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Decades ago, Michael Polanyi (1966) wrote
of there being a tacit dimension to much of
what humans do and experience. This tacit
dimension refers to taken for granted aspects
of our experiencing and doing that occur
below our attentional radar. Important for our
considerations here is that such tacit experi-
encing and doing occurs because of the
familiarities of our responsiveness to people
and other features of our situations. Whether
learning to pedal a bicycle or greeting a new
colleague – beyond any initial awkwardness,
these novel sense-making interactions often
become familiar, lulling us into overlooking
the tacit responsiveness required for enabling
such interactions to recur. Should the famil-
iar become tacit in these interactions, we can
lose our sense of responding to how we are
being responded to, unless such tacit interac-
tions are disrupted or re-visited for new kinds
of sense-making. This makes such interac-
tions, or socio-material practices, interesting
practitioner-research foci.
Interaction has been difficult to conceptu-
alize for individually focused psychologists
and socially oriented sociologists. Basically,
it refers to the back-and-forth responsiveness
that develops between people, or between
people and material features in their situa-
tions. Goffman (1967) launched his micro-
sociology suggesting that researchers look at
the immediacies of everyday interactions as
being ‘where the action is’. Garfinkel (1967)
went a step further to suggest that everyday
interactions – those recurring in the back
and forth of people’s immediate responses to
each other – were how they brought famil-
iar order to their relationships. Translated to
human interactions with material elements
(e.g., technology, objects, geography), a more
challenging and recent socio-material view
theorizes how humans become situationally
‘entangled’ (Barad, 2007) with material fea-
tures of their lives.
Socio-material practices begin as responses
to something new, in sense-making interac-
tions that develop according to how people
Researching Socio-material
Practices: Inquiries into the
Human/non-human Interweave
Tanya Mudry and Tom Strong
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and material elements respond to each other
in recurring interactions over time. A consid-
erable literature has been developing, high-
lighting how interwoven humans and material
phenomena have become (e.g., Grosz, 2017;
Hekman, 2010) or may have always been
(Ingold, 2007). New ‘posthuman’ (Braidotti,
2013) or relational ontologies (Barad, 2007)
are discussed within this literature, particu-
larly as technologies become more central
in our lives (e.g., Fry, 2018; Latour, 2013).
This literature suggests that it is becoming
increasingly hard to distinguish human influ-
ence from the influence of socio-material
phenomena with which we interact, par-
ticularly when one adds in Polanyi’s tacit
dimension. Therein lies a potentially inter-
esting dilemma, as some practices, such as
performed elegance or expertise (Dreyfus &
Dreyfus, 1986) illustrate the usefulness
of this tendency. However, a downside
becomes evident when socio-material prac-
tices acquire an unwanted automaticity, such
as when we become mindlessly ‘addicted’ to
activities. Socio-material practices exemplify
how humans routinely interact with material
phenomena to reproduce experiences and
relations, and effectively meld with these
phenomena (e.g., technology, geographies,
objects). Gregory Bateson (1972) similarly
described how the practice of using a cane
could seemingly develop into an extension of
a visually impaired person using it.
In this chapter, we focus on researching
socio-material practices – those that conjoin
humans with material elements of their situ-
ations. Our aim is to show ways to ‘zoom in’
(Nicolini, 2012) to research specific socio-
material practices as concurrent doings, say-
ings, and relatings (Kemmis, Wikinson, &
Edwards-Groves, 2017), while also ‘zoom-
ing out’ to research bigger picture influences
sustaining socio-material practices. We con-
ceptualize socio-material practices as recur-
rent ‘doings, sayings, and relatings’ (Kemmis
et al., 2017) that develop into inertias or
‘rhythms’ that persist in taken-for-granted
ways that almost feel second nature. Henri
Lefebvre issued, for us, a heuristic chal-
lenge for our inquiries: ‘When rhythms are
lived, they cannot be analysed’ (2004, p. 88).
Through clinical and research-related stud-
ies of ‘excessive behaviours’ we probe such
rhythms through reflexive forms of sense-
making, uncoupling how socio-material
practices tacitly reproduce what can become
unacceptably familiar.
SOCIO-MATERIAL PRACTICES
A Pavlovian view of practice would probably
stop at S-R (stimulus-response) habits, a
focus of behavioural therapists for almost a
century (e.g., Watson, 1925). This focus on
‘doing’ or the actions required for perpetuat-
ing a habit, omits any sayings and relatings.
Sayings are what people say to themselves to
justify or inform their doing of a socio-
material practice – a normal target for cogni-
tive therapists (Beck, 1979). Relatings tap
into dimensions of value, affect, and goal-
orientation (or ‘teleoaffectivity’ – see
Schatzki, 2010) that relate the person to the
practice. Psychological language like ‘com-
pulsion’ partly captures this component,
which mindfulness and acceptance-focused
therapists (e.g., Roemer & Orsillo, 2010)
emphasize. Socio-material practices, how-
ever, seldom refer to the discrete doings,
sayings, or relatings these approaches to
therapy target. They are responsive and typi-
cally recur in broader networks or assem-
blages where they seemingly take on lives of
their own.
For Peter Sloterdijk (2013), ‘Every active
person is dyed in the lye of their activities
until the miracle of ‘second nature’ takes
place and they perform the near-impossi-
ble almost effortlessly’ (p. 321). Practices
acquire their ‘second nature’ through becom-
ing conjoined in networks and assemblages
and then persist because they have a kind of
life support system that extends beyond the
person caught up as part of sustaining them.
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To illustrate, systemic therapy which sought
to change unwanted family practices, tends
to be up against other practices engaging the
family beyond the consulting room (Dreier,
2008). Thus, a change focus on a specific
practice may seem like bucking the tide for
being part of a greater network or assemblage
of practices.
RESEARCHING SOCIO-MATERIAL
PRACTICES
The pithy phrase ‘zooming out and zooming
in’ (Nicolini, 2012) nicely encompasses our
interests in tackling research questions in
macroscopic and microscopic ways. Our
backgrounds in ethnomethodology (e.g.,
Garfinkel, 1967; Heritage, 1984) had ori-
ented us to micro-interactions through which
humans negotiate a shared, but mostly taken-
for-granted, sense of orderliness or familiar-
ity. However, we were also drawn to making
sense of larger historical and cultural influ-
ences on human interactions – particularly
the hermeneutically oriented writings of
Foucault (2011) or Ian Hacking. For Hacking
(1999), some cultural phenomena acquire
their salience in ‘ecological niches’, which in
some way resemble the situations or assem-
blages we will describe in greater detail later.
When researching socio-material practices,
we think it is important to zoom in, to see
how these practices are done in micro terms,
while zooming out to consider macro-
influences that shape the salience or rele-
vance of any socio-material practice.
Zooming in on Socio-Material
Practices
Socio-material practices typically begin in
sense-making interactions, and for us that
means looking beyond the brain. Others have
claims on how we navigate and negotiate
sense-making interactions, and not only other
humans (Garfinkel, 1967). Our smartphones
show us how our use of them becomes inter-
woven with other social and material claims
on our attention. Practices come out of how
we initially make sense of such interactional
claims or challenges in ways we can later
develop as reliable responses helpful in nego-
tiating such challenges to make them ‘accept-
ably familiar’ (Lock & Strong, 2010).
Zooming out on Socio-Material
Practices
Researching socio-material practices is com-
plicated because they seldom recur in isola-
tion, and more commonly are sustained
inside broader networks or assemblages. One
needs to consider broader cultural and sys-
temic influences shaping that recurrence
(e.g., Tomm, St. George, Wulff, & Strong,
2014). In zooming out to research socio-
material practices we alternate between con-
sidering their recurrence within assemblages
and/or networks. The notion of assemblages
comes from Deleuze and Guattari (1988) and
addresses conditions under which phenom-
ena like practices commingle and develop
together. Assemblages have been used to
conceptualize emergent health conditions
(e.g., Duff, 2013) and political developments
(Massumi, 2015). They function as ecologies
inside which unpredictable developments
emerge, even go viral, in ways unique yet
consistent with their interactive elements. It
took a particular convergence of factors like
Facebook and Twitter, a cultural disgust for
political prevarication, online editing tools,
etc., for today’s creative political meme prac-
tices to develop on the Internet.
Networks acquire a procedural familiarity
enabling one interaction or practice to foretell
the need to engage in a next familiar practice.
This is a view some associate with cybernet-
ics (Bateson, 1972) and entails tacitly know-
ing what to do next in a patterned sequence.
However, there is usually an interpretive
interactional gap that any practice stitches
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together (Latour, 2013) – a gap humans fill
with their doings, sayings, and relatings.
Often such gaps acquire a recurring sense
that Guattari (1995) referred to as ‘machinic’.
The familiarity and predictability of recur-
ring practices inside networks makes them
interesting and potentially liberating targets
of critical reflection and reflexive inquiry.
REFLEXIVE RESEARCH OF SOCIO-
MATERIAL PRACTICES
One aspect of reflexivity is that questions,
whether asked in therapy or in research, are
anything but neutral data-retrieval proce-
dures. Karl Tomm’s seminal writing on
reflexive questions in therapy (1987) paral-
leled how action researchers (e.g., Heron &
Reason, 1997) saw questions potentially
inviting consideration and enactment of new
social realities – they could be ‘future-
forming’ in Ken Gergen’s language (2015).
Furthermore, reflexivity has an ethnometh-
odological meaning (e.g., Heritage, 1984)
shared by process-oriented philosophers
(Nail, 2019; Stengers, 2011); that posthuman
life is normally in flux. Socio-material prac-
tices are ways humans responsively try to
stabilize or bring familiar order to that flux.
Thus, we sought to research socio-material
practices without reifying them, and to
instead find generative ways to, identify and
represent them.
Clarke’s Situational Analysis (SA; Clarke
etal., 2017) offers mapping procedures useful
for zooming in and out to better understand
socio-material practices. Macroscopically,
John Shotter (2006) referred to ‘responsive
orders’ that we see as stitched together by
socio-material practices tacitly perpetuated
in assemblages and networks of practice.
Zooming in helps us look at specific socio-
material practices, to revisit alternative
sense-making that had become closed up or
made seamless by such practices (Schegloff
& Sacks, 1972). SA maps, in other words
give us lenses for considering the actual and
the possible.
RESEARCHING EXCESSIVE
BEHAVIOURS
Excessive behaviours are common, practised
excessively and tacitly, and often experi-
enced as unacceptably familiar, as ‘addic-
tions’. We draw from examples of inquiries
into excessive behaviours (Mudry, 2016),
specifically gambling, to demonstrate how
we have researched socio-material practices.
We aim to show how to reflexively probe and
uncouple the ways socio-material practices
are tacitly reproduced to create and sustain
gambling, so that individuals can better
change practices they deem are no longer
acceptable.
In Tanya’s original study, participants who
self-identified as feeling ‘stuck’ in, or hav-
ing concerns related to eating, Internet use,
or gambling were interviewed about specific
practices they deemed important to sustain-
ing or interrupting these concerns. Nicolini’s
(2012) orienting questions were used to attend
to the doings, sayings (beliefs, ideas, talk
within the practice), timing, tempo, embodied
choreography, objects, and place (see Mudry,
2016 for details). Through analysing inter-
view transcripts, we zoomed out to examine
participants’ social worlds and arenas to con-
sider which conditions and practices were
most relevant or salient to our inquiry, while
zooming in to see how unacceptably familiar
practices are sustained. For Nicolini (2012)
‘zooming in and out is achieved by switching
theoretical lenses, the result is both a repre-
sentation of practice and an exercise of dif-
fraction whereby understanding is enriched
through reading the results of one form of
theorization through another’ (p. 219). Here
we use data from an interview with one par-
ticipant, ‘Tom Jackson’ (his chosen pseu-
donym), to illustrate how researchers might
examine socio-material practices by zooming
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out and zooming in, through using lenses
afforded by the earlier mentioned assemblage
and network approaches.
Social Worlds Arena
Drawing from Situational Analysis (SA,
Clarke, 2005) we created our version of a
social worlds/arenas map to depict gambling
as a situation pertaining to individuals (Tom
Jackson in particular) who gamble. In our
social worlds/arenas map (Figure 10.1), we
portray the actors engage in this situated
form of coordinated action (gambling), as
social worlds, or meso-level arena(s) where
these actors have something at stake. While
not exhaustive, four broad social arenas were
identified in the map as salient to the situa-
tion of gambling: Mental Health and
Addiction; Political; Personal and
Community; and Gambling Industry. Within
each of these arenas are actors that have a
stake in gambling, some of which are in ten-
sion with others. For example, policy makers,
research bodies, funding bodies, and govern-
ment are situated and motivated within all
four arenas. Tom Jackson lives in a jurisdic-
tion where gambling is legal and regulated
by the government, which receives tax reve-
nues from gambling to fund service provid-
ers and treatment facilities for ‘problematic
gamblers’. In seeking profit, the casino and
gambling industry design casinos and games
accordingly, to accelerate play, extend dura-
tion, and increase spending (Schüll, 2012).
Such goals are in direct conflict with policy
makers advocating for responsible gambling,
who also benefit from the profits of the
casino and gambling industry. Those who
Figure 10.1 Gambling social worlds/arena map
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gamble (i.e., Tom Jackson), do so within a
tension between the government’s role to
help and protect their citizens, while profit-
ing from the gambling revenues through
taxation.
Depending upon the participant, different
social arenas may play a larger or smaller
role in (i.e., have claims on) the practices in
which they engage. If the participant uses
mental health or addiction services, the men-
tal health and addiction arena may be more
relevant to investigate. If the participant gam-
bles during work hours, or gambling harms
their social relationships, the personal or
community arenas (i.e., workplace, social
relationships) may be relevant for the inquiry.
Social worlds are not fixed, and the porosity
of social worlds/arenas are depicted through
the use of dotted lines. Tom Jackson’s social
worlds involved formal counselling to reduce
gambling, as well as Gambler’s Anonymous
(peer-based 12-step recovery), both of which
sit within the mental health and addiction
arena and have stakes in him reducing gam-
bling. Conversely, the casinos and developers
of video lottery terminals (VLTs) (gambling
industry arena) have a stake in increasing
Tom Jackson’s gambling through technology
and environment to increase play. Therein
lies an important tension between Tom
Jackson’s relevant social worlds, each with
opposing stakes in him continuing to gamble.
When Tom Jackson is engaged in practices
that sustain excessive gambling, he does so
within and as part of these social worlds.
In light of our interest in socio-material
practices, we focused on practices involving
the Personal and Community (workplace,
family, friends) and Gambling Industry (i.e.,
casinos and VLTs) social worlds.
Zooming Out: Assemblages of
Practices
We used an assemblage approach to attend to
and identify the conditions and influences
under which situated elements commingle
and develop into socio-material practices, all
occurring within and as part of social worlds.
Given Tom Jackson’s social worlds, and our
interview with him, we identified the follow-
ing conditions and influences that likely
converged and commingled to facilitate
excessive gambling (Figure 10.2):
Neoliberalism, media, gambling industry,
government/political system, current econ-
omy, work/employment, health and mental
health, and social network. For the purposes
of this chapter, we focused on conditions and
influences most related to Tom Jackson’s
casino gambling, which directly attend to
socio-material elements. However, condi-
tions such as social network (i.e., recent loss
of parents, lost connection to friendships due
to working night shifts) and health and
mental health (i.e., chronic pain and depres-
sion) are also major influences in the
assemblage.
Relevant to casino gambling are neolib-
eralism, technology, media, the gambling
industry, and the political system/govern-
ment. North America embraces a neoliberal
ideology which privileges independence,
capitalism, higher socioeconomic status, and,
arguably, excessiveness. This translates to a
desire to become and appear wealthy, often
through excessive spending and consuming
(e.g., cars, jewellery, clothing, fancy dinners,
going to Vegas). The gambling industry is
both a product of, and contributor to neolib-
eralism. The aim of the gambling industry is
to maximize profit, while also promising the
gambler the potential to win a jackpot (money
is material). This industry uses technology in
their materials to engineer player practices
and experiences to perpetuate further play
(Schüll, 2012). Casinos are designed to be
exciting (lights and bells), glamorous, and
disorienting in time and space, to keep con-
sumers engaged in the practices. Video lot-
tery terminals (VLTS) are also designed to be
‘addictive’, creating a trajectory towards con-
tinuous gaming productivity by ‘accelerating
play, extending its duration, and increasing
the total amount spent’ (Schüll, 2012, p. 52).
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This fits clearly with Tom Jackson’s socio-
material description of the casino as a ‘differ-
ent world’ filled with excitement, fun, lights,
and sounds.
The current economic system creates a
tension with the neoliberal ideal. In a neo-
liberal system, as smaller numbers of people
become increasingly wealthy, more become
economically disadvantaged without options
to progress. Those who are economically dis-
advantaged are likely to be less satisfied with
their ‘reality’; working very hard, in jobs they
dislike, and earning less than required for
comfort, let alone match the ideal performed
in media. However, those who are economi-
cally disadvantaged are still under the influ-
ence of the neoliberal ideal, which creates
conditions to accumulate wealth outside of
their regular jobs; gambling at a casino is
very lucrative. In the case of Tom Jackson,
he talked about his experience of being in
the casino as a ‘different world’, with lights,
sounds, and the potential to win money to
make the pain and depression of his daily
reality (Figure 10.3) ‘go away.’
Zooming in: Assemblage Instance
From an assemblage view we can zoom in to
a practice of interest (‘walking into a casino’,
Figure 10.3) to examine how conditions and
influences come together to comingle and
create the possibility of gambling. Tom
Jackson spoke about chronic pain, depres-
sion, grief over the death of his parents, as
well as an inheritance (material required to
gamble), working night shifts in an empty
warehouse, and loss of social connection and
leisure activities. Tom Jackson’s daily reality
is sharply contrasted with what a casino has
to offer: opportunities for excitement, escape,
and the potential to win a fortune and escape
daily reality. He described the casino as a
Figure 10.2 Zooming out – assemblage
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completely ‘different world’ – an escape that
was exciting – with bells, sounds, lights –
and huge potential to win. He spoke about a
‘big win’, which was exciting, and served as
a distinct contrast and escape from the stress
and depression he experienced in his life
elsewhere. He described the small ‘high’ he
experienced walking in to the casino and the
enormous high (‘euphoria’) he experienced
when he hit a jackpot. Going to a different
world with anticipation of an enormous high
is a logical option.
Zooming Out: Larger Network
of Practices
Zooming out to a networked view, we can
tease apart the mechanics of the practice net-
work, which might be useful for reflexively
investigating how practices network together
in familiar, tacit ways, engaged as second
nature. In contrast to a commingling and
convergence of conditions in an assemblage
view, a networked view feeds off procedural
familiarity, practices become linked together
in ways that seem predictable, one practice
inviting the next. The more the practices are
associated together, the more familiar the
next step in the practice becomes. Using net-
work view (Figure 10.4) we ‘zoom out’ to
depict how Tom Jackson described his cell
phone practice (playing VLT games) at work
was linked to the practices of driving to the
casino, walking into the casino, and gam-
bling on a VLT.
In Figure 10.4, we depict four hinge prac-
tices that network together to sustain gam-
bling: cell phone practice at work, driving
to the casino, walking into the casino, and
playing the VLT. Note that other daily life/
home practices could also be included in Tom
Jackson’s larger network of practices, and
expanded upon for a more thorough analysis.
Figure 10.3 Zooming in – assemblage instance
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Tom Jackson described the VLT game on his
cell phone as analogous to the VLT he played
in the casino. Working the night shift alone,
he played this game when he was bored, feel-
ing lonely, or wanted a break. His engage-
ment in the cell phone game was more than
escape; however, what happened on the game
(whether he won or lost) was associated
with particular feelings and beliefs about his
next steps. If he was winning in the game,
he would go home after work, because he
had ‘already won all of his wins’ (a supersti-
tious ‘saying’ described in the next section).
However, if he was losing, he knew he was
‘due for a win’ (another superstitious ‘say-
ing’) and embodied anticipation of a win
would be felt in his body.
If he lost in his cell phone game, at the end
of his shift he would drive to the casino (a
few blocks away, on his route home). On the
drive there (a hinge practice), he would be
filled with anticipation, expectation, adrena-
line, and excitement. He would walk into
the casino (a hinge practice), which was a
completely different world (compared to his
warehouse job) – an escape that was exciting.
The bells, sounds, and lights are all part of
the socio-material ‘place’ of walking into the
casino, and the next hinge practice of playing
on a VLT.
Zooming in: Hinge Practices
From a practice perspective, we can zoom in
to each of the socio-material hinge practices
in a network to examine the doings, sayings,
relatings, and actants (materials, place, and
timespace). By ‘zooming in’ we attend
closely to the details associated with accom-
plishing the practice. Doings are the actions
of the practice, grounded materially in place
and with things (actants). Sayings refer to
what is said about the practice, the rationale
for the practice, and what is said within the
practice. Sayings are drawn from larger dis-
courses or ways of understanding and doing
the practice. Relatings are the emotional,
embodied connections that glue the practice
together. Relatings are teleoaffective and
help describe how trajectories are formed
within the practice towards continuation.
Trajectories (telos = towards an aim, affec-
tive = feeling, emotion, embodied affect
state) connect and perpetuate the practice in
ways that become tacit. In Figure 10.5, we
Figure 10.4 Zooming out – network of practices
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depict how doings (grounded socio-materially
in things and place), sayings, and relatings
comprise and sustain a practice.
For example, we can zoom in to examine
the hinge practice of walking into a casino
(Figure 10.6), which was highlighted in
Tom Jackson’s story as walking into a ‘dif-
ferent world’ (a ‘saying’ from a discourse
of escapism). In Figure 10.6, we depict the
socio-material practice of entering into this
different world (casino), in contrast to the
daily world he would like to shut out.
In this example, place and timespace of
the casino are particularly important from
a socio-material perspective. Tom Jackson
has an embodied, affective relationship to
the casino (place) that feels exciting and fun,
and where he experiences a small ‘high’ with
potential (i.e., telos) for an enormous high.
In this hinge practice, the potential for an
enormous high (teleoaffective relating) is
networked with the desire to play the VLT
(to achieve that high), which is another hinge
practice (interacting with the VLT). This prac-
tice of interacting with a VLT (Figure 10.7)
is grounded in the materiality of the VLT.
The VLT is an important actant, the way in
which it spins, the number of spins, how it
is re-triggered, its timespace (2–3 mins), and
the outcome (huge jackpot), all of which
occurred alongside intense affective relatings
(high, euphoria) which ‘made all that pain
and depression go away’. These affective
relatings became associated with the VLT
through intensely positive affect. At the time
of occurrence, and until deemed problem-
atic, the sayings associated with this experi-
ence might centre on thrill, potential to win,
excitement, and positive invitation to con-
tinue. In the retrospective account described
here (after engagement in addiction treat-
ment), Tom Jackson drew from an addiction
discourse, when he likened his experience to
cocaine or narcotics addiction (Figure 10.7).
In these network examples we were able
to highlight the complexity of the practices
and analytically focus in on material actants,
which might be typically implicit or ignored
in research. Zooming out allowed us to view
these practices as relationally integrated and
situated in networks of practices, while by
zooming in to hinge practices we could zoom
Figure 10.5 Zooming in: gambling practices
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in closely on the details of the accomplish-
ment of the practice.
CONCLUSION
As therapist-researchers we have sought
reflexive methods of inquiry that help people
zoom in and out on the assemblages and net-
works that sustain particular practices. Seeing
the questions and representations of any
inquiry as reflexive or socially constructive,
given what they might bring forth (Tomm,
1987), in this chapter we also presented con-
siderations for researching socio-material
practices in zooming in and zooming out
ways. We drew heavily from Clarke’s (2005,
Figure 10.7 Hinge practice: interacting with a VLT
Figure 10.6 Hinge practice: walking into a casino
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Clarke et al., 2017) Situational Analysis, a
theory-methods package that uses maps to
zoom in and out of situations and the prac-
tices (i.e., doings, sayings, relatings) that
comprise them.
Assemblages have indeterminate quali-
ties, yet develop in ways that create partic-
ular conditions of possibility inside which
a range of socio-material practices might
develop. Corners of today’s Internet assem-
ble highly distinctive practices that would
have been impossible without the technol-
ogy. Networked practices, in contrast, are
sustained in patterned familiarities that are
sequentially connected so that engagement in
one socio-material practice almost foretells
engaging in an ‘inevitable’ next practice.
Whether researching assembled or networked
socio-material practices we aim to make their
conditions and predictable sequences for
unacceptably familiar reproduction evident
in ways that enable new thinking, dialogue
and actions.
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