To gain better understanding of the epistemology of practice—and therefore move away from analysis that privileges action as the product of actors in a given context—it is useful to recall how Ira Cohen (1996) distinguishes between theories of action and theories of practice. We may say that whilst the former theories privilege the intentionality of actors, from which derives meaningful action (in the tradition of Weber and Parsons), the latter locate the source of significant patterns in how conduct is enacted, performed, or produced (in the tradition of Schutz, Dewey, Mead, Garfinkel, and Giddens). Hence, theories of practice assume an ecological model in which agency is distributed between humans and non-humans and in which the relationality between the social world and materiality can be subjected to inquiry. Whilst theories of action start from individuals and their intentionality in pursuing courses of action, theories of practice view actions as ‘taking place’ or ‘happening,’ as being performed through a network of connections-in-action, as life-world and dwelling (as the phenomenological legacy names them, see Sandberg and Dall’Alba, 2009).
The adoption of an ecological model that gives ontological priority to neither humans nor non-humans, or discursive practices, constitutes the fundamental difference between theories of action and of practice. It is in this interpretative framework that the difference can be grasped between the study of practice as an empirical object and the use of practice as epistemology. The difference is based on the attribution to practice of a realist ontology (that objectifies practices as primary units) and a social constructionist conception that does not distinguish between the production of knowledge and construction of the object of knowledge (between ontology and epistemology). From this derive different methodologies for the conduct of practice-based studies (Charreire-Petit and Huault, 2008).
One may answer the question as to what type of epistemology the epistemology of practice is by referring to Østerlund and Carlile (2005), who illustrate, through a re-reading of three classic studies on communities of practice (Lave and Wenger, 1991; Wenger, 1998; Brown and Duguid, 1991, 1998, 2001), how practice epistemology is based on a relational thinking in which the practice is the locus for the production and reproduction of social relations. The three studies not only select a specific practice to study (Lave and Wenger focus on the relation between newcomers and old-timers, Wenger on identity formation, and Brown and Duguid on community knowledge and canonical versus non canonical practices) but also choose to study this practice with regard to a limited set of relations characterized by specific differences, dependencies, changes, and power dynamics. But aside from the specific practice that can be studied and the relationships on which an author may choose to focus, the main feature of practice as relational epistemology is its focus on the emergence of relations through ongoing interaction and their normative stabilization.
Not only do subject and object define each other within a context of interaction, but the relationship between the material and the discursive comes about as a single phenomenon in which materiality is social—as social studies on technology have shown (Law, 1994)—and the process of meaning-making encompasses material semiosis. The term ‘sociomateriality’ has come into use after removal of the hyphen between the two terms (Orlikoswki, 2007; 2009). And the term ‘intra-action,’ coined by Barad (2003; 2007) to locate the relationship of mutual determination between subject and object, has also entered the lexicon of organization studies (Iedema, 2007; Nyberg, 2009) in relation to practice as epistemology. In other words, it is in the historically situated context of a practice that the knowing subject, the object of knowledge, and sociomateriality are involved in the processes of ‘becoming’ through which their identities are materially negotiated and (re)confirmed (Chia 2003: 106).
The epistemology of practice makes it possible to articulate the dynamic that occurs between the becoming of a practice as a socially sustained mode of action in a given context and the ‘given’ sociomaterial context in which it develops. Practice is situated between the given and the emergent as an element in the social order. If, therefore, practice is different from action, if it is not an ontologically distinct entity, we may ask how a practice becomes such, what relationship it assumes with other practices, and what effects it produces.