| This dissertation is concerned with human behavior usually attributed to individual interests. As conceptualized in experimental and educational psychology, an individual interest refers to a particular relationship (called an interest relationship) between a person and a set of topically related activities. Interest relationships are self-motivated, long-term, and relatively stable, though they might change over time. As an example, a teenager's enduring and self-motivated involvement with model rocketry reflects her individual interest in the topic or domain of rocketry.; As an alternative to this formulation, I develop a practice-centered theory of persistent engagement---or, simply, a theory of persistence---in free-choice, self-motivated practices. Taken together, self-motivated, long-term persistence in a free-choice practice refers exactly to the same set of phenomena that is the purview of psychological theories of individual interests. Hobbies are prototypic of free-choice, self-motivated, extended pursuit practices and therefore are the focal object of study of this dissertation.; The centerpiece of the theory I put forward is the grounded theoretical concept of lines of practice. A line of practice is a distinctive, recurrent pattern of engagement in a person's continued pursuit of a hobby. To return to the example above, our rocketry buff might have three lines of practice in her hobby---one related to designing and flying unusual rockets, the other related to designing and flying high-powered rockets, and yet a third line concerned with designing and flying low-powered models.; Any particular line of practice entails a set of closely interrelated activities. For instance, designing and flying high-powered rockets might entail visiting particular hobby stores, becoming a member of particular rocketry clubs, and engaging in construction work. Designing and flying unusual rockets, on the other hand, might entail some very different activities (e.g., continuously searching for unusual materials that can be transformed into rockets), as well as activities that cross line boundaries (e.g., construction work).; The "essence" that runs through a set of closely related activities is what defines a line of practice. Such an "essence" is determined by two structural elements. The first element is the preferences that a hobbyist brings to bear on her practice. Preferences refer to psychological constructs such as goals, beliefs, values, and so forth. Our hypothetical subject's line of unusual rockets might reflect her need to fashion an identity as a competent practitioner and her love of design and construction.; The second structural element refers to the conditions of practice impinging on the persons hobby. Conditions of practice include such things as the material infrastructure available to the practitioner (e.g., tools for working rocket parts), the immediate circumstances of the hobbyist's life (e.g., the person's socio-economic status and whether or not the person has easy access to practice sites), the rules of practice adopted by a hobby community (e.g., the maximum ceiling for rocket flights), the larger socio-cultural space in which the hobby exists (e.g., the availability of hobby stores), and so on. Each of these factors, and the many sub-factors included therein, may be seen to provide constraints and affordances for practice.; I illustrate the theory with a comparative study of two hobby practices with techno-scientific underpinnings---model rocketry and amateur astronomy. The empirical base of the work is a series of ethnographic video records of two focal subjects, one for each hobby practice. (Abstract shortened by UMI.)... |
