Practical Knowledge as an Academic Study of Its Own? A Methodological Approach

Abstract

Taking its point of departure in the neo-Aristotelian sense of praxis, this chapter discusses whether empirical research on practical knowledge takes on a disciplinary character. By applying common features for all academic disciplines, the relational “field-theory-method” model, empirical studies of knowledge in practice are presented paradigmatically. It is of vital importance that the overall theory is an articulated perspective that makes one identify the objects of the field, and that helps in designating appropriate methods for studying them. The field in the studies of practical knowledge is defined as knowledge developed in the practising itself by a theory of actions as socially meaningful, thereby leading to a study of the practitioner’s own experience as its point of departure. Thematizing may take several different directions. A combined examination of subjective and objective points of view lays the ground for further theoretical and practical elaborations with the methods appropriate for that field, with the questions based on the theory. This insight is particularly informed by social hermeneutical theory in the sense of Alfred Schütz, as well as the social philosophy of phenomenology of actions expounded by Thomas Luckmann more generally.