Practice Theories and the “Circuit of Culture”: Integrating Approaches for Studying Material Culture

The paper compares two heuristic tools to understand how practice theory could be used to study the phenomena of material culture: the one summarized by Shove et Al. (2012) in The Dynamics of Social Practice: Everyday Life and How It Changes and the “circuit of culture” proposed by Paul Du Gay et Al. in Doing Cultural Studies. The Case of the Sony Walkman (1997). The aim of the article is to test the possibility to integrate the use of these two tools. In order to fulfil this purpose, the article is comprised of two parts. The first part illustrates how the two heuristic tools are compatible and what advantages each have over the other. In the second part, both heuristic tools will be applied to explore two case studies, one regarding a technological artefact and another one regarding a type of agricultural practice.