'This is a fresh, highly intelligent and stimulating study that should be of considerable interest to philosophers and social and political scientists alike.' Stanley Rosen, Pennsylvania State University 'Turner's book offers a devastating critique of one of the central analytic tools of contemporary humanities scholarship. He shows how the notion of practices has become the postmodernist counterpart to traditional explanation- stoppers or first principles. More importantly, he drives home the principled inability of practice jargon to explain, or even to acknowledge,the phenomena of change of rules and concepts.'Larry Laudan, University of Hawaii'This is a wide-ranging, highly critical, indeed polemical book.'Political Studies'Provocative and intelligent book ... impressively wide in scope.'Studies in History and Philosophy of Science