Includes bibliographical references and index.

Introduction / Allison Hui, Theodore Schatzki and Elizabeth ShoveL︣earning in and across practices : enablement as subjectivation / Thomas Alkemeyer and Nikolaus BuschmannQ︣ualities of connective tissue in hospital life : how complexes of practices change / Stanley Blue and Nicola SpurlingS︣ociomateriality in posthuman practice theory / Silvia GherardiV︣ariation and the intersection of practices / Allison HuiE︣pigenetics, theories of social practice and lifestyle disease / Cecily MallerT︣echnologies within and beyond practices / Janine MorleyI︣s small the only beautiful? making sense of "large phenomena" from a practice-based perspective / Davide NicoliniP︣ractices and their affects / Andreas ReckwitzS︣ayings, texts and discursive formations / Theodore SchatzkiR︣eflexive knowledge in practices / Robert SchmidtM︣atters of practice / Elizabeth ShoveP︣lacing power in practice theory / Matt WatsonH︣ow should we understand "general understandings"? / Daniel Welch and Alan WardeR︣eferences.

The Nexus of Practices: connections, constellations, practitioners brings leading theorists of practice together to provide a fresh set of theoretical impulses for the surge of practice-focused studies currently sweeping across the social disciplines. The book addresses key issues facing practice theory, expands practice theory's conceptual repertoire, and explores new empirical terrain. With each intellectual move, it generates further opportunities for social research. More specifically, the book's chapters offer new approaches to analysing connections within the nexus of practices, to exploring the dynamics and implications of the constellations that practices form, and to understanding people as practitioners that carry on practices. Topics examined include social change, language, power, affect, reflection, large social phenomena, and connectivity over time and space. Contributors thereby counter claims that practice theory cannot handle large phenomena and that it ignores people. The contributions also develop practice theoretical ideas in dialogue with other forms of social theory and in ways illustrated and informed by empirical cases and examples. The Nexus of Practices will quickly become an important point of reference for future practice-focused research in the social sciences.