When I presented the basic ideas of this paper at a conference, a Swedish colleague
commented: ?you manage to combine water and fire.? I understood his kind comment
to mean that he used water and fire as metaphors for practice and theory.
The comment puzzled me for a while. Water and fire obviously destroy each other, or at
least radically transform each other. Then I realized that humans have actually managed
to combine water and fire in several ways. One solution is the kettle. It makes possible
to use fire in a controlled way for the human purpose of boiling water. Thus, this paper
can be taken as an attempt at offering a kettle-like vehicle for bringing together practicetheoretical
concepts and vocational practice. My kettle is a concept of practical activity.
I am trying to boil up an answer to the following question: in what senses a study of
work can be practically relevant to those who are doing the work being studied?
