La consommation est désormais élargie à toutes les phases et comprend le tri des déchets. Les explications avancées jusqu’ici sur la performance du tri sont insatisfaisantes. Le tri des déchets présente deux spécificités : il est porté par la famille (et non l’individu) et ses modalités sont imposées par les Pouvoirs Publics. Ce travail est ancré dans la théorie de la pratique sociale qui permet l’étude d’une routine de consommation à l’intersection entre les niveaux micro- et macro-sociaux. L’objet de cette recherche est de mettre en évidence la construction de la pratique sociale du tri des déchets dans les familles. La démarche méthodologique est qualitative, basée sur des observations participantes, des entretiens semi-directifs et des mimes. Les résultats mettent en évidence (1) la structure de la pratique organisée selon les faires, les objets et les engagements ; (2) les liens qui unissent ces éléments au travers des processus d’appropriation, de réalisation et de renforcement et (3) la dynamique de la pratique, par laquelle les familles entrent dans celle-ci. La contribution majeure de ce travail réside en l’apport d’un cadre théorique permettant la compréhension à l’échelle familiale du processus de construction de la pratique sociale du tri à l’échelle de la société. / Today, consumption is enlarged to all stages and includes recycling. Explanations on performance given so far still remain unsatisfying. Two specificities characterize recycling : it is supported by the family (and not the individual) and its rules are imposed by public policies. This research is anchored in social practice theory that allows the study of a consumption routine at the crossroads between micro- and macro-social levels. The aim of this research is to highlight the building up of recycling’s social practice in families. The methodology is qualitative, based on participant observations, semi-structured interviews and mimes. Results highlight : (1) practice structure organized around doings, objects and engagement ; (2) links unifying those elements through appropriation, realisation and reinforcement and (3) practice dynamic, that allows families involvement into it. The main contribution of this work relies on the understanding of the building process at a familial level of the recycling practice at a societal level.

Little empirical work has been conducted on workplace practices in university settings. Meanwhile, the impact of feedback on changing consumption patterns has been mainly studied through individualistic approaches. The academic workplace with its variety of users offers a setting that could provide a range of insights as to how practices form and change under the impact of efficiency interventions and, in turn, how relevant policies could be formed. This research looks at workplace practices related to the regulation of indoor temperature and the use of office equipment. It examines the potential of reducing energy usage in the workplace through a case study on the understanding of and interventions in practices using consumption feedback. A framework based on social practice theory is applied where daily practices are configured by routines, technologies, knowledge and meanings. The research takes place in a UK university building, where the provision of real-time consumption feedback through a display is employed to raise energy awareness. It follows a case study approach featuring three different office typologies and associated user groups: the shared, enclosed administrative office; the PhD open-plan office, and the post-doctoral cellular office. The study begins with an examination of the thermal characteristics and comfort preferences in the case study offices. It then examines how users shape their practices in the workplace. Finally, it observes the impact of feedback through real-time displays on the reduction of energy consumption. A mixed methods approach is employed combining qualitative and quantitative data. Semi- structured interviews and on-site observations are cross-related to environmental conditions monitoring, electricity audits and thermal comfort diaries. Data collection takes place in two phases— (February 2014 and July 2014) —to capture differences in practices between the winter and summer as well as before and after the installation of real-time displays. By exploring the empirical evidence through a practice theory framework, this research shows how social dynamics, the difference between the notion of comfort at home and work, and striving for productivity can prefigure ‘passive’ thermal comfort practices in the workplace. The real-time displays did not trigger change despite the fact electricity audits revealed a savings potential related to high standby use. The inadequacy of building maintenance structures, significant installation delays and the type of projected information were the main factors restricting change. The use of a practice approach advanced the understanding as to why it is so difficult to save energy at work and use feedback as a successful intervention. The combination of qualitative enquiry and energy audits meanwhile indicated the potential source of savings.

The current trend of emissions from the transport sector is unsustainable. To increase cycling mitigates these emissions, while also actively promoting health and alleviating congestion within cities. However, the clear benefits from cycling, along with efforts from municipalities around the world to promote cycling, have not translated in a sufficient change in behavior to reverse the global trends in emissions. Rather than looking at individual behavior, Social Practice Theory (SPT) is concerned with the practice (of cycling) as a whole. Primarily through interviews with international students about their experiences cycling and how they picked up cycling in Uppsala, voted best bike city in Sweden in 2018, I present an analysis of the recruitment process, and the overall practice of cycling in Uppsala through the lens of SPT. In this thesis I found that the pervasiveness of cycling throughout Uppsala and the social networks created by exchange students work together to recruit practitioners and spread the practice of cycling.

Abstract Background: Value co-creation emerged at the beginning of the 21st century as a new way of understanding of value and its creation which occurs around individualized experiences of co-creation, leading to the creation of value that is exclusive to every person. In the essence of the concept of value co-creation lays the service-dominant logic of marketing. The investigation of value co-creation within brand communities has been emphasized in recent years. The practices of brand community members play a significant role in the value co-creation. Since Airbnb has never been looked as a brand community in the value co-creation literature, it remained unclear how value can be co-created through the practices of Airbnb community members. Purpose: How value is co-created between brand community members of Airbnb (between hosts and guests and guests themselves) through their practices in their experiences within the corporeal world? Method: In order to meet the purpose of this study, authors applied a qualitative method. Further, a netnographic strategy has been employed which led us to collect online-posted reviews of Airbnb guests from Airbnb website. Authors used purposive sampling by selecting the only guests who had the previous experience of stay in Airbnb accommodations in cases of on-site hospitality. 155 reviews of different guests from 31 accommodation profiles were collected in three waves of data collection. Moreover, a grounded theory coding was employed in order to analyze the data. Conclusion: We identified 14 sub-categories of value-creating practices that emerged under four major categories, namely: practice of sharing, practice of communicating, practice of saving, and practice of authenticating. Further, in the process of elaboration of main elements of practices (i.e. objects, doings, and meanings), we found general connections of these elements within the practices of hosts and guests (i.e. Airbnb community members) that helped us to understand how value is co-created in their experiences within the corporeal world.

Appeals to practices are common the humanities and social sciences. They hold the potential to explain interesting or compelling similarities, insofar as similarities are distributed within a community or group. Why is it that people who fall under the same category, whether men, women, Americans, baseball players, Buddhists, feminists, white people, or others, have interesting similarities, such as similar beliefs, actions, thoughts, foibles, and failings? One attractive answer is that they engage in the same practices. They do the same things, perhaps as a result of doing things at the same site or setting, or perhaps as a result of being raised in a similar way among members of the same group. In the humanities, appeals to practices often serve as a move to point out diversity among different communities or diversity within the same community. Communities are distinct from one another in part because their members do different things or do things in different ways. The distinct and varied ways in which different communities enact social norms or formulate law, state institutions, and public policy might be explicable in part by the different practices their members are socialized into. Appeals to practices hold the promise of explaining these differences in terms of the different background practices of the groups, cultivated through a kind of cultural isolation or sense of collective identity. In the social sciences, appeals to practices have played a central role in fundamental theorizing and theory building. Appeals to practices in the social sciences are often much more systematic and theoretical, forming the core of the systematic theories of Pierre Bourdieu and Anthony Giddens in Anthropology and Sociology. Practice theory has thus become a growth industry in social scientific investigation, offering the promise of a central object of investigation that explains both unity and difference within and across communities and groups. But it is unclear just what practices are and what role, both ontological and explanatory, that practices are supposed to play. The term `practices' is used to pick out a wide range of things, and its relation to other terms, from `tradition' or `paradigm' to `framework' or `presupposition', is unclear. Practices are posited as ubiquitous, yet they are difficult to isolate and pin down. We are all said to participate in them, but they remain hidden. Their role, whether causal, logical, or hermeneutical, remains mysterious. After locating the historical origins of appeals to practices in the work of Ludwig Wittgenstein and Martin Heidegger, my dissertation uses Stephen Turner's broad and systematic critique of appeals to practices to develop a new type of account. My account is a phenomenological account that treats practices as human doings that show up to people in material and social environments and make themselves available for specific responses in those environments. I argue that a phenomenological account is an effective alternative to accounts that treat practices as either shared objects with properties or shared and implicit presuppositions. I use a phenomenological account of practices to treat important debates in feminist philosophy and the philosophy of the social sciences, particularly debates over pornography's subordination of women and the classification of mental disorders in psychiatry.

Urban areas will play a decisive role in the sustainability of future societies. As such, there is a need to understand the processes through which cities can become more sustainable. Based on a qualitative case study of a community food waste initiative in Gothenburg, Sweden, this thesis explores the phenomenon of urban sustainability transitions in relation to learning. The thesis attempts to explain how learning at the level of socio-technical niches could be instrumental to broader systemic changes at the regime level. The theoretical framework for the thesis draws on the transactional perspective on learning developed from pragmatist educational philosophy, as well as practice theoretical approaches to studying sustainability transitions which have emerged in recent years. The empirical results gathered from the case are analysed using dramaturgical analysis and practical epistemology analysis. Based on these analyses, the thesis argues that the role and significance of learning in urban sustainability transitions can be understood in terms of educative practices, a concept which is elaborated in the discussion chapter. Thus, it is argued that learning through educative practices can contribute to urban sustainability transitions by challenging prevailing institutional norms and structures, and by establishing pathways through which unsustainable elements within the socio-technical regime can be reconfigured. / Wicked Problems and Urban Sustainability Transition

The thesis focuses on the nurse and her practice in end-of-life care in the field of palliative home care. The overall question is how nurses come to do what they do within this practice and where they get the practice, which can also be expressed as the  genesis and structure of the practice. The thesis’ social relevance takes its starting point in the Swedish Elderly Care Act (Ädelreformen) and theoretical inspiration from Foucault’s discourse analysis regarding the establishment of the clinic. The thesis has a practice-theoretical approach in which Bourdieu’s habitus concept, explaining how practice is generated, is central. The habitus concept can be described as a set of subjective dispositions in the individual that prompt her to act in a certain way. These dispositions are expressed in attitudes, strategies, and capacities and can be seen in relation to the practice structure. The thesis’ method is based on observations, conversations, and interviews with the nurses about their work, education, and social background. Conversations between the nurses and the spouse living with the sick person were recorded and transcribed. Encompassed by the study were six nurses, whose work was followed for seven months in 13 private homes. The actions performed by the nurses in their practice proved to be homogenous, a circumstance they were not aware of. There was agreement between the nurses’ underlying structure and how they handled their practice, i.e. the end-of-life care in the private home. The nurses had similar ideals and had developed similar habituses as they grew up and during their adult lives. The thesis is empiric in that the reader follows the nurse in her work in private homes. The nurse organizes this care in the home in consultation with the patient and the person living with them in an extraordinarily cautious manner. How the nurse handles difficult situations and conversations with spouses and often dying patients, is viewed in relation to the nurse’s habitus and dispositions. Key words: nurse, palliative home care, practice theory, habitus, observation, pedagogical practice, Bourdieu, Foucault / Lokal för dispuation ändrad till Universitetshuset sal X.

Based on four articles, this compilation thesis analyses the demonstrated com-petence defining a medical doctor, to the extent to which he or she acquires a high status and high level of employability in professional practice. Overall, the thesis aimed to describe and analyse professional socialization during doctors' transition from education to work. Questions addressed included how higher education should be understood as preparation for professional practice, how ideals of the future professional were conceived and how these ideals differenti-ated 'good' from 'bad' doctors in professional development and recruitment. The research employed a version of practice theory as its theoretical framework, developed with the aid of work by Pierre Bourdieu, Judith Butler, John Dewey and Theodore Schatzki. Throughout the individual studies, ideals were con-structed and understood as moral imperatives, stating how doctors are expected to perform in professional practice. Article I explored the ideals of academia and higher education practices in a general sense. In this study, the ideals involve the perceived function of higher education in relation to work. Three different and conflicting perspectives were constructed with the aid of a literature study. Arti-cle II was a survey investigation of how two cohorts (n=169) of recent graduates from a Swedish medical programme viewed their competence and the prepara-tion they received for work through the medical programme. The results show that graduates might be overly prepared from a knowledge perspective, while lacking in practical skills and preparation for difficult situations in the work-place. Article III investigated the ideals of the medical programme using an interview study with eight medical students and eight medical teachers. The ideals constructed show how conflicting ideals, such as strength and humility, shape conceptions of the future professional. Finally, Article IV reports an inter-view study with recruiters of medical interns in Sweden's 21 most popular hospi-tals. Results showed that the most attractive candidates balanced two traits: orientation towards performance and orientation towards human relations. They also successfully demonstrated possession of these qualities in their appli-cation and subsequent interview. Overall, the results from the studies indicated that there are great differences between views of proper preparation for work and views of the highly-employable doctor. While medical knowledge and skills were seen as important in preparation for work, they were absent in the views of the highly-competent and employable doctor. Instead, generic attributes, such as drive, curiosity, cooperativeness, warmth, maturity and reflectiveness, char-acterised descriptions of the most accomplished medical professionals. These attributes also were seen primarily as developed before or 'beside' the formal medical education programme.

There is a globally acknowledged urgency for mankind to transition toward sustainability. Empowering people to make sound assessments is the basis for desirable transitions. ‘Education for sustainable development’ (ESD) is an interdisciplinary learning process advancing knowledge, understanding and action for sustainability. To encourage sustainability transitions ESD needs to be personal and place-specific. One platform provisioning for such learning is ‘ecotourism’, where participants have a heightened sense of self, others and the environment. Hence a practice incorporating ESD into ecotourism is investigated in this thesis, to determine whether the setting would be propitious for fostering sustainability transitions. The pertinent sustainability concepts are assessed, and ‘social practice theory’ is utilized in a case study. The approach of social practice theory was preferable, as it holds the assumption that people are able to act in relation to collective cultural activities rather than in immediate responses to internal or environmental events. The effect of ESD in ecotourism is analyzed through observations and unstructured interviews conducted in a case-study in Turkey – Narköy, which is a hotel, organic farm and educational facility. The findings imply that through social practice, pro-environmental transitions can be encouraged and strengthened, with the provisions of having freedom for learning, social interaction, connection with nature, tangible activities and inclusive approach.

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.