A Qualitative Analysis of Excessive Behaviours Conceptualized Through a Practice Theory Lens

Abstract

This study conceptualized excessive behaviours (EBs; e.g., gambling, Internet use, eating) and used practice theory to identify components that sustain or interrupt these behaviours in daily life. Drawing from relational constructionism and practice theory, the author used a focused ethnographic approach to analyze participants’ accounts of EBs. A practice theory approach involves zooming in to the particularities of practices to understand the complex trajectories within and zoom out to the larger networks of practices that influence and sustain excessive eating, Internet use, and gambling. This research shows how things such as food options, Internet features, and game and phone design played an integral role in the trajectories of EB practices. Ability, availability, and the presence of people and context (“place”) situated the practice. Several discourses (superstition, positivity and normativity, addiction) were described as important for enacting, explaining, directing, and resisting EB practices. EB practices were sustained in teleoaffective trajectories (“relatings”) and through various other life practices. Practice theory offers a heuristic framework for counsellors to conceptualize how EBs persist and how they might be interrupted in counselling.