Edited Volume on Practice Theory Seeks Submissions

Theorizing Cultural Practice, a volume edited by Simon J. Bronner, seeks essays that explore and unpack practice theory. See below for more information about the volume and how to submit.

Editor: Simon J. Bronner, Distinguished Professor of Social Sciences, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee

Publisher: Lexington Books (Rowman & Littlefield)

Format and Guidelines: 6,000–9,000 word essays in English, prepared electronically in Microsoft Word with automatic footnoting disabled. Follow Chicago Manual of Style 17th edition for spelling, quotation style, formatting, and author-date citation system. For Citation Quick Guide, see https://www.chicagomanualofstyle.org/tools_citationguide/citation-guide-2.html.

Deadline: December 1, 2021

Contact for inquiries: Simon J. Bronner: [email protected]

Arguably the most exciting international analytical development in studies of culture, society, folklore, and heritage in the twenty-first century has been “practice theory,” “frame analysis,” or “praxeology.” Yet rather than representing a unified philosophy or approach, praxeological approaches to cultural practice represent a family of theories based on the idea that repeated bodily, tradition-based practices take on socially framed, symbolic forms in everyday life that affect self and group understandings and actions of culture, politics, and cognition. Often cited for inspiration as well as points of departure in Europe and the Americas is the work of Pierre Bourdieu, Michel de Certeau, Anthony Giddens, and Theodore Schatzki, and parallel theoretical discourses of cultural practice have arisen in languages other than English in Asia, Middle East, and Africa. The goal of this book is to globalize the discourse on practice theory in addition to showing regionalized versions of its relevance toward explanation of cultural thought and action. Especially desirable for this book are applications of method and theory to explain puzzling cultural customs in community, ethnic, regional, and transnational contexts; implications of practice theory for issues of political power and public policy; integration with constructed concepts of race, ethnicity, gender, class, and sexuality for practitioners of cultural analysis as well as the groups they study; comparative consideration of practices driven by contemporary forms of technology and media; relationship to twentieth-century streams of cultural work including structuralism, psychoanalysis, performance, and functionalism.  Emphasis in the volume will be on interdisciplinary, international dialogue and clear, comprehensible writing will be a requirement for publication. Essays will be vetted by an international advisory board for the book series Studies in Folklore and Ethnology: Traditions, Practices, and Identities: https://rowman.com/Action/SERIES/_/LEXSFE/Studies-in-Folklore-and-Ethnology:-Traditions,-Practices,-and-Identities. Send a precis of the proposed contribution to the editor at [email protected].