Prof. Elizabeth Shove

DEMAND Centre/Department of Sociology, Lancaster University, UK Homepage von Professor Elizabeth Shove (Lancaster University) Titel des Vortrags: “Careers, paths and projects: a discussion of practices and their carriers” The processes involved in becoming a practitioner – that is someone who enacts a practice – are thoroughly social. They are also dynamic. As Jean Lave and others have argued, such processes transform both the people involved and the practices that are enacted and carried. In general terms, the proposition that the careers of individual practitioners, and cohorts of carriers are intertwined with the lives of the practices they carry is not especially controversial. However, more complicated questions arise when we go into detail: how and why do some practices have extended and differentiated career ‘structures’ and others not? How do such structures shape the ways in which ‘templates’ of
proper performance proliferate and change? How do practitioners’ careers develop between as well as within specific practices? Thinking about these questions calls for further discussion of how practices evolve in relation to each other and to the institutions and infrastructures on which they depend (and which they also reproduce). I explore these somewhat abstract ideas with reference to a handful of specific examples relating to sport and leisure and to occupations, professions and working lives.