What's New? Temporality in Practice Theory and Pragmatism

This chapter discuss two temporal approaches to social order that accentuate the role of novelty, change, and temporality in accounts of social organization, activity, and human action, namely, the pragmatist approach of George Herbert Mead and the practice theoretical approach of Theodore R. Schatzki. The chapter investigates how they conceive of novelty in their theoretical accounts. With this in mind, an empirical case from an organizational setting in the creative industry is introduced: the production of the film Antboy. To illustrate the points about novelty, the case is discussed with the conceptual resources put at our disposal by the two approaches to better understand how organizing for the future can in fact accommodate the processes of creativity that bring about novelty.