He is on the editorial board of some 15 journals, and is the longest serving "Collaborating Editor" of Social Studies of Science.
In The Social Theory of Practices as well as in other writings Turner argues against collective concepts like culture: what we call culture (and similar concepts), he argues, needs to be understood in terms of the means of its transmission.
He has extended this argument in various places, most recently in relation to the philosophical idea of "normativity" which he argues is an explanation of "facts" which are the product of an unnecessary and mystery-producing redescription motivated by an attempt to take back ground from social science explanation.
Instead, he argues that this is only one solution among many to the problems produced by the fact that knowledge is distributed unequally.
Turner uses examples such as the claims in economics and the debate over climate change to show that reliance on experts can go wrong, and that the mechanisms of self-policing attributed to the scientific community are often ineffective.
He has also stressed Weber's use of empathy (Einfühlung) to solve the generic problem of the under-determination of description.