Practices and Actions A Wittgensteinian Critique of Bourdieu and Giddens
- 1 September 1997
- journal article
- research article
- Published by SAGE Publications in Philosophy of the Social Sciences
- Vol. 27 (3) , 283-308
- https://doi.org/10.1177/004839319702700301
Abstract
This article criticizes Bourdieu's and Giddens's overintellectualizing accounts of human activity on the basis of Wittgenstein's insights into practical under standing. Part 1 describes these two theorists' conceptions of a homology between the organization of practices (spatial-temporal manifolds of action) and the governance of individual actions. Part 2 draws on Wittgenstein's discussions of linguistic definition and following a rule to criticize these conceptions for ascribing content to the practical understanding they claim governs action. Part 3 then suggests an alternative, Wittgensteinian account of the homology between practices and actions that avoids this pitfall.This publication has 11 references indexed in Scilit:
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