Practice? It’s a Matter of Taste!
Abstract
This article aims to enhance our understanding of how practice is socially sustained, learnt and constantly refined by arguing that practice is much more than a set of activities—it involves, beside instrumental and ethical judgements, taste and appraisal. Taste is a sense of what is aesthetically fitting within a community of practitioners—a preference for ‘the way we do things together’. Taste is based on subjective attachment to the object of practice and is learnt and taught as part of becoming a practitioner; it is performed as a collective, situated activity within a practice. The elaboration of taste and the refining of practice within a community involves taste-making, which is based on ‘sensible knowledge’ and the continual negotiation of aesthetic categories. The article examines how in a variety of practices, taste-making occurs through three processes: sharing a vocabulary for appraisal; crafting identities within epistemic communities; and refining performances.
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The NHS CRS was formed, translated and reproduced in various sites and settings and embodied different meanings for different people at different times and locations.
“In this way we were able to understand how the NHS CRS was formed (i.e. how it was ‘per-formed’), translated and reproduced in various sites and settings [55] and the different meanings it embodied for different people, at different times and locations [56].”
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“how it was ‘performed’), translated and reproduced in various sites and settings [55] and the different meanings it embodied for different people, at different times and locations [56].”
Background
- Authors
- Gherardi, S.
- Affiliations
- University of Trento (IT)
- Corresponding author
- Gherardi, Silvia
- ORCID
- Gherardi, Silvia
- Venue
- Management Learning
- Publisher
- SAGE Publications
- Published
- 2009-10-21
- Volume
- 40
- Issue
- 5
- Pages
- 535-550
- ISSN
- 1350-5076 (ISSN-L)
- 1461-7307
- OpenAlex
- W2035864464
- Cited by
- 239
- References
- 45
- Citations by year
- 2026: 10 · 2025: 5 · 2024: 12 · 2023: 21 · 2022: 13 · 2021: 10 · 2020: 16 · 2019: 19 · 2018: 8 · 2017: 18 · 2016: 13 · 2015: 22 · 2014: 19 · 2013: 19 · 2012: 19
- FWCI
- 34.48
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
- Locations
- Management Learning (publishedVersion)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Human Factors and Ergonomics › Innovative Education and Learning Practices
- Social Sciences › Business, Management and Accounting › Organizational Behavior and Human Resource Management › Management and Organizational Studies
- Social Sciences › Arts and Humanities › Philosophy › Education, Philosophy, and Society
- Keywords
- practice, taste, taste-making, aesthetic categories, sensible knowledge, appraisal, epistemic communities, professional identity, learning in practice
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