This book contends that practices are perhaps the most fundamental building-block of social reality and asks what social scientists¿ research would look like if they took this insight seriously. Arguing for the importance of detailed empirical study of human practices to effective social-scientific inquiry, and the centrality to social theory of a well-developed practice theory, the author examines the generic features of human practices, the means by which they can be identified, characterised and explained, how they function and how they might change across time and space.