We can now revisit our model of practices and regimes by relating them to the ontological dimensions of social reality in a more systematic fashion. We must engage dimensions of social reality in a more systematic fashion. We must engage, therefore, in what might be termed a more middle-range style of theorizing, which involves the use of our ontological categories to redescribe ontical entities like practices and regimes. For instance, practices can be understood in terms of the way different dimensions of social relations —comprising the social, political, ideological, and ethical dimensions — are foregrounded or backgrounded, how they are articulated, and so on. We claim that this provides us with significant analytical purchase to describe and explain the socio-political world in a non-topographical fashion (120).
It is important to stress that in this to and fro movement between the ontological and ontical levels, which after all is constitutive of the logic of middle range theorizing, such typolgies are empirical and contingent. … our account of regimes and our account of practices as a function of four ontological dimensions relies on a set of sociological and normative assumptions. (127).
This suggests that we need to develop a language with which to characterize and critically explain the existence, maintenance, and transformation of concrete practices and regimes that is sensitive to our four ontological dimensions, and which makes explicit the normative aspects of our critical explanations.