Power and Theories of Social Practice: Bringing Capacity into Question with a Focus on Plastic Packaging Recycling

In this essay, we conceptualise ‘capacity’ as a means of attending to power and addressing corollary issues of disparity and social change in a manner commensurate with the ontological commitments of second-wave theories of practice. While second-wave theories of practice justifiably see power as immanent to the enactment and ordering of practices, the challenge remains to develop convincing analytical tools capable of empirically parsing the relations that give rise to social disparities. Our conceptualisation of capacity, which comprises three interwoven dimensions (potential, limit, and position), responds to this challenge and, in doing so, illuminates how practices are imbued with and produce social disparities in capacities to act. To illustrate the novel empirical tractability that our conceptualisation of capacity contributes to the debate on power and second-wave theories of practice, we focus on and critique the assumed ‘power’ of packaging design practitioners to tackle waste by enhancing the recyclability of plastic packaging. As this case demonstrates, the conceptualisation of capacity articulated in this paper contributes a powerful means for practice-theoretical research to unpick and address the details and dynamics of disparities in capacities to act, sharpening insight into the constraints and possibilities for social change.