with practice theories and makes contributions to current frontiers of theoretical development in the field.