The chapters in this volume are the result of a conscious effort by the editors to identify researchers from a wide range of disciplines and theoretical traditions who were trying to understand individual practice by using a social or societal analysis. The task of this concluding chapter is to reflect about the chapters in this volume in order to formulate some ideas about future directions for developing a social scientific study of individual practice. In other words: Where do we, as researchers concerned about understanding human practices located in social and societal interactions, go from here?

Not many researchers were working with this perspective in the mid-1980s when the authors in this volume came together, and those who did felt isolated. Our premise was that because so few people were actively trying to develop this perspective it would be more important to try to learn from each other than to promote or defend a single approach.

The editors encouraged the chapter authors to write their chapters by starting from their positive content, instead of defending their views against or criticizing dominant traditions. We wanted to avoid an all-too-common situation in which advocates for an uncommon research approach write mostly about what is wrong or limited with dominant views, and only present their positive ideas at the end of a chapter or article, usually developed thinly and too often defined as a negation of the dominant views they were discussing. The resulting chapters show the excellent results.

For the most part these chapters focus on human practices at the level of concrete interactions of individuals acting in a meaningful social context.