Daily Life as a Phenomenon of Modern Philosophical Discourse

Authors: Maret Betilmerzaeva, Makhmud Kerimov, Lida Kurbanova, Laila Ismailova, Hadji Umarov
Year: 2019
Source type: article (SCTCMG 2019 Conference Proceedings, Future Academy)
Raw file: raw/articles/betilmerzaeva-2019-daily-life-philosophical-discourse.md

Summary

This conference paper analyzes everyday life as a philosophical phenomenon, tracing its emergence in 20th-century thought through phenomenological (Husserl, Schütz), hermeneutic (Gadamer), and ethnomethodological (Garfinkel) approaches. The authors argue that everyday life reflects "the sphere of the unmediated being of a person" and is fundamentally spatio-temporal. The paper emphasizes how the life-world (Lebenswelt) is given in ordinary experience as the basis of all objective knowledge, and how subjects create multiple "subuniverses" of reality that together constitute the world of everyday life. Special attention is given to Garfinkel's breaching experiments and the role of background expectations in making everyday life intelligible.

Key Claims

• Everyday life as unmediated being: "The life world of each person is represented by a wide palette of many realities, in which everyday life reflects the sphere of the unmediated being of a person as such."

• Spatio-temporal transformation: "Everyday life takes place in certain space and time, and therefore, these phenomena are complementary and interdependent." The study aims to reveal "the causation of the spatial-temporal transformations of everyday reality within the framework of modern culture."

• Husserl's life-world: Husserl declares that "each of us has its own life world, which is thought of as a world for all" (2004, p. 336). The life-world is "given to us in ordinary experience and is the basis of all objective knowledge."

• Schütz's multiple realities: Following William James, Schütz notes there are "infinitely many different orders of realities, each of which assumes its own and separate style of existence" — what James calls "subuniverses" (world of sensations, world of science, world of ideal relationships, supernatural worlds, worlds of individual beliefs, worlds of madness). "Every world at that moment, when attention is directed to it, is real in its manners, only its reality eludes attention."

• The world of everyday life as intersubjective: For Schütz, the "world of everyday life" designates "the intersubjective world that existed long before our birth, experienced and interpreted by others, our predecessors, as an organized world now given to our experience and interpretation." New interpretations are initiated by the stock of previous experiences — own, inherited, established through education — which acquire the status of "present knowledge."

• World as something to modify: "The world of everyday life is a scene and at the same time an object of our actions and interactions" which appear as objects that resist our actions. "We must either overcome this resistance or surrender to the world." Our modification of the world is a creative process.

• Garfinkel's "natural facts of life": Familiar scenes of everyday life, interpreted as "natural facts of life," are "the most important facts of individuals' daily existence both as the real world and as a product of activity in the real world" (Garfinkel, 2007, p. 46). Daily routine is not one "finite region of meaning" but the condition of those.

• Background expectations: There are "certain stereotypes, standard background expectations, which contribute to the interpretation of a fact-event by a subject." Using background expectations as interpretation scheme, "real phenomena become recognizable and understandable to him as phenomena-familiar-events."

• Breaching experiments: To see how social structures normally reproduce, "it is necessary to disrupt order — one must 'produce and maintain confusion, fright and confusion, produce socially structured effects of nervousness, shame, guilt and resentment and disorganize the interaction'" (Garfinkel, 2007, p. 48). Revealing "the strangeness of a steadily familiar world" requires deliberately deviating from the expected course of everyday life.

• Hoffman's frames: Social interaction proceeds within certain frames. "Social life is characterized as a joint activity that is based on differentiation and integration." Status symbols divide the social world and maintain intra/inter-categorical solidarity.

• Berger & Luckmann: "Any knowledge is a consequence of social interaction." People are "aimed at finding a meaningful place in the reality of his daily life."

• Historical anthropology (Annales school): Braudel distinguished three levels of historical time: (1) material life — extremely slow changes in food, housing, furniture, costumes, transportation, luxury goods, tools, diseases, village/city plans; (2) market economy — more mobile zone of production/exchange; (3) transnational forces that can distort the economy.

Connections

Concepts: Life-World · Background Expectations · Everyday Life
Authors: husserl-edmund
Related source notes: kalekin-fishman-2013-sociology-of-everyday-life, thompson-2013-what-is-everyday-life

Direct Quotes

"The life world of each person is represented by a wide palette of many realities, in which everyday life reflects the sphere of the unmediated being of a person as such. Everyday life takes place in certain space and time, and therefore, these phenomena are complementary and interdependent."

"Each of us has its own life world, which is thought of as a world for all" — Husserl

"Every world at that moment, when attention is directed to it, is real in its manners, only its reality eludes attention." — William James (via Schütz)

"Familiar scenes of everyday life, interpreted by individuals as 'natural facts of life', are the most important facts of individuals' daily existence both as the real world and as a product of activity in the real world." — Garfinkel

Open Questions

• How does the Russian/ post-Soviet philosophical tradition (Betilmerzaeva et al. are from Chechen State institutions) approach everyday life differently from Western phenomenology?
• What is the relationship between Braudel's three levels (material life, market economy, transnational forces) and the wiki's existing analysis of "vernaculars of capitalism"?
• How does the spatio-temporal emphasis connect to Virilio's dromology and the "aesthetics of disappearance"?