Renewing Theories of Practice and Reappraising the Cultural

Professor Bente Halkier has co-edited and contributed to the special issue of the journal Cultural Sociology titled ‘Renewing theories of practice and reappraising the cultural’.

Together with co-editors Daniel Welch and Margit Keller, Bente Halkier has written the introduction. Furthermore, she has contributed with her own article: ‘Social Interaction as Key to Understanding the Intertwining of Routinized and Culturally Contested Consumption’.

The special issue focuses on theories of practice in sociology and new ways to include cultural dimensions. According to the editors, there has been a tendency to elide, ignore or obscure ‘explicit’ culture focusing more on routine and embodied non-communicative aspects of practises. The issue seeks to broaden the perspective by re-vitalising the cultural dimension in both theory and analyses.

Halkier’s own article looks more specifically into the sociological study of consumption and how a number of concepts and concerns from cultural sociology were completely ignored when the sociological study of consumption became dominated by the use of practice theories.

However, the article argues that in the field of sociological analysis of food conduct, there is indeed a need for addressing both more culturally contested parts of food practices as well as more routinised parts. Food consumption and practices of provisioning, cooking and eating are both tacit, recursive, mundane activities, and at the same time discursively questioned through multiple, mediatised, cultural repertories of food.

Finally, Halkier introduces four analytical suggestions (focussing on coordination, intersection, hybridity and normative accountability) for how the culturally tacit and reflexive in food conduct become linked through social interaction. These are exemplified empirically based on a number of qualitative studies of food conduct among Danish consumers.

Read the introduction (open access): Introduction to the Special Issue: Renewing Theories of Practice and Reappraising the Cultural 

Read the article: Social Interaction as Key to Understanding the Intertwining of Routinized and Culturally Contested Consumption