Heterogeneity in knowledge and knowing: A social practice perspective

The alternative conception of knowledge we take up here, a practice-based view, is advocated by a growing interdisciplinary group of organizational scholars. Influenced by several related streams of theorizing, a practice based view provides a vision of social life based on connections between culture, activity, minds, objects, and interactions (Reckwitz, 2002). Knowledge becomes not an identifiable and commodifiable entity, but rather an active presence in, or attribution made about, practice. Analytical concern thus turns away from identifying the existence or uniqueness of knowledge, and instead turns to processes of knowing, seeing these processes as always embodied, embedded in particular socio-historical settings and communities, and intimately connected to the material factors through which they emerge.