Vol. 1 (2025)
Practice Theory: Past, Present, Future

Essays

Proposing a Gradient of Humanism/Non-Humanism and Understanding The Contributions of Body-Minds To Social Practices

Published 10-11-2025

  • Cecily Maller

Cecily Maller
Centre for Urban Research, RMIT University

An ammended version of Giorgio de Chirico's Hector and Andromache (1918).

Abstract

The world is constantly changing, as are the social practices that comprise it. In view of the growing numbers and types of dynamic non-humans recruited into social practices, and what the significance of humans might be in this crowd, this article presents three interrelated lines of thinking in two main sections. The first section discusses whether there are any potential differences between humanist and post-humanist varieties of social practice theories, and instead of favouring one or the other, advocates for some middle ground by proposing a gradient of humanism. The second section explores how human body-minds (bodies) can be conceptualised more distinctively in theories of social practice, and in doing so, invokes the persistent question of whether distinctions between humans and non-humans in social practices can be usefully made and, if so, what roles they might play. The conclusion reflects on the previous discussion and revisits the recursive relationship between practices and bodies, highlighting important nuances and complexities while advocating for an expanded conceptualisation of bodies as more than simple carriers of practices and moving beyond dichotomies of humanist/post-humanist accounts of practice.

Keywords

bodies, dynamism, materiality, more-than-human, non-human, perfrormance

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