Table of Contents

Governance, Innovation & Change

Social practice

lead-authors: [Name] contributors: Vitaliy Soloviy, Klaus Kubeczko reviewers: [Names] version: 0.4 updated: 4 April 2026 sensitivity: low status: draft ai-use: Claude Sonnet 4.6 (Anthropic) was used for editorial revision, reference verification, and formatting; reviewed by Vitaliy Soloviy, 17.03.2026

This topic is part of the ISGAN Wiki and is currently being developed. You can contribute directly by clicking the edit button, or use the Topic Builder for guided input. A confirmed wiki account is required. Register and allow up to three days for admin confirmation. Before contributing, read the ISGAN Wiki Editorial Guidelines.

Practices are routinised behaviours that depend on materials, competences, and meanings attached to specific acitivites.

Why this matters

[To be drafted]

Shared definitions

Practices are situated patterns of action that transcend individual action.1)

Practice theory treats practices as routinised types of behaviour consisting of several interconnected elements: forms of bodily activity, forms of mental activity, things and their use, background knowledge, know-how, states of emotion, and motivational knowledge.2) On this reading, practices are the primary unit of social analysis — neither individual behaviour nor social structure, but the shared, repeated performances that connect them.

The distinction between behaviour and practice matters for energy policy. Behaviour-change approaches target individual attitudes and choices, assuming that information provision or price signals will shift what people do. Practice-oriented approaches focus instead on the social, material, and infrastructural arrangements that make certain ways of doing things normal, easy, and expected — and others difficult or inconceivable. Shove (2010) argues that energy demand is better understood as the product of ordinary social practices than as the aggregated outcome of individual decisions, and that effective policy must engage with how practices change rather than simply trying to shift individual behaviour.3)

Perspectives

Actors and stakeholders

Technologies and infrastructure

Institutional structures

Distinctions and overlaps

Behaviour vs. social practice
Behaviour refers to individual actions or responses. Social practice refers to the collective, repeated, and culturally embedded patterns through which people engage in everyday life. The distinction matters for how change is understood: behaviour-change frameworks focus on individual choices, while practice theory asks how the social and material conditions enabling particular ways of doing things come to be established or disrupted.4)

Users, citizens, consumers · Actors and roles · Institutions · Transitions · Innovation

Topic notes

Content notes from source material:

1)
Möllering, G., & Müller-Seitz, G. (2018). Direction, not destination: Institutional work practices in the face of field-level uncertainty. European Management Journal, 36(1), 28–37. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.emj.2017.10.004
2)
Reckwitz, A. (2002). Toward a theory of social practices: A development in culturalist theorizing. European Journal of Social Theory, 5(2), 243–263. https://doi.org/10.1177/13684310222225432
3) , 4)
Shove, E. (2010). Beyond the ABC: Climate change policy and theories of social change. Environment and Planning A, 42(6), 1273–1285. https://doi.org/10.1068/a42282