Practice theory emerged in the late 20th century and was first outlined in the work of the French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu.
Practice theory developed in reaction to the Structuralist school of thought, developed by social scientists including Claude Lévi-Strauss, who saw human behavior and organization systems as products of innate universal structures that reflect the mental structures of humans.
In 1972, French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu published Esquisse d'une théorie de la pratique (published in English as Outline of a Theory of Practice in 1977), which emerged from his ethnographic field work in French-occupied Algeria among the Kabyle at the outbreak of the Algerian War of Independence.
Instead, Bourdieu argues, culture and society are better understood as the product of dynamic interactions between social actors and structure.
First proposed by philosopher Marcel Mauss, Bourdieu uses the term habitus to refer to patterns of thought and behavior which are deeply internalized structures.
They inform our practice and give meaning to the world and are what drives us to behave in accordance with social and cultural conventions.
In contrast to Bourdieu, though, Foucault laid particular emphasis on the violence through which modern regimes (e.g. prisons and asylums) are used as a form of social control.
It is the learned, fundamental, deep-founded, unconscious beliefs and values that are taken as self-evident universals and inform an agent's actions and thoughts within a particular field.
The field represents a structured social space with its own rules, schemes of domination, legitimate opinions.
It is the intangible assets that enable actors to mobilize cultural authority/power as part of strategy e.g., e.g., competencies, education, intellect, style of speech, dress, social networks,.
[9] Her engagement with practice theory focuses on how agents "react to, cope with, or actively appropriate"[10] external structures.
Agents create broader social narratives practices unique to their specific culture from multiple schemas.
[21] His basic premise is that people do what makes sense for them to do and derives from the work of Martin Heidegger and Ludwig Wittgenstein.
[23] Such practices consist of four main elements: (1) practical understanding – "knowing how to X, knowing how to identify X-ings, and knowing how to prompt as well as respond to X-ings" (idem, p. 77); (2) rules – "explicit formulations, principles, precepts, and instructions that enjoin, direct or remonstrate people to perform specific actions" (idem, p. 79); (3) teleo-affective structure – "a range of normativized and hierarchically ordered ends, projects and tasks, to varying degrees allied with normativized emotions and even mood" (idem, p. 80); and (4) general understanding.