Taken together, these arguments support an account of the social as an affective space: a field of connections, extensions, and pressures through which practices emerge, stabilise, and transform. Rather than treating practices as entities that change, this perspective understands them as ongoing processes of change and challenges familiar dualisms between agency and structure, micro and macro, and past and present that, I argue, continue to underwrite practice-theoretical conceptions of social phenomena.
To demonstrate the analytical and practical significance of this approach, the lecture draws on an empirical case: the study of non-communicable disease in the seaside town of Morecambe. This example illustrates how a process-oriented practice theory expands the remit of sociological analysis, enabling attention to the interwoven relations between practices, materials, environments, and histories that shape everyday life. It demonstrates the significance of conceptualising power as nomadic within the practice plenum and the kinds of interdisciplinary demands that follow from studying social phenomena as processes of becoming.
