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Practice Theory and the Biosocial: Microbes, Matter and Milieu

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Practice Theory and the Biosocial

Microbes, Matter and Milieu

Elizabeth Shove, Stanley Blue and Michael P. Kelly

118 pages, bibliog., index

ISBN  978-1-83695-339-5 $120.00/£92.00 / Hb / Not Yet Published (February 2026)

eISBN 978-1-83695-340-1 eBook Not Yet Published


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Reviews

“This is an engaging, lively text that not only challenges many standard bioscientific framings, but also the current literature in the social sciences.” • Simon Cohn, London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine

Description

Practice Theory and the Biosocial - Microbes, Matter and Milieu shows what recent developments in social theory bring to questions about how bacteria, viruses, microscopic materials and societies develop in tandem. The examples discussed – from urban infrastructures to the medieval plague and from antibiotic resistance to epigenetics –develop an account of how previous and present arrangements make some futures more likely than others and how unequal patterns of exposure and entanglement arise. This book aims to demonstrate the relevance of social and practice theories by overcoming classic distinctions between the very small and the very large, between agency and structure, and between nature and culture.

Elizabeth Shove is Professor of Sociology at Lancaster University and Fellow of the British Academy. She was co-director of the DEMAND Centre (Dynamics of Energy, Mobility and Demand) from 2013-2019. Elizabeth has written, co-authored or edited numerous books and papers, including Connecting Practices: Large Topics in Society and Social Theory, the Nexus of Practices (Taylor and Francis, 2022), and The Dynamics of Social Practice: Everyday Life and How It Changes (SAGE, 2012).

Stanley Blue is Senior Lecturer in the sociology department at Lancaster University. He is the author of the book Practice Theory and Process Philosophy: Towards a Sociology of Becoming (Routledge, 2026), co-director for the Centre for Practice Theory at Lancaster and editor of The Journal of Practice Theory.

Mike P. Kelly is Senior Visiting Fellow and Professor in the Department of Public Health and Primary Care at the University of Cambridge. Between 2005 and 2014 he was the Director of the Centre for Public Health at NICE and from 2005 to 2007 he directed the methodology work stream for the World Health Organisation’s (WHO) Commission on the Social Determinants of Health.

Subject: Theory and MethodologyMedical AnthropologySociology


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