the socio-material practice of entering into this different world (casino), in contrast to the daily world he would like to shut out.
Figure 10.6 Hinge practice: walking into a casino
In this example, place and timespace of the casino are particularly important from a socio-material perspective. Tom Jackson has an embodied, affective relationship to the casino (place) that feels exciting and fun, and where he experiences a small ‘high’ with potential (i.e., telos) for an enormous high. In this hinge practice, the potential for an enormous high (teleoaffective relating) is networked with the desire to play the VLT (to achieve that high), which is another hinge practice (interacting with the VLT). This practice of interacting with a VLT (Figure 10.7) is grounded in the materiality of the VLT. The VLT is an important actant, the way in which it spins, the number of spins, how it is re-triggered, its timespace (2–3 mins), and the outcome (huge jackpot), all of which occurred alongside intense affective relatings (high, euphoria) which ‘made all that pain and depression go away’. These affective relatings became associated with the VLT through intensely positive affect. At the time of occurrence, and until deemed problematic, the sayings associated with this experience might centre on thrill, potential to win, excitement, and positive invitation to continue. In the retrospective account described here (after engagement in addiction treatment), Tom Jackson drew from an addiction discourse, when he likened his experience to cocaine or narcotics addiction (Figure 10.7).
Figure 10.7 Hinge practice: interacting with a VLT
In these network examples we were able to highlight the complexity of the practices and analytically focus in on material actants, which might be typically implicit or ignored in research. Zooming out allowed us to view these practices as relationally integrated and situated in networks of practices, while by zooming in to hinge practices we could zoom in closely on the details of the accomplishment of the practice.
Conclusion
As therapist-researchers we have sought reflexive methods of inquiry that help people zoom in and out on the assemblages and networks that sustain particular practices. Seeing the questions and representations of any inquiry as reflexive or socially constructive, given what they might bring forth (Tomm, 1987), in this chapter we also presented considerations for researching socio-material practices in zooming in and zooming out ways. We drew heavily from Clarke's (2005, Clarke et al., 2017) Situational Analysis, a theory-methods package that uses maps to zoom in and out of situations and the practices (i.e., doings, sayings, relatings) that comprise them.
Assemblages have indeterminate qualities, yet develop in ways that create particular conditions of possibility inside which a range of socio-material practices might develop. Corners of today's Internet assemble highly distinctive practices that would have been impossible without the technology. Networked practices, in contrast, are sustained in patterned familiarities that are sequentially connected so that engagement in one socio-material practice almost foretells engaging in an ‘inevitable’ next practice. Whether researching assembled or networked socio-material practices we aim to make their conditions and predictable sequences for unacceptably familiar reproduction evident in ways that enable new thinking, dialogue and actions.
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