Course description The three of us invite PhD students to investigate how situated political conflictuality is inherent in, changes, and develops social practice. We will focus on social practices in everyday life as organized around common causes, which are concrete and contradictory. The social practices may be tailors' apprenticeships, work in schools or designing and building houses. Many persons are participating in these practices, and each have their perspective with priorities on it. This opens up for conflictual cooperation, where participants must make room for themselves and each other. One way to see politics is as the activity of keeping the common cause and its concrete and contradictory aspects together. This work more or less depends on involved participants, and we posit that openness about the conflictual contradictions and particular interests of participants can make development possible. The disagreements of the participants provide an opportunity to expand our understanding of the practice in question. An exploration of the conflicts can contribute to knowledge on the subject matter and to the development of the practices. Each of us has explored social development in situated practice, Jean Lave has investigated apprenticeship among tailors in Liberia. Charlotte Højholt has investigated conflictual cooperation about children's school life, and Erik Axel has investigated conflictual cooperation about budget and design in the development of the design of a house. We shall read texts that discuss different theoretical ways of understanding conflict as part of social life(on the one hand) and consider detailed empirical studies of conflict-in-practice (on the other hand). Taken together they will provide a basis for our discussions of theory/practice relations in developing skilful and powerful research practice.