Phronesis can be understood as part of a ‘turn to practice’ in the social sciences. After the ‘linguistic’ and ‘cultural’ turns gave centre-stage to symbols and meanings in human affairs, attention to practice is one way of returning materiality to social theory. Phronetic social researchers engage in detail in the complexities of the phenomena which they study, examining why things are the way they are, often uncovering undesirable workings of power, and asking how things could be improved. In so doing, they develop both practical wisdom and theoretical tools that provide lenses for problematizing and reconstructing practices in other settings. They explicitly do not strive to create general or universal theories of human behaviour.
Would you like to comment?
Join Diigo for a free account, or sign in if you are already a member.