This article works out the main characteristics of `practice theory', a type of social theory which has been sketched by such authors as Bourdieu, Giddens, Taylor, late Foucault and others. Practice theory is presented as a conceptual alternative to other forms of social and cultural theory, above all to culturalist mentalism, textualism and intersubjectivism. The article shows how practice theory and the three other cultural-theoretical vocabularies differ in their localization of the social and in their conceptualization of the body, mind, things, knowledge, discourse, structure/process and the agent.

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Even though organizational activities have always been future-oriented, actors’ fascination with the future is not a universal phenomenon of organizational life. Human experience of the future is a rather young product of modernity, in which actors discovered the indeterminacy of the future, as well as their abilities to ‘make’ and, in part, even control and de-problematize it through ever-more sophisticated planning practices. In this essay, we argue that actors have recently ‘rediscovered’ the future as a problematic, open-ended category in organizational life, one that they cannot delineate through planning practices alone. This, we suggest, has been produced through a pluralization of what we refer to as ‘future-making practices’, a set of practices through which actors produce and enact the future. Based on illustrations of the experienced problematic open-endedness of the future in prevalent discourses such as climate change, digital transformation and post-truth politics, we invite scholars to explore future-making practices as an important but under-appreciated organizational phenomenon.

Zusammenfassung: Ausgehend von der jüngsten Diagnose eines ‚Practice Turn' in der Sozialtheorie und empirischen Forschungspraxis arbeitet der Artikel Strukturmerkmale einer ‚Praxistheorie' oder ‚Theorie sozialer Praktiken' im Vergleich zu alternativen Sozial-und Kulturtheorien heraus. Von besonderer Bedeutung erweisen sich dabei drei Grundannahmen: eine ‚implizite', ‚informelle' Logik der Praxis und Verankerung des Sozialen im praktischen Wissen und ‚Können'; eine ‚Materialität' sozialer Praktiken in ihrer Abhängigkeit von Körpern und Artefakten; schließlich ein Spannungsfeld von Routinisiertheit und systematisch begründbarer Unberechenbarkeit von Praktiken. Das Feld der Praxistheorien