For some time now, social scientists, literary critics and others who have examined socio-political developments characterised by intercultural interaction (e.g. colonialism or globalisation), have emphasised the creative, transformative and hybrid character of the space 'in-between' (e.g. Bhabha 1994; Young 1995). Even though 'hybridity discourses' have principally explored spheres of intercultural interaction in order to dismantle traditional binary oppositions used in colonial studies, or to describe the subtleties of our contemporary globalised environment, they have also raised awareness of the need to integrate such insights into accounts that explore and theorise a range of social phenomena (e.g. Nederveen Pieterse 2009). Whilst this integration has taken place in the wider context of the social sciences, scant attention has been given within the reflective arena of post-processualism to devising theoretical approaches which allow for analyses either of the space 'in-between' or the 'multivoicedness' (Bakhtin 1981) of material culture (for an exception see Fahlander 2007). This thesis seeks to define the theoretical as well as methodological strategies needed to incorporate the notion of 'hybridity' into the post-processual discourse. Although the effects of hybridity can take various forms (e.g. linguistics, culture, politics, religion) (Ashcroft et al. 1998), our possibilities for exploring this concept in archaeology amount to identifying the effects of hybridity on the realm of material culture. This research focuses on developing a theoretical and methodological approach that allows intercultural interaction to be examined through the identification of material patterning. To do so, the notion of 'diffusion' is reconsidered as an analytical concept in archaeology. This thesis then draws upon this approach to explore developments within the Orcadian Neolithic during the later fourth millennium BC. As a period of structural change in the islands, it has been the breeding ground for the development of various differing approaches to interpretation (e.g. Renfrew 1979b, Hodder 1982a; Sharples 1985). On this occasion, I will argue that this period represented a classic example of the formation of hybrid identities. Whilst a self-unified image of society was sought in these islands during this period, it is suggested that the cultural expressions used to depict identity reflected intercultural interaction with the Boyne Valley (Ireland).

Thesis advisor: Mary Ann Glynn / Categories are persistent features of cultural fields and markets, used to delineate boundaries between different kinds of cultural products and cultural producers. Categories are dynamic social constructions, evolving over time as their constitutive practices and meanings change, through a variety of processes that scholars are still describing and unpacking. This dissertation explores, in three papers, the processes through which categories change over time in the context of the field of jazz music, describing mechanisms of category change and theorizing processes of category evolution and decline. The first paper (chapter two) examines the emergence of a novel subcategory of jazz, called bebop, in the mid-1940’s, and the changes to jazz consumption practices and category meanings that bebop’s emergence wrought. It contributes to the categorization literature by highlighting the role of consumption practices in shaping category meanings. The second paper (chapter three) examines the emergence of another subcategory, called jazz fusion, in the 1960’s and 1970’s, and unpacks gatekeeper responses to its emergence in the form of critical discourse, revealing how category gatekeepers codify category change by reordering their standards of value, quality, and category membership through their discourse. It contributes to the literature by showing how gatekeepers discursively modify categories as they make sense of new practices. The third paper (chapter 4) explores the processes through which subcategories are absorbed into broader umbrella categories, falling out of use even as their constitutive practices and meanings live on. This paper contributes to the literature by expanding our understanding of category decline. Overall, this dissertation contributes to literature on category dynamics and the practice turn in organization theory. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2022. / Submitted to: Boston College. Carroll School of Management. / Discipline: Management and Organization.

<p> Ericsson, Krampe and Tesch-Römer (1993) have concluded from work with musicians that expertise is the result of "deliberate practice". So how valid is this conclusion in sport? Four groups of wrestlers (n=42); 2 international and 2 club (current & retired) recalled the hours spent in wrestling activities since beginning wrestling. All groups had begun at a similar age (M =13.2 ± 0.6year) and had been wrestling for 10 years or more. Contrary to Ericsson et al., practice alone activities did not discriminate between the groups, only practice with others. At 6 years into their careers, the international group practised 4.5 hour/week more than the club wrestlers and at age 20 years the international wrestlers had accumulated over 1000 more hours of practice with others. Evaluations of wrestling activities showed that those judged as relevant, were also rated high for concentration and enjoyment. Diary data were collected from current wrestlers, however, no differences were found for time spent in wrestling activities. The international wrestlers spent longer travelling to practice, which reflected the necessity to train at a club with the best sparring partners. Practice with others yielded high correlations between estimates for a typical week and the diary data for the international wrestlers only, suggesting a more consistent training schedule for this group. In conclusion Ericsson et al.s' definition of "deliberate practice" needs to be reconsidered. It is suggested that "maintenance" hours should be considered separately from practice, and that future studies focus on what it is that motivates people to practice.</p> / Thesis / Master of Science (MSc)

No / Goal-setting is indispensable for effective healthcare management. Yet, literature evidence suggests many organisations worldwide do not know how to formulate ‘SMART’ goals. Evidence of how existing theories work in practice is scarce, and the practices in low-income countries are unknown. Therefore, this research explored how leprosy project goals were formulated to describe the theoretical practice framework of A leprosy-focused organisation in Nigeria. Using a case-study design, ten managers were interviewed individually concerning their goal-setting knowledge, experience and perspective; and documented goals of six projects were reviewed. A five-step constructionist thematic data analysis generated eleven theoretical frameworks from the concepts of the emergent core themes of ‘stakeholders’, ‘strategies’ and ‘statements.’ Further theorisation reduced them to one general framework. This revealed organisational goal-setting practice as a four-stage centre-led, top-down, beneficiary-focused and problem-based process. The stages were national preparation, baseline needs-survey, centralised goal formulation and nationalised planning. The outcome was the formulation of assigned, ‘non-SMART’ objective statements, which are then used for planning projects. Other theoretical models constructed included a Goal Effects Cycle, ‘SMARTA’ goal attributes and hierarchical criteria for differentiating goal-types. A theory developed from the goal-setting practice postulates that: ‘Assigned non-SMART goal formulation directly results from centralised goal-setting practice and is the predictor of unrealistic project planning.’ Therefore, I propose that goal statements will be ‘SMARTA’ and plans, more realistic and relevant if goal-setting is done collaboratively by all stakeholders at all stages of the process. Also, ‘Change-Beneficiary-Indicator-Target-Timeframe’ and ‘Change-Beneficiary-Location-Timeframe’ frameworks are recommended as templates for writing SMART objectives and aims respectively.

Natural resource–based economies are typically embedded in rural networks of production. In recent years, however, the privatisation of access rights and the organisation of markets have substantially transformed some of these rural economies. By using the case of the Icelandic coastal fisheries, this ethnographic study shows, on one hand, how property rights–based management regimes and markets have reconfigured rural economies by disentangling fishers from their community ties, leading to increasing investment and technological development in the industry. On the other hand, the case shows how daily economic ‘coping’ has re-entangled fishers in a web of money-mediated relations that have economised economic expectations from cost-awareness to increasing profit-making in the industry. This economisation of the fisheries’ economy, however, not only reconfigures forms of coordination and network ties, but also changes the social practices that lie at the heart of economic value itself: fishing and processing. Hence, the study shows how artisanal and labour-intensive industries cope with the ‘primacy of the economy’ not only by rationalising their operations towards economic efficiency, but also by recontextualising traditional forms of knowledge and technology for the collective construction of a new 'quality'-oriented market-niche. The consequences of this coping, however, are twofold: while on one hand this development has led to the valorisation of line-caught fish, coastal fisheries have become objects of financial speculation, leading to a paradoxical cycle of investment and technological problem-solving that is pushing the temporal and spatial boundaries of coastal fisheries in local networks of production. As a consequence, the meaning of ‘small boats’ as social backbone and symbol of rural independence is being contested. This study is not only of interest to scholars dealing with processes of economisation and marketisation of rural networks of production and natural resources, but also for those interested more generally in the role of markets, technology and changing economic practices of evaluation and valuation in contemporary capitalism.

Accomplishing desired benefits from investments in planned change is problematical for organizations, their leaders and the change agents charged with delivery. This is despite a well-developed literature, replete with advice on how change should be achieved. Examination of this literature shows the primary focus on change agents and their practices. This research widens the focus by observing the influence of change agents, change recipients and line managers on organizational routines undergoing planned change. It examines the interplay between stability and change in organizational routines, adopting a social practice perspective, and the routine intended to change as the unit of analysis (Feldman and Pentland, 2003, 2005). The research builds on claims that to understand the patterns of action within routines requires the internal dynamics – the claimed duality between ostensive (in principle) and performative (in practice) aspects - to be examined. A research method to operationalize the study of this claimed duality was devised following the principles of Strong Structuration (Stones, 2005). This method enabled a unique conceptualization of the study of routine dynamics, focused on planned change from the perspective of multiple, interdependent actors. Two cases of change agents following the advice in the planned change literature were explored. In one case, stability of the routine persisted when change was intended. In the other, change was relatively easy to achieve irrespective of change agent actions. The primary contribution is the demonstration of how the attitudes to change of change recipients, line managers and change agents influence the internal dynamics of routines undergoing planned change. Other contributions pertain to the method of ‘unpacking’ organizational routines and its potential for shaping future practice. This research does not offer new ‘normative’ advice but instead sensitizes planned change practitioners to the level of analysis they need to carry out to ensure that their interventions are suitably designed.

Traditional research into pro-environmental behaviour change has a tendency to be focussed on either the context in which practices are enacted or the cognitive processes that lead to particular behaviours. Research is often located within individual disciplines, with policy implications defined by (often) narrow interpretations of a problem. Despite increasing recognition of the ability of behaviour change to significantly contribute to the reduction in emissions required to meet UK targets, policy is so far failing to encourage ‘normative’ low carbon practices in many areas of life. Based on theories of social practice, this thesis attempts to redress the relationship between individuals and behaviour in order to discover how energy practices are developed, maintained and reconfigured. Specifically, it develops a phenomenological approach to energy consumption by exploring how energy practices are experienced by individuals on a daily basis, based on the premise that much human behaviour is driven by individuals’ perceptions of their actions. The study highlights the importance of the meanings and associations that individuals possess in relation to their energy practices and how these are implicated by their experiences, past and present. Furthermore, it contends that practices are influenced by social interactional dynamics and normative frameworks within the home, as well as by the form and frequency of social relations external to the home. With energy consumption so closely interlocked with the practices with which individuals engage in a daily basis, this thesis suggests that policy needs to be more in tune with the everyday experiences of energy consumers. It concludes by setting out a form of policy-making that has the potential to reduce everyday energy use by being sensitive to the experiences and well-being of individuals and society.

This thesis is an ethnography of the phenomenon of self-help. It begins by noting a problematic at the centre of the topic: the term self-help connotes, on the one hand, an autonomous agent ("self'), and on the other, a reliance on other agents ("help"). More substantively, the term attaches itself to two opposing ideological positions, individualism and collectivism. This strange splitting of the term is reproduced in a contemporary context, where we see the genre of self-help books, which is built around the highly individualistic activity of reading as a quest for self-help, and self-help groups, which are built around the collective, co-presence of members as they mutually help one another. But the phenomenon is engaged by separate, non-overlapping literatures that treat self-help books as having a status independent of self-help groups; one attends to self-help books, but disregards self-help groups, while the other attends to self-help groups, but disregards self-help books. Thus self-help books and self-help groups get polarized. This effectively makes the original problematic around the term itself disappear, because it' simply ignores it. This research turns this character of self-help into a topic for study. It looks at what holds the term together, that is to say, self-help books and self-help groups, when they appear to be entirely independent phenomena, and yet still share the term self-help. It is interested in the significance of the term, why it gets invoked as a description of particular activities and what that entails as a practical matter. It wants to see how self-help is performed. It identifies a hybrid of self-help books and self-help groups - a self-help workshop. This third site of self-help brings individual readers of self-help books into a context of collective, social activity. It uses this as a strategy with which to examine the relationships between self-help books and self-help groups, self and help. It undertakes a detailed empirical analysis of a corpus of self-help books, a selfhelp workshop and a range of self-help groups, drawing on textual, discursive and ethnographic modes of inquiry. It then uses this empirical work to map self-help and engage it as a wider, cultural phenomenon in the modem period.

Analysing what it means being neither immigrant nor tourist in a foreign country, this thesis looks at the experiences of international PhD students and their supervisors in the Swedish university town Uppsala. The Faculty of Science and Technology of Uppsala University and the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences (SLU) are the universities studied. Based on anthropological methods, this thesis focuses on the individual actors as they attempt to match the objective of doing a PhD while at the same time being in a different country. Using practice theory, the study highlights that the experiences of international PhD students and the people working with them vary greatly from PhD student to PhD student. Yet, almost all undergo a certain form of self-formation and adjustment process to match the requirements of not only their host country, but also the international field of science they attempt to enter. Being connected to other people in similar situations can help them adapt to this new environment, and many international PhD students join communities of practice. I argue that most develop an internationally recognised habitus, which helps them being recognised by the international community. The habitus can further, under certain circumstances, become partially conscious.

Corporations have increasingly turned to CSR-initiatives in order to monitor workers’ rights and responsibilities in global supply chains. This article argues that in order for these CSR- initiatives to succeed in enabling workers’ voice at the workplace, the shared benefits of the practice must be realized by all stakeholders. In this article, H&amp;M’s social dialogue project in Bangladesh has been analyzed through the lens of social practice theory identifying three crucial elements which must exist or be created, linked and sustained in order to produce behaviour change, which in this case is social dialogue between factory workers and factory management. This article argues that H&amp;M’s social dialogue project has all the essential elements and objectives to increase workers’ voice and improve industrial relations. It also points out the importance of not viewing bipartite social dialogue as the end goal. Instead, H&amp;M’s implementation of bipartite social dialogue at their suppliers’ factories should serve as the stepping stone toward tripartite social dialogue where trade unions can empower workers in the readymade garment-sector. The trade unions have the unique right to bargain collectively and if corporations truly want to ensure workers’ rights, they must promote increased union activity in the industry. This research describes the key activities, training methodology, objectives and expected outcomes of H&amp;M’s social dialogue project followed by an analysis of workers employed in Bangladeshi readymade garment-sector experiences, attitudes and associations to social dialogue. By analysing workers’ associations to social dialogue and H&amp;M’s objectives of the social dialogue project, certain conditions have been identified as crucial in order to enable efficient social dialogue at the workplace.