Hello and welcome to all my new followers.

I must explain that this 'learning blog' idea is a bit of an experiment that Gill and I are trying, so please stick with us as we think it could be a really great way of getting everyone engaged with the course (and maybe even staying in touch with one another after the course finishes).

So, the first blog topic was 'what do I want to get out of this module, and what do I find interesting about sustainable consumption'.

Right - what do I want to get out of the module...hmm, what I like best about teaching on this module is the practicals and getting everyone engaging with the different theories and approaches to sustainable consumption that the course talks about. Everyone comes at this from their own unique perspective so it's quite exciting when people share them with others. This is, actually, one of the best parts about teaching on masters courses, where there are usually smaller groups, so more people can input more interesting ideas. This is another reason why Gill and I thought this blog idea would be a good one, because it gives people even more chance to engage with the ideas and to come up with their own better ones.

So, what do I find most interesting about sustainable consumption. Well, I hope some of my interest in it is explained in the posts I've added below - these highlight some of my research interests. In short, though, I'm interested in the idea that sustainable living might demand quite radical changes in what it means to be a 'normal' human being. One of the examples in this afternoons practical was about showering and how often we're socially expected to shower. I guess what I'm interested in is how these ideas evolve and change over time. Further, I guess I'm concerned that the current ways of trying to bring sustainable consumption about seem to fall well short of even beginning to challenge what counts as 'normal', so another interest is in what other methods we might use to do this.

Getting a bit phronetic

I’m giving a paper in a little under two weeks at the Royal Geographical Society (RGS) conference in Manchester as part of a session I’m co-organising that’s rather grandly entitled ‘Innovating methodological approaches to pro-environmental behaviour’ or some such. Now, it was back in November/December 2008 that I dreamed up my abstract for this session. I’d recently read Bent Flyvbjerg’s book ‘Making Social Science Matter’ (2001, C.U.P.) and was so interested in the approach he was advocating that I thought I’d try and put a paper together on it. I’d just finished my PhD when I read the book, and really felt that Flyvbjerg explained a lot of the things I’d been trying to do, however at the time I hadn’t necessarily been able to justify why I was doing them, I suppose they just felt right, and I certainly didn’t have a vocabulary with which to describe them. So, the idea of trying to work out what a phronetic approach (which is what Flyvbjerg calls for) to pro-environmental behaviour seemed a good one. I still think it is a pretty good idea, only it’s now less than two weeks before the conference and I haven’t had a great deal of time to work on it, so it’s all a bit of a last minute thing, which is why I thought I’d sketch some of the initial ideas here.

Flyvbjerg argues that the social sciences have not had the impact that the natural sciences have had because they’ve been misguided in their attempts to emulate the natural sciences and seek universal, context-independent laws for how the social world works. He argues, however, that whilst the social sciences have been weakest where the natural sciences have been strongest, the reverse can also be true if a phronetic approach is sought instead. So, what is a phronetic approach?

Flyvbjerg draws on the Aristotelian distinction between three qualitatively different types of knowledge: episteme, techne and phronesis.

Episteme is scientific knowledge, and is still found today in words like epistemology, (indeed it’s the only one of the three words that my spell checker recognises). This is produced by the application of an analytical and logical kind of rationality which seeks universal, invariable context-independent laws to explain things.

Techne is technical knowledge, and is found today in words like technology or technique. This is essentially the engineering sciences. This is built not by seeking universal laws but by seeking pragmatic solutions to specific problems. The key thing about techne is that its production oriented and utilises a form of instrumental rationality to achieve a clear and conscious goal.

Phronesis has no obvious modern day equivalent, although has been translated into prudence or ‘practical wisdom’. Like techne, phronetic knowledge is also pragmatic, variable and context-dependent, and it’s also oriented towards action, but here this is action based on ‘value-rationality’ i.e. there may be no clearly identified problem to solve or goal to achieve because phronesis asks questions “with regard to things that are good or bad for man” (Aristotle in Flyvbjerg 2001, p2).

Now, Flyvbjerg isn’t suggesting that phronesis is necessarily better than techne or episteme in general. It’s very handy to know about the law of gravity, or to have a bridge that helps one cross a river. The point, however, is that each form of knowledge has it’s place and that you end up in a muddle if you try and apply one form of knowledge to an inappropriate set of issues. This is exactly what Flyvbjerg suggests has happened in the social sciences. He suggests that if the social sciences stopped seeking episteme and started seeking phronesis they might start to have more of an impact – they might start to matter. In his words:

“just as the social sciences have not contributed much to explanatory and predictive theory, neither have the natural sciences contributed to the reflexive analysis and discussion of values and interests, which is the prerequisite for an enlightened political, economic, and cultural development in any society.” (Flyvbjerg 2001, p3)

So, this sounds like a good idea to me, but what has it got to do with pro-environmental behaviour and the RGS?

Well, in my excitement after reading the book I felt quite strongly that a lot of the work on pro-environmental behaviour that I’d been critiquing in the thesis, particular that from a more quantitative psychological approach, was ultimately seeking to produce universal, invariable, context-independent models of pro-environmental behaviour. In short, this was perhaps a good example of the pursuit of episteme where phronesis might be more appropriate.

To give an example, models like Ajzen and Fishbein’s ‘Theory of Planned Behaviour’ (TPB - see below), although there are many many more I could select, ultimately suggest that human behaviour is nothing more than the logical outcome of a combination of different antecedent variables. In the case the TPB these variables are things like the evaluation of outcomes, ‘perceived behavioural control’, and social norms etc. and of course others have added lots more factors to this list, but ultimately all these ‘improvements’ to the model simply suggest that as long as you’ve identified the antecedent variables and they are present in the right quantities, then a particular form of either pro- or anti-environmental behaviour will be the more or less inevitable outcome. Yes, these models recognise that the precise mix and balance of variables might differ across contexts, but ultimately behaviour is still reduced to the product of these magic ingredients. This, of course, has been rapidly picked up by policy makers eager to change behaviour, but if one looks at what they’ve ultimately attempted to do, it’s basically been about trying to make sure the right variables (such as pro-environmental attitudes) are present in more places.



This, I think, is a classic case of episteme, and in my thesis it was precisely this mechanistic reductionism that I sought to challenge. Now, my thesis looked at a pro-environmental behaviour change initiative in a workplace, just one. I’m sure psychologists would claim to explain the moderately successful results of the initiative using models like the TPB, but through my ethnographic research I uncovered a whole host of usually ignored social processes which, I feel, cannot meaningfully be reduced to a simple variable in behaviour and placed in the mix with a series of others. Instead, I saw that pro-environmental behaviour change involved groups of intelligent and active people negotiating amongst themselves about precisely what their current behaviour was and what significance it had in environmental debates, asking what ‘the environment’ meant and imbuing it with a specific meaning in their specific context, considering who was telling them to change their behaviour and what right they had to do so, and also considering what other positive human values their everyday behaviour sought to fulfil and how these might be affected and challenged by a shift towards more pro-environmental sets of values and meanings. In short, I felt that these were deliberations about phronesis rather than about episteme or techne. These were deliberations about social values and relationships, about what is good or bad, and what would be a wise thing to do, rather than questions about the mechanics of individual decision-making. That’s why I thought a paper trying to flesh out what a phronetic approach to pro-environmental behaviour might look like would be a good idea. I only wish I had more time ahead of the RGS to try and do it justice.

Anyway, one of the most interesting parts of Flyvbjerg’s work is when he relates these ideas about different types of knowledges to different models of human learning. In particular, he describes Hubert and Stuart Dreyfus’ model of learning – the Dreyfus model (1986) – which is based on extensive phenomenological research and suggests that, in the course of learning, learners (and the presumption here seems to be that individuals are learners rather than communities, institutions or societies for example) pass through a number of stages en-route to expertise in a particular area. The Dreyfus model highlights 5 such stages.

The first stage is that of the ‘Novice’. Here, learners learn rules and how to follow them. Using my favourite example, we might suggest that one of the first stages of learning to play cricket is learning the basic laws of the game, or the first stage in learning to play the cover drive is being taught which parts of the body and bat to put in which positions. Now learning such rules is obviously vitally important, but interestingly, the Dreyfus model points out, after a certain point rules and their dogmatic following can actually be a hindrance to further learning. It is all well and good knowing how to perform a cover drive in a technically perfect manner, but this must also be adapted to specific situations – depending, for example, on the pitch, the conditions, the bowler etc. etc.

Once such rule-following behaviour becomes a hindrance, the Dreyfus model suggests learners move to a second stage, that of the ‘Advanced Beginner’. Here, the learner starts to recognise the salient elements of specific situations that demand rules are bent or even broken. In short, in this stage rules remain important and what behaviour occurs is still based around these rules, but there is also an element of trial and error and personal experience creeping into learning here – it’s about working out when rules don’t fully apply. In cricket, this might be characterised by, for example, analysing the pitch before a game and working out that expansive cover drives could be risky. Again, the rules of how to play a cover drive or other shots are what is guiding action, but the specific situation is also being factored-in to decision-making.

Moving beyond this second stage, there’s something of a change in the nature of how learning occurs. The third stage, that of the ‘Competent Performer’, involves a move away from simply following rules, or working out when not to follow them, but towards a greater level of personal interpretation and judgement of specific situations. Once this stage is reached, action is no longer a case of identifying which rules apply and which don’t, but the learner is seen to reach a state of ‘flow’ as they begin more intuitively to adapt their behaviour to the specific situation and its changing elements. S/he is here able to make personal judgements about what needs to be done and in what order to achieve certain goals. So, in cricket, this might be adopting the old adage of ‘playing each ball on its merits’. There aren’t rules existing in the batsman’s head simply waiting to be followed any longer, but each ball demands that new judgements are made about what is an appropriate shot to play, with what timing, with what level of force, for example.

Vitally, Flyvbjerg argues that there is a qualitative leap between the first and second stages and this third stage. He likens this leap to the limits of computer models in predicting human action:

“People are generally seen as problem-solving beings who follow a sequential model of reasoning consisting of “elements-rules-goals-plans-decisions” [by the cognitivists]. It is this model which the cognitivists have attempted to simulate in computers and in various problem-solving models, in ‘expert systems’ and in artificial intelligence. Their extrapolation yields good results when the models are applied to well-defined tasks with well-defined solutions. The cognitivists have had much less success, however, when the tasks and solutions are less well-defined.” (Flyvbjerg 2001, p14)

In short, when situations are dynamic and solutions must be found that are appropriate to these specific dynamic situations, there is a need to move beyond the simple following of fixed and static rules.

Now, I’ll admit that the next two stages of the Dreyfus model, at least on my reading of Flyvbjerg’s description, seem to be a rather vague extension of this third stage. Stage four, the ‘Proficient Performer’ sees the process of interpretation and judgment that began to happen in stage 3 become more continuous and less sequential. Then, stage 5 – ‘Expert’ – is characterised by effortless performance. This, I’d imagine, is the way you might describe how Ricky Ponting or Sachin Tendulkar bat, the way they seem to have inordinate amounts of time to select and play their shots even when bowlers are steaming in at 90-plus mph. At this expert level, performances are virtuoso in nature and rules no longer apply. Here the individual learner has reached a level of intuitive understanding and action that stretches beyond what episteme and techne can provide. As Flyvbjerg puts it:

“Where science does not reach, art, literature and narrative often help us comprehend the reality in which we live.” (Flyvbjerg 2001, p18)

Now, once again I’ve rather digressed beyond the nature of the paper I’m giving at the RGS, so to get back on track quickly, the argument I’d make on the basis of the Dreyfus’ model, is that conventional psychological approaches to pro-environmental behaviour interpret behaviour as a form of rule-following and seek to change it by adjusting the rules people follow i.e. by adding a pro-environmental attitude into consumer purchasing decisions. In short, they address individuals as, at best, stage 1 or 2 learners.

Thinking about this more carefully, and linking this back to the methodological thrust of the RGS session, it’s immediately understandable why these approaches address people in these ways, because the methods they use are designed to systematically eradicate situational specifics. These approaches tend to be based on questionnaire methods and statistical analyses of the different models. The specific strength of these approaches is said to be that they get beyond unreliable single cases to provide (statistical) representativeness. To do this, they are forced to highlight only very specific aspects of behaviours that are seen as common, albeit in potentially greater or lesser quantities, across all situations. In short, all the contextual detail, the expertise and virtuosity that individuals display as the undeniable experts in the conduct of their own day-to-day lives, is intentionally ignored and airbrushed out of the analyses. Admittedly some individuals might find rule following necessary, but such back to basics measures hardly seem fit for virtuoso’s – which is perhaps why people like Kevin Pietersen and Shane Warne have never really got on with coaches, although this is a little bit flippant.

So, instead of this return to rules, what is instead needed is greater attention to specific cases of behaviour and behaviour change, and the complexity of values, relationships, debates and deliberations that these quotidian experts are constantly, even if unconsciously, engaged in. Research on pro-environmental behaviour, I’d suggest, needs to turn to the action and deliberation that experts in everyday life conduct in specific situations. This, I think, is what my thesis was trying to achieve a better understanding of, and what more research in this area should seek.

Now, I’m going on a bit and my recent resolve to try and keep blog entries short has vanished as if it never existed, indeed, this is far too much stuff for a single conference paper, but before I stop, it is worth noting that Flyvbjerg offers some fairly loose ‘methodological guidelines’ for how a phronetic approach should be sought. These aren’t prescriptive rules to be followed – that would be hypocritical – but they are principles and values to apply and challenge across specific research projects into specific problems. First, he highlights four ‘value-rational’ questions which he sees as lying at the heart of all phronetic research. These are:

1. Where are we going? (e.g. with attempts to encourage pro-environmental behaviour)
2. Who gains and who loses, and by what mechanisms of power?
3. Is this desirable?
4. What should be done?

So, these are pretty big questions, and I hope the extent of the difference between these and questions about ‘what are the key drivers and barriers for pro-environmental behaviour’ is immediately apparent. In some sense, this is asking something of a prior question along the lines of ‘what is pro-environmental behaviour really seeking to achieve?’

Now, with these as the guiding questions, Flyvbjerg suggests nine guidelines for attempts to answer them. These are as follows:

1. Focus on values
2. Put power at the core of the analysis
3. Get close to reality (i.e. to the situation being studied)
4. Emphasise little things – details.
5. Look at practice before discourse
6. Study cases and contexts
7. Do narrative and ask how
8. Join agency and structure
9. Dialogue with a polyphony of voices

Simple really isn’t it? Now again, these guidelines aren’t meant to be prescriptive, it’s not as if they forbid one from using questionnaires or interviews in specific cases, and indeed it’s unclear if you have to simultaneously follow them all in order to be classed as ‘doing phronetic research’ – although I’d suggest that several of them are mutually reinforcing (this is certainly what I found in my PhD research – one tends to lead to another). What these guidelines suggest to me though, and others will surely interpret them differently, is that a key method for research seeking to adopt a phronetic approach is the ethnographic case study. Whilst this may not produce general laws or models for how behaviour occurs and how it might be change, this isn’t the point. Instead, what it does, I’d suggest, is treat individuals not as rule-following dunces, but as expert practitioners of everyday life. It enables the researcher to see beyond rule-based models and to try and get close to understanding virtuouso performances of both pro- and anti-environmental behaviour. By doing these things it might also be able to help individuals and groups to address much more significant questions about what is good or bad for them and for the environment, and what they might be able to do about it. In Flyvbjerg’s words:

“the purpose of social science is not to develop theory, but to contribute to society’s practical rationality in elucidating where we are, where we want to go, and what is desirable according to diverse sets of values and interests.” (Flyvbjerg 2001, p167)

This, arguably, is the way we might make social science matter. My hope is that this will also encourage pro-environmental behaviour not for its own sake, or because the Government thinks it’s a good idea, but as part of a contribution to deliberations over what sort of sustainability we wish to create. I would suggest, then, that there’s a need to get a bit more phronetic about these issues, rather than wasting time fretting about which drivers and barriers might encourage an individual to decide to turn a light off.

The individual and practice theory (and cricket)

Right, ever since I attended a meeting recently, something’s been troubling me about social practice theory. I’ll introduce this and why anyone should care about it in a moment, but the burning issue for me is this:

What happens to the individual in practice-based accounts of social change?

Right, for those who don’t know what I’m on about, practice theory (PT) is an emerging approach to understanding social order and change that attempts to escape from the methodological individualism and overflowing levels of individual agency in more conventional economic and psychological accounts. This is important because if we’re going to make the social and behavioural changes necessary to avoid the worst effects of environmental problems (like climate change) in the time we have available, then we need a decent understanding of how such social change happens and how it might be brought about. Anyway, putting it crudely, conventional accounts assume that an individuals’ behaviour is the relatively straightforward outcome of the choices individuals make, which it suggests are determined by a series of psychological (e.g. an individuals’ attitudes or values) and contextual (e.g. what other people think about recycling or whether or not a kerbside scheme is available) factors. Changing behaviour is thus a pretty straightforward process of getting the psychological factors right (e.g. spreading pro-environmental attitudes and values) and getting the contextual factors right (e.g. providing kerbside recycling schemes and making everyone pro-recycling). So far so simple, and this approach has a really nice common sense appeal making it easy to understand why it’s buried right at the heart of contemporary policy making.

PT, however, challenges this view. It downplays the scope and significance of individual choice saying that attention should turn instead towards how ‘social practices’ are collectively and socially organised and how this differs across space and through time. So, what is a social practice? Well, where conventional accounts assume social life is made up of the sum of individual decisions, PT suggests that social reality is divided into discrete blocks or chunks which have their own internal logics and dynamics. These are practices, such as football, cricket, cooking, writing a blog etc. etc. Basically the things people ‘do’ in the course of everyday life are all part of one social practice or another (or maybe even many). Anyway, there’s a rather stolid theoretical debate about precisely what these chunks of existence called practices are made up of and how to draw boundaries around them, but I rather the like Elizabeth Shove’s (and she’s developed this with others like Mika Pantzar, Alan Warde, Dale Southerton etc etc) view that practices consist in the inter-relationships between three different elements: images/discourses, skills/routines, and stuff/artefacts. So, to draw on cricket as an example, because it’s one of my favourite things and - this being written in the heart of an Ashes series- it seems appropriate, the stuff/artefacts are easily identified as a bat and a ball (stumps, pads etc. are optional extras really), the skills are those of batting, bowling and fielding, and the images/discourses are the laws of the game alongside some localised understanding about how seriously the game should be taken e.g. are you about to hit the winning runs in an Ashes test match or are you playing with your 5-year old child on the beach. The basic point of PT is that if you change any one of these elements, then what you’re left with is just not cricket, or at least it’s a different kind of cricket.

So, this is quite a different approach. Rather than looking at individual decision making processes and the influences thereupon, it turns attention towards images, skills and stuff and how they are collectively organised and negotiated. As such, it poses some pretty taxing questions. Where the conventional approach provides a pretty simple, linear model with obvious implications for how to change things, PT suggests that things have their own internal logics and that these are co-evolutionary and dynamic and nature. To give an example of this, the meeting I attended recently explored people’s bathing practices. Conventional approaches would say that to save water you need to spread pro-environmental values among the populace and to provide technical-fixes such as water saving devices on showerheads etc. In contrast, PT shows that the reasons why we bathe as we do are a lot more complex than this. At the meeting we all introduced ourselves through a picture of our bathrooms, and a one-to-one interview about our bathing practices. What this revealed is that we all had pretty much the same bathroom infrastructures – bath, shower, sink, toilet – despite big differences in our ages, incomes etc, but that we used this same infrastructure in massively different ways which related to things like what stage we were at in our lives (e.g. people tend to share baths with siblings when their little, then as they get older tend to shower a bit more, then shower a lot at university etc etc), what we each perceived as being ‘clean’, what other practices we were doing (e.g. were we about to go to work or had we just finished playing football?) and lots of other things. Crucially, very few of these bathing stories had anything to do with ‘the environment’, and they seemed to have even less to do with individual attitudes, values or choice. To cut to the chase, the conventional model appears to be flawed (at least in this case, but the logic extends to other practices too). Practices evolve and change because of social and historical dynamics that seemingly have nothing to do with individuals.

So, having set up this new approach, I’m now left asking how, if at all, does the individual fit into all of this? And can individuals do anything to change practices and put them on more sustainable tracks, or must we slip into a swamp of fatalism? There’s something of an irony in here, because whilst the conventional approach is extremely optimistic about individual agency, it nevertheless portrays individuals as simplistic creatures, as ignorant passive automatons or dupes who need to have the correct pro-environmental attitudes/values plugged into them from on high. Whereas in contrast, the PT approach argues that individuals are skilled, competent and knowledgeable agents who integrate and coordinate all these elements in the performance of practices, but who nevertheless can do pretty much nothing to bring about changes to those practices. So, this leaves me wanting a more considered approach to where the individual fits in all of this. Is there a middle-way between these two approaches that sees individuals as competent and skilled practitioners who are ALSO able to effect change in the practices they perform? And, if so, is this one way in which the two approaches might be reconciled?

Now, I’m not suggesting for one minute that I’m able to offer this ‘considered approach’, and indeed if I felt I could I don’t think I’d do it here, but I thought it might be worth thinking a bit more about what PT says about individuals when it does think about them. So, in short, and as already mentioned, PT suggests individuals are knowledgeable, skilful and competent practitioners who integrate a wide variety of different elements (images, skills, stuff etc) in their active performances of different practices as they pass through unique ‘careers’ of engaging with particular sets of practices. Indeed, through such performances individuals are seen to keep practices alive and kicking, preventing them from dying out by continually refreshing the relations between elements. So, maybe there’s an argument here that if individuals keep practices alive, then they should be given prior attention? But this doesn’t wash, because individuals are also seen as the ‘carriers’ and ‘crossing points’ of a huge range of different practices that are organised and carried out socially i.e. above and beyond the mere individual. Further, individuals can be ‘captured’ by practices which end up taking over their whole lives. This is particularly evident in the case of addicts who can’t stop themselves from conducting a particular practice e.g. shopaholics who can’t stop buying the shoes they don’t need, or cricket fans who can’t get on with their work because the Ashes is just too compelling. Indeed, some have even suggested that analysis of practices means that the individual simply ‘evaporates’ from view because they are so insignificant in the face of these broader collective dynamics. So, on the basis of what I’ve seen so far, we can suggest that PT provides a somewhat confusing view of the individual as simultaneously all important and insignificant.

Now, another way to think about this might be to look not at what the existing literature says, but to look at specific practices themselves and try and consider what roles individuals play and what level of agency they can exert within them. This obviously demands some decent empirical research, but in the spirit of getting on with it, it might be possible to begin to think through some of these issues and trace the moments at which individuals can exert their individuality within practices. I propose to do this with cricket.

So, I suppose the first appearance of the individual in cricket is in the decision over whether or not to partake in it in the first place. Now, this is tricky. I play cricket. I love doing so, and I would choose to do so more often if I had the chance. So already it’s seen that I don’t have free choice to play cricket. Thinking back too, I never made a conscious decision to ‘choose’ cricket, but was introduced to it by my parents from an early age, and indeed was brought up in a culture where cricket was one of several practices available to me. There are other practices I didn’t do e.g. hockey, rugby, sailing etc, but again I never made a conscious choice not to do them. Now, of course, in adulthood, I could choose to take up these other practices, just as I have chosen to continue playing cricket but have shown less interest in football. But even here, the level of choice I can exert as an individual is small, so whereas I can choose to play hockey, I have to abide by certain rules when playing, I have to use certain equipment, and - if I’m going to do it well – I have to develop certain recognised skills. So, there’s little real choice open to me here. Coming back to cricket, I suppose I have some choice over the amount and quality of the equipment I purchase, but again there is certain equipment that I simply have to use (whether I own it or borrow it), and my ability to buy one bat rather than another is constrained by the amount of money I have which relates to the working practices I perform. So, little real individuality here either. So, so far the individual doesn’t appear to be faring very well at all.

Now, looking at how I play the game, I did choose to become a bowler rather than a batsman, but I’m then constrained by the conventional ways in which bowlers can get batsmen out, just as, when I bat, I’m more or less limited to the conventional array of strokes. But, here there might be a chance for the individual to appear because, when I bat my ability to play conventional strokes is limited, so I play a poor approximation of a cover drive or a late cut. Indeed, I might be said to have a unique and individual ‘style’ of playing cricket, which no doubt results from the amount of time I’ve practiced, the size, shape and athletic capabilities of my body (which is influenced by other practices I do or don’t do – e.g. if I drank less and ran more who knows what might happen – but surely isn’t wholly dictated by these other practices), so in the localised performance of the practice of cricket I, the humble individual, may make a fleeting appearance. Talking of individual ‘styles’ then leads me to think of expert practitioners like Kevin Pietersen or Ricky Ponting, and what influence they are able to exert on the practice. Thinking through a few stories, we know that the laws of the game were changed after the bodyline Ashes tour in 1932-3 to restrict the number of fielders that could be stationed backwards of square on the legside. This development of the practice stemmed solely from Bradman’s batting ability, Jardine’s tactical nous, and Larwood's bowling ability. More recently, Dennis Lillee got aluminium bats banned, Mike Brearley got the laws about equipment on the field amended after placing a helmet at point to try and tempt the batsmen into seeking 5 penalty runs, and Pietersen’s ‘switch hit’ got the laws about a batsman’s stance amended. So, all of these are examples of when expert practitioners have amended the practice. Admittedly, in none of these cases has the game been fundamentally changed (although Kerry Packer’s World Series Cricket and recent Twenty20 developments might be seen as a fundamental change by some), but in all cases an individual has exerted some small influence over the game which has resulted in changes which, over time, have been embedded into the practice and may in turn lead to more changes. So, in this respect, I think it might just be possible to say that individuals can exert some influence on the practices they perform, although this influence might be limited, its implications may not be felt for some time, and the ultimate outcome may be somewhat unpredictable.

Hmm, so judging by this brief flight of fancy, the individual, even expert individuals, has only a limited part to play. Moving back to practices, this makes me start to think in terms of the available ‘room for manoeuvre’. In this case, experts seem to have greater power to exert influence over practices than amateurs (although it is possible that my individual cricketing style is being emulated on cricket fields all around the world, who knows). This leads to an analysis that seeks to account for an individual’s position within a practice and the extent to which this influences their room for manoeuvre. Etienne Wenger comes close to these sorts of ideas when he talks about ‘knowledge brokers’ and how they can change a community of practices’ practice by introducing new elements from other practices in which they partake. We might also ask if there is more or less room for manoeuvre in other practices e.g. football, playing a musical instrument, or in more mundane practices like bathing or cooking etc. What role is there for individual style and creativity to exhibit itself and exert influence across different practices? It might only be a glimmer of hope for the individual, but it might also be worth following, particularly if fatalism is to be avoided.

So, what’s the significance of this, well if individuals can exert some influence, does this mean that conventional approaches to social change will suffice and all we have to do is revise our expectations of them? Or is it possible to conceive of a new kind of policy arrangement that gets to grips with the more complex dynamics of practice? In fact - thinking about it - what does the practice of policy making look like, and how might that be changed? I didn’t suggest I’d come up with any answers here, but I would suggest, as does Latour, that although PT puts practices first, is shouldn’t stop us from seeking to ‘follow the actors’ who are engaged in practices. Seeking to understand how they understand the practices they perform, what unique styles they bring from their own practice histories and careers and so on and so on. Narrative and diary methods might help in this, who knows. The key point for me, though, is that it seems worth exploring what localised performances of practice are like, how individual practitioners and communities of practice engage in them and, by doing this, hopefully illuminating whatever limited room for manoeuvre individuals may have open to them.

First up

"How can the ordinary be changed?" asks a character in Kiran Desai's 'the inheritance of loss'. I'm wondering how well this characterises the challenge of responding to issues like climate change. Do we first have to forget or undo the current ordinary with all its fantastic and horrid implications in order to re-assemble a new one? And if so, where do we begin?