Sociology of Everyday Life

Author: Devorah Kalekin-Fishman
Year: 2013
Source type: article (Current Sociology, Vol. 61, No. 5-6, pp. 714-?)
Raw file: raw/articles/kalekin-fishman-2013-sociology-of-everyday-life.md

Summary

Kalekin-Fishman provides a comprehensive survey of how everyday life has been theorized in sociology, tracing its emergence from an ignored "elephant in the room" to a recognized branch of the discipline. The article covers classical theorists (Rousseau, Smith, Durkheim, Marx) who used everyday life implicitly, then examines explicit theorizations across German (Simmel, Benjamin, Habermas), British (Elias, Thompson, Williams), French (Lefebvre, de Certeau, Foucault, Bourdieu), and American (Mead, Goffman, Garfinkel, Schütz, Berger & Luckmann) traditions. The survey concludes with research on minorities and empirical studies of political issues, urban experiences, body/emotions, and normalcy.

Key Claims

• Everyday life as sociology's "elephant": For early sociologists establishing society as a scientific object, everyday life was the "gross presence" ignored — used in theories but not thematized. Rousseau, Smith, Durkheim, and Marx all relied on everyday life examples while focusing on macro structures.

• Two emergences in sociology: (1) Among general theorists, everyday life properties were "taken for granted in abstract reasoning"; (2) Post-postmodern turn, everyday life became an explicit object of research in its own right.

• German tradition:

  • Simmel: Sociology as describing rules for "being-together" (sociation); formal description of how groups act as units while individuals establish uniqueness
  • Walter Benjamin: Everyday life (Aktualität) as basis for understanding historical events; world of everyday as arena of action AND heart of thought
  • Habermas: "Lifeworld" (Lebenswelt) as space within reach, including time allocation and social extension from family to world society; lifeworld increasingly surrenders to bureaucracy and corporate capitalism

• British tradition:

  • Elias: Everyday life as site of centuries-long "civilizing process"; unplanned patterned order more compelling than individual will
  • E.P. Thompson & Raymond Williams: Social history of workers' lives; culture as ongoing accomplishment of everyday life; CCCS investigated cultural practices underpinning racism, genderism, classism

• French tradition:

  • Lefebvre: Everyday life as urban phenomenon, site of victimization by capitalism, "inescapable alienation"; language imposes unquestioned rules as "terrorism"; only revolution in perception can overcome this
  • de Certeau: Everyday life as site of spontaneity and diverse outcomes; working-class "tactics" resist capitalist "strategies" of domination
  • Foucault: State structures everyday experiences of body, sexuality, family, kinship, knowledge, technology; disciplinary mechanisms are inevitable "dark side" of juridical equality
  • Bourdieu: Habitus as "embodied history" imbibed through different kinds of capital (social, symbolic, economic); habitus governs choices among persons, goods, practices, opinions

• American tradition:

  • Mead: Self formed in family interaction, broadens to rule-governed games
  • Symbolic interactionism (Blumer): Details of performance; naturalistic study of how persons interpret situations and signal meanings
  • Schütz: "Because" and "in order to" motives; "and so forth" signaling community
  • Berger & Luckmann: "Recipe knowledge" institutionalizes typical actions with transcendental implications
  • Goffman: Everyday life as theater; "front stage" vs. "back stage"; dramatic relations across milieus
  • Garfinkel: Ethnomethodology — meticulous examination of shared meanings enabling smooth everyday performances
  • Maffesoli: Sociality components: organic solidarity, symbolic dimension, "non-logical," concern for the present; banalities "constitute the essence of existence"

• Minorities and standpoint theory:

  • Fanon: Language preserves master-slave relationships between Whites and Blacks
  • Gilroy: Persistent outcomes of colonization in everyday lives throughout Westernized world
  • Dorothy Smith: Looking at social from woman's standpoint produces alternative sociology by problematizing everyday world
  • Hill Collins: Interdependence between everyday knowledge of African-American women and knowledge produced by Black women intellectuals
  • Cope: Women create political action spaces using embedded verbal/non-verbal codes across Argentina, India, Kenya

Connections

Concepts: everyday-life
Related source notes: thompson-2013-what-is-everyday-life, betilmerzaeva-2019-daily-life-philosophical-discourse

Direct Quotes

"For a long time 'everyday life' was the elephant (Zerubavel, 2006) in the realm of the 'normal' – used by early sociologists in their theories but ignored as a theme."

"For Henri Lefebvre... the task set for his 'critique of everyday life' is to bring this back into the orbit of Marxism... He wants to bring this back into the Marxist analytical fold as the site where any transformation of the social order will begin."

"De Certeau (1984), on the other hand, who insisted on the centrality of human agency, saw everyday life as a site with opportunities for spontaneity and the potential for diverse outcomes. He highlighted the aesthetic pleasure to be derived from the beauty of the unforeseen actions that make up much of daily living."

"For Bourdieu (1977, 1990), habitus, embodied history, is imbibed and expressed in the interrelated workings of different kinds of capital – social and symbolic as well as economic. Thus, habitus is the principle that governs how constituents of position govern choices among persons, goods, practices, and opinions in everyday life."

Open Questions

• How does Kalekin-Fishman's survey position the "feminist/sociological reconstruction" mentioned in the wiki's History of the Everyday theme page?
• What is the relationship between Garfinkel's ethnomethodology and Heidegger's "indifferent everydayness" (explored in Koev 2010)?
• How does the standpoint theory tradition (Smith, Hill Collins) relate to Bourdieu's habitus — are they competing or complementary accounts of how position shapes everyday knowledge?