Practical consciousness
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Revision as of 16:17, 9 October 2011
Practical consciousness is one of the three levels of consciousness in human agency that Anthony Giddens distinguishes. The other two types are unconsciousness and discursive consciousness. Most of our knowledge about the wordt can be seen as knowledge we are practical consciouss about. This means that actors "are able to do things that require this kind of knowledge, even though they are unable to report outright on it. That is to say, actors possess this knowledge withoud being able to give account on it" (Lippuner and Werlen, 2009, p. 42). An example of practical consciousness was given by Huib Ernste (personal communication, October 4th, 2011): when you're riding a bike, you're not busy with how you should move the pedals, because this works 'automatically', in a practical consciouss way. This works the same in other daily actions, like walking stairs and opening a door.
References
Lippuner, R. & Werlen, B. (2009). Structuration Theory. In International Encyclopedia for Human Geography. Elsevier.
Contributors
Page created and edited by --JikkeVanTHof 18:35, 7 October 2011 (UTC)
