The Contamination of Practices: How Practice Theories Matter in Multiple Domains

This introduction presents the genesis of The Contamination of Practices: How Practice Theories Matter in Multiple Domains Symposium. The Symposium is the outcome of a research network established to explore new ways to adopt, criticize and expand the approaches that fall under the definition of practice theory, in relation to different topics, and to answer multiple research questions. The shared foundation underlying the contributions is developed around the metaphor of “contamination”: while up to the present the efforts of scholars of major practice theory have been to sharpened to specify a common theoretical framework, we argue that practice theory is at the verge of entering a new stage of diffusion and contamination. Contamination is intended here in a double sense: on the one hand, practice theory is contaminating several fields and domains of social research; on the other hand, its conceptual framework is also being contaminated by other intellectual and theoretical traditions, as it is being innovatively adopted and adapted based on the different topics and questions it addresses. Each of the nine articles comprising the Symposium addresses this contamination in a specific way.