A Process-Oriented Methodology for Practice-Theoretical Projects
Workshop for fellows and associated fellows
Building on the lecture, this interactive workshop invites participants to explore what a process-oriented practice theory might mean for their own research projects. Participants are asked to bring an object that helps introduce the social phenomenon they are studying and the way they currently approach it, providing a starting point for discussion.
The workshop introduces a set of principles for a process-oriented methodology, including how to conceptualise practices as ongoing and extensive, how to work with connection and extension across time and space, and how to approach empirical material without defaulting to bounded individuals, discrete events, or fixed contexts. Central to this is the idea of a kaleidoscopic methodology: an epistemological orientation that treats any empirical moment as part of a shifting pattern of relations, rather than as a self-contained unit of analysis.
Participants will be guided to reflect on how their research designs define boundaries (of sample, time, geography, and discipline) and to consider how these limits are established, what they enable, and what they exclude. The workshop encourages participants to rethink these boundaries in processual terms, asking how far they can be extended, how they might be treated analytically, and what kinds of claims can be made as a result.
The session concludes with a collective reflection on the possibilities and challenges of process-oriented research, including its analytical power, methodological risks, and implications for interdisciplinary work.
Preparation:
Participants bring an object to introduce their research (the phenomenon and the design).
In advance, participants are asked to read the following (with their object and research project in mind):
Blue, S. 2025. ‘A Process-Oriented Practice Methodology for Practice Theory’ in Practice Theory and Process Philosophy: Towards a Sociology of Becoming. Routledge, 164-190.
Gherardi, S. 2019. ‘The Texture of Practice’ in How to Conduct a Practice Based-Study: Problems and Methods. Eward Elgar, 177-200.
Schäfer, Hilmar. 2017. ‘Relationality and Heterogeneity: Transitive Methodology in Practice Theory and Actor-Network Theory’. In Methodological Reflections on Practice Oriented Theories, edited by Michael Jonas, Beate Littig, and Angela Wroblewski, 35–46. Springer.
MP2