Toward a Hermeneutic Theory of Social Practices: Between Existential Analytic and Social Theory

by Dimitri Ginev

Overview

Recent methodological debates have shown that practice theory can either be developed by combining and slightly extending established theoretical concepts of inter-subjectivity, social normativity, collective behavior, interaction between agents and environment, habits, learning, collective intentionality, and human agency; or by following a strategy that promotes the quest for completely autonomous concepts. In the latter case, one defends a thesis of irreducibility.

Toward a Hermeneutic Theory of Social Practices advocates this thesis by approaching the interrelational dynamic of social practices in terms of existential analytic. Indeed, this insightful volume outlines a methodology of the double hermeneutics that allows the study of the entanglement of agential plans, beliefs, and intentions with configured practices; while also demonstrating how interrelated social practices with which agency is entangled articulate cultural forms of life.

Suggesting a framework for studying the cultural forms of life within the scope of practice theory, this book will appeal to postgraduate students and postdoctoral researchers interested in fields such as Social Theory, Philosophy of Social Science, and Research Methods for Social and Behavioral Sciences.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780367889210
Publisher:	Taylor & Francis
Publication date:	12/12/2019
Series:	Routledge Studies in Social and Political Thought
Pages:	198
Product dimensions:	6.12(w) x 9.19(h) x (d)

About the Author

Dimitri Ginev is Professor for Continental Philosophy and Hermeneutic Philosophy of Culture at the University of Sofia, Bulgaria

Table of Contents

Introduction

Chapter One: THE IRREDUCIBILITY THESIS

1. Holism without Essentialism





2. Social Practices and the Human Body





3. The "Hand" and the Readiness-to-hand

Chapter Two: THE FACTICITY OF PRACTICES

1. Cultural Forms of Life Disclosed and Articulated Within Interrelated Practices





2. Facticity, Ethnomethodology, and Radical Reflexivity

Chapter Three: CONSTRUCTING PRACTICE THEORY THROUGH DOUBLE

HERMENEUTICS

1. Defending Irreducibility via Double Hermeneutics





2. Empirical Ontologies and the Double Hermeneutics





3. The Frames of Meaning and the Fusion of Horizons





4. The Integral Circle of Interpretation

Chapter Four: THE TRANS-SUBJECTIVITY OF SOCIAL PRACTICES

1. Exemplifying Trans-subjectivity





2. Chronotopes of Configured Practices





3. Entangled Agency with Configured Practices





4. The Interplay of Practices and Possibilities

Chapter Five: THE DIALOGICAL SELF AS THROWN PROJECTION IN

PRACTICES

1. The Dialogical Proliferation of I-positions





2. Narrating the Self and Positioning





3. I-Positions and Existential Possibilities





4. Integrity through Re-positioning

Epilogue

Index