Download Turning to practice – what does it mean and why is it important?

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Common heading for Davide Nicolini & Olav Eikeland:
Ways of turning to practice, what, why, how
Turning to practice – what does it mean and why is it
important?
Olav
Eikeland,
presentation
at
the
Conference
“Making
the
"Practical
Turn"
Practical:
th
Collaboration across nationalities, professions and varieties of action research”, Oslo, September 10 2007
I will talk about action research and turning to practice in a philosophical vein. The main title
of this conference is “making the practical turn practical”. This is, of course, meant to be
slightly provocative by suggesting that whatever the “practical turns” within different
disciplines have amounted to so far, they have hardly been “practical”. We could ask: Why
should any researcher or anyone at all, “turn to practice”? One answer could be that fiddling
away one’s time with social theory is futile? There are many reasons for this futility, provided
by science criticism and the growing discipline called “the philosophy of social science”.
Many such reasons are summarized by Stephen Turner (1994) in his book on the social
theory of practices. I’ll return to a few in a short while. In several ways, the challenge of the
“practical turn” is similar to the one Dr. Faust faced in Goethe’s drama, who after years of
being locked up in his study-chamber reading books came to the profound conclusion: “Im
Anfang war die Tat” (line 1237), or “practice is primary” in
the preferred formulation of
philosophers after Wittgenstein. The question is what consequences we could or should
draw from such an insight.
One way of turning to practice, then, is by turning our backs on theory. But why should
“theory” itself turn to practice, that is, why should anyone still holding a theoretical interest in
better understanding of something turn to practice? Hardly in order to abandon theory! If
theory turns to practice it must be because practice is somehow needed in order to
understand something better. The question is, of course: What do allegations like these
mean? What does “practice based” theory mean? I will try to elaborate.
A part of the background for the headline of the conference is the ongoing turn to practice in
management and organisation studies and in the studies of science and technology that
Davide Nicolini has just presented for us. One premise is that this “turn” ought to
communicate with action research and vice versa. The practical turn is clearly, but still in
several different ways, inspired by the major turns in philosophy during the 20th Century,
instigated mainly by Martin Heidegger, by Ludwig Wittgenstein, by American pragmatism,
and by critical theory, all of them with historical roots going further back. We may say that
much current action research is also inspired by and part of the same philosophical turn. This
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is one reason why action research and the practical turners in organisation theory should
communicate and explore both differences and common interests for the purpose of mutual
learning.
The “pragmatic turn” in philosophy concerns many subjects, like ontology and metaphysics,
which I will not try to deal with here. But it also entails a major confrontation with the whole
modern attempt at modelling social research on natural science. Similarly, an important
reason for the turn in the more mundane social studies just mentioned is that the
insufficiency of using abstract models is becoming increasingly evident – that is, borrowing
concepts metaphorically from mathematics, cybernetics, or biology, or from “the researcher’s
own culture” whatever that is, or from wherever, and applying them to atomised and isolated
observational data produced by short-term visiting strangers in “as-if” explanations and
interpretations. Without giving up theory, the need is felt for more close-up studies of what
people are “actually doing” as the saying goes. In order to come closer to their subjects of
study, the social studies of science turned to ethnography and participant observation around
1980 (Latour, Knorr-Cetina, etc.), with the study of management and organisations following
suit over the last decade or so. Anthropologists seem to think that “you cannot get any
closer” (“nærmere kommer du ikke”) as it is formulated in one Norwegian text-book in
anthropology (Nielsen, 1996).
But since action research turned to practice more than 60 years ago, we might ask: In what
way is a turn to practice from within current mainstream organisation studies and the studies
of science and technology relevant for action research? The “practical turn” of mainstream
research might simply be irrelevant for action research. If, however, the mainstreams of
social research were to approximate or turn into some form of action research, it would
undoubtedly be of interest for the existing action research community. As an orphan expelled
by mainstream social research it would be strange and somewhat self-defeating for the
established action research community to remain an outsider to such a turn. But is this really
what is happening with the “turn to practice” in the study of organisations? Are
mainstreamers becoming action researchers, or is action research becoming mainstreamed?
1. Historical turns
In order to discuss this I think it is important to emphasize that there have been several “turns
to practice” through European intellectual history (which is what is at stake here). It is also
necessary to distinguish different ways of turning to practice. But before discussing different
ways of turning to practice I would like to mention some important preceding practical turns.
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First of all, I think it is important to remember that European philosophy actually started with
a turn to practice. The so-called Socratic turn in ancient Greek philosophy, explained by
Socrates (470-399BC) in Plato’s dialogue Pheado (95A-100A), was a turn to practice,
indicated most obviously by all his references to the skills of artisans as providing standards
of knowledge and competence. After having been a natural philosopher studying external
things in his youth, and after having tried to explain everything by means of what Aristotle
came to call material and efficient causes, Socrates realized that by this method of studying
things merely external, he was made to forget or overlook what he and everybody else
already knew and had to know already in order to walk and talk in reasonable ways at all.
So, instead of studying external things by extraneous observation, Socrates started
investigating what both he and others knew and had to know already in order to be able to do
what they actually did. The critical examination and bringing to consciousness of what we
already know or think we know (either tacitly or explicitly) is primary. The exhortation “Know
thy self (gnôthi seautón)!” was no empty slogan. It was a precondition. Re-collecting and remembering who we are, what and how we do things, is primary. Studying external objects
and events is secondary. The Socratic turn was a turn away from mere perceptual
knowledge and attempted explanations of external things, events, and behaviour. It was a
turn away from mere spectator or auditor knowledge. It was a turn away from speculative
natural philosophy. It was a turn away from “behaviourism” to use an anachronistic term.
But the Socratic turn was never a turn away from the competence and experience of
practitioners. It did not turn away from experience. On the contrary! It was a re-turn to
practice; a practical turn to the practical experience of the knowers themselves. Similar or
related turns were attempted later in history by Michel de Montaigne (1533-1592) in his “selfstudies”, by Giambattista Vico (1668-1744) in his realization that we could only really
understand what we caused and made ourselves, and by others. Francis Bacon’s (15611626) turn to experimentation was clearly a “practical turn” in certain ways, away from
speculative spectator theories.
In addition, Marxism was undoubtedly a practical turn with far-reaching effects in the 19th and
20th Century. I won’t try to go into details. But we might say it was a turn to practice by turning
its back, maybe not on theory but on critical inquiry, applying the theories of Marx for political
and practical purposes instead. Marx may have wanted intellectuals to stop interpreting the
world and start changing it instead. His most ardent followers, however, seem to have
changed the world by interpreting Marx, often instead of interpreting the world, with
ambiguous results to say the least. In this, the Marx-ists were quite different from Marx who
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derided the traditional approach of scholastic science and education trying to force the
“gebratenen Tauben” or “roasted fowl” of dogma on the masses. So, at least, the practical
turn of marx-ism, is quite different from the practical turn of Marx himself.
Of course, action research belongs in this historical list of practical turns as well. As I said,
action research turned to practice more than 60 years ago following Kurt Lewin and John
Dewey who were both strongly influenced by the experimental turn of Francis Bacon.
Although action research started out as an expansion and social distribution of the scientific
attitude and practice of experimentation into everyday activities, I think its turn to practice has
tended to be a simultaneous turning of its back on theory, simply leaving theory behind.
Since the 1970ies this turning away from theory has acquired intellectual justification and
legitimacy by a certain way of reading Wittgenstein in particular. As with ancient scepticism,
practical therapy, healing the wounds inflicted by conventional theory on everyday speech
and understanding became more important. Creating spaces for broad participation in local
change and knowledge generation became more important.
Today, these efforts by action research tend to merge with more general developments in the
organisation and distribution of knowledge generation. The quite rapid change from a rather
monopolized mode of knowledge production to the socially distributed mode of knowledge
production, labelled “mode 2” by Gibbons et al (1994), is an emerging, collective turn to
practice, made, we might say, by society itself. Of course, knowledge production was never
really monopolized, since knowledge generation of some sort has always been a necessary
ingredient in everyday life. But today (and, in fact, increasingly over the last 100 years), even
scientific knowledge production, formerly more isolated in specialised research institutions,
tends to be relocated or resituated as a part of industry and ordinary work life. The
burgeoning social movement of “self-study” among practitioner researchers within different
professions is also part of this change. Both (a) the realization that knowledge generation
happens everywhere all the time and (b) the real migration of research activities into
everyday settings imply major changes in the established relationships between research,
education and learning, and in the daily life of practitioners, and it requires conscious
readjustments and re-conceptualisations – practical turns – by all parties involved.
As already indicated, throughout the 20th Century there have been major discussions about
the social sciences and their relations to models borrowed from the natural sciences. Most of
these discussions have been about the relationship of social research to social practice.
Should social science be a spectator or a participant, and how – in what way – should it be
either one; spectator or participant? Since the 1960s, the contributions from major figures of
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critical theory like Jürgen Habermas and Karl-Otto Apel have concerned these questions,
and, for example, members of the Erlangen school in Germany have brought the discussions
about the practical basis of knowledge far into the inner chambers of scientific practice (cf.
Janich, 19xx). These different turns through history form the general background from which
the most current turns also emerge.
2. What does “turning to practice mean”?
But although there have been many turns to practice throughout European intellectual
history, these turns are definitely not all alike. There are many different ways of turning to
practice. Turning to practice means several different things. Without any pretence of
exhaustiveness, I think the following ways of turning are prominent, relevant, and important
for our current discussion. Let me emphasize, however, that in trying to outline these
different ways of turning I’m not claiming that particular historical turns can be characterized
by one of them alone, although I do think certain ways of turning have dominated certain
historical turns as well.
First of all 1) we can turn to practice by turning our theoretical gaze more intensively – more
close up and for longer periods at a time – towards the practices of others. Turning to
practice may mean not doing something different or differently, but simply looking at different
things in different ways, turning our telescopes or microscopes in different directions at
different objects. Earlier we turned our theoretical gaze towards “systems” maybe, or
“cultures”, but today we turn it towards “practices”. I don’t think it is unfair to say that this is
mostly what the ethnographies of science, technology, organisations, and management have
been doing (Latour, etc.).
Secondly (2), we can turn to practice by turning our backs on theory – “doing something”,
“changing things”, “helping people” instead of just observing, “speculating”, and interpreting.
Instead of relocating and transforming our study-chamber, we can leave it, like Faust did.
Although I know I’m being unfair to some by saying this, I think this is mostly what action
research has been doing over the last 60 years. My point, however, is simply that, as ways of
turning to practice, observing the practice of others closely is clearly different from turning our
backs on theory, and part of the incompatibility between action research and practical turns
in organisation theory is due to such differences.
But there is still another way of turning (3), different I think from both of these. We may turn
to practice by turning our researching, inquiring, and critical attention towards our own
practices instead of towards the practices of others. This is not abandoning theory, nor is it
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merely gazing at the others. It is to transform the study-chamber by bringing our own practice
into the study-chamber or the study-chamber into our own practices.
Anyhow, all of these ways of turning are different from each other. While the mainstream turn
to practice has mostly turned its theoretical gaze towards the practice of others, action
research has mostly turned its back on theory. I think both should turn more to practice in the
third way, however, and I will try to explain why. As I indicated already, my contentions here
are not really directed neither at specific action researchers in particular nor at specific
organisation researchers. It concerns, on the one hand, the insufficiency of using “practice”
as a spectator lens in studying the others, that is, merely as another theoretical concept
within a form of research practice that is quite in accordance with the dominant and
institutionalized “mode 1” ways of doing research. On the other hand, it concerns the
insufficiency of merely practising – of merely “doing something”, “changing things” or serving
the needs of some practice, neglecting theory and inquiry done for the purpose of
understanding.
The insufficiency of the first kind – merely turning our theoretical gaze – concerns the point
made by Wittgenstein (xxxx: §yy) and emphasized by Peter Winch (1958) that although the
behaviour or conduct of others may be interpreted as following a certain rule, this “may be” is
no proof. Rules may prescribe similar behaviour for a certain set of cases or within a certain
time slot, but then diverge for other cases before, after, or outside. This point is emphasized
by Stephen Turner (1994) as a major objection towards “practice theories” of various kinds.
But it is an objection with an even wider application. It is really an ancient logical point about
the possibility of theory pluralism. It strikes every kind of “spectator theory” of knowledge
(Dewey, 192x). Any number of theories may produce certain given sets of “data” as
consequences in logically valid ways. In a logical inference, false premises may produce true
conclusions just as validly as true premises. One effect or very similar effects may have
many different causes.
As such, this is a logical justification of the deconstructions done by “post-modernism”. Every
point of view is just that; a situated point of view, an interpretation done from somewhere.
The point in arguments like these is that “somewhere” means somewhere outside the object
studied. For spectators, views from nowhere in particular (Nagel, 1989) do not exist, that is,
every viewpoint is from some specific point of view outside the thing studied. Dead objects
do not have their own points of view (as far as I know), and some living things we do not
know how to communicate with. This condemns us as researchers or ordinary interpreters to
views from somewhere. But when the things studied are human beings, views from these
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things themselves do exist. In these cases, the practitioner’s point of view is from nowhere
outside the thing studied. In the sense relevant here, it is actually from nowhere. Although I
do not think all practitioners are free from self-delusions and have immediate access to
significant truths about themselves, when it comes to objectivity or closeness to the thing
studied, this is where to start. And actually, I think both action researchers and practically
turned organisation researchers might agree on this. But still their ways of letting the natives
speak for themselves are different.
When it comes to turning to practice by turning our backs on theory – “doing something”,
“changing things” instead of just “speculating” and interpreting – things are different. In
certain situations it is certainly necessary to get things done rather than remain idle or merely
think. So, why do we need to work with theory at all? It is not very “practical”, and usually not
necessary in action, to make as much as possible explicit – only as much as necessary.
Practical competence has to be mainly “tacit”, that is, already established as skills. And socalled “practically minded” people, set on getting things done, usually do not want to go into
too much distracting detail.
All of this may be quite true. The problem, however, is how to decide in action, on the spot,
how much is necessary. At least one general precondition seems to be necessary. Since we
cannot know beforehand exactly what will be necessary in any given situation, in order to be
able to make as much as necessary explicit in action, on the spot, as much as possible must
somehow already or simultaneously have been made explicit analytically and theoretically. If
we lack adequate concept and words, what is made explicit on the spot will also be
insufficient and inadequate. Even practical efficiency depends upon some kind of theoretical
preconditions. Practitioners may not need the elaborate theories of spectators in order to act
adequately on the spot. But they do need some other kind of theory or insight that makes
them able, on the spot, to articulate aspects of the situations relevant to their actions. They
need to be conceptually advanced and articulate. But if developing this kind of theory or
insight is neglected, it won’t be available when it is needed. This is why I think turning to
practice in the third way is necessary, that is, by turning our researching, inquiring, critical
attention towards our own practices as knowers.
Ultimately, I think the challenge is the same for action research and organisation theory. Both
the first and the second way of turning to practice are insufficient. Both turning our spectator
gaze and abandoning theory are insufficient. The challenge is: How do we have to turn to
practice, what kind of practical turn is needed in order to understand better, gain better
knowledge, more adequate and practically relevant knowledge? The challenge is not to
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abandon theory or a better understanding, but what kind of theory do we need? Mainstream
organisation theory needs to overcome the objections that can always be raised against
specific views from somewhere outside the objects studied. Ethnography by visitors is not as
close as you can possibly get to practice. The native practitioners are always already closer.
But native practitioners need theory too. Action research needs to attend to theory, but a
different kind of theory, the kind necessary for practitioners in order to become conceptually
advanced and articulate about their own practices. A long time ago, Aristotle pointed out that
practice based knowledge-forms organise and structure the competence of their carriers
individually and collectively and become primarily a qualification of these carriers
themselves, as with grammar. I think we need more theory of this kind.
The difference between turning to practice by turning away from theory and by turning our
critical attention to our own practices can be described in different terms as well. I think it is
necessary to emphasize a difference between 1) being a) practice based and being b)
practice directed, and between 2) being a) speculation or theory based and being b)
speculation or theory directed. I mention “speculation or theory” simultaneously since
historically and etymologically there are close connections between being speculative, being
a spectator, and being theoretical.
What, then, does being practice based mean? Many speak of being practice based when
what they mean is what they gather from observing intensely the activities of others. But this
is confusing since it conflates the difference between being observation based and being
practice based. Being practice based must mean being based in the knower’s own practice,
not on the observed practice of others. Being practice based means taking our own practice
as our point of departure when thinking. Being practice based is different from being practice
directed however. So-called “practical reasoning” – rhetoric and deliberation – for which there
is an intellectual tradition of a couple of millennia, is practice directed. It aims at producing
some particular action. This distinction makes it clear that it is possible to be practice based
without being practice directed and vice versa.
What, then, about the other distinction between being speculation or theory based and being
speculation or theory directed? Being speculation or theory based means being spectator
based, that is, positioned outside what we are studying, applying preconceived theoretical
concepts brought to the observation. Being speculation or theory directed, however, means
aiming at developing and gaining some insight and understanding – reasoning, thinking, or
reflecting in order to understand. This means we can be theory directed without being theory
based and vice versa. We can also be practice based and theory directed aiming to articulate
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and develop theories of our own activities in different fields, as grammar is a theory of certain
aspect of our linguistic conduct, and as rhetoric and logic are practice based theories of other
aspects of our linguistic conduct
My final contention, then, is that action research has been practice based but at the same
time mostly too action directed. Organisation studies have been theory oriented but mostly
too theory or spectator based. We often need to be practice directed in our everyday lives,
and action research should not stop being so. We also need to be theory directed, and
organisation theory should not stop being so. But in order to make the practical turn practical
in the required sense, I think both action research and organisation studies need to be both
action or practice based and theory directed. They need to converge.
Universalizing this means providing space and time for practitioner research to unfold in work
life and other everyday settings. I believe this would be quite in line with the needs of a
burgeoning socially distributed mode (2) of knowledge production as well. Although providing
such time and space for practitioners certainly requires changes in work life, practitioners do
not necessarily need to change all the time. People get exhausted from changing constantly.
Practitioners need space and time to reflect and articulate their own experienced world, skills
and competences. I think this is a kind of action research that would provide the best basis
for developing an organisation theory that has taken the practical turn seriously and made it
practical too.
References
Turner, Stephen (1994):
The Social Theory of Practices – Tradition, Tacit Knowledge, and Presuppositions,
Chicago, University of Chicago Press,
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