Describe and analyse an aspect of your life which has been affected by COVID-19, using what you have learned in this unit.

Week 2: The Meaning of Everyday Life

Sociology of Everyday Life

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Lecture outline:

Situating the Everyday

• Modernisation and Modernity

• Post-modernity

• Globalised world

• Network society

• Risk society

Tutorial outline: Defining the Everyday

• Waiting for the Bus

• The Queue

• The Footpath

Rationalisation and routines

Situating the Everyday

• ‘By considering such everyday issues as dealing with

bureaucracies, making music, going to the supermarket,

playing sport, driving a car, walking through the city,

choosing clothes, decorating your home, going on

holiday, and saying ‘I love you’ to someone, I will show

that all of these and many other daily activities are

expressive of and influenced by the specific cultural

characteristics of modernity’

(Inglis, David 2005:40)

Pre-modern /Traditional  Modern society

•Industrialisation

•Development of capitalism

•Democracy: The State

•Science (knowledge and ideas) – rationality

•Break from the past

•A different society

•A new way of thinking about society

Pre-modern society

ReligionProvidence

Modern society

Science & rationality

Progress

Definitions: Modernity and Modernization

• Modernity: the kind of society that came into being with industrialization and urbanization.

• Modernization: The weakening of traditional patterns of living and associated world views. Metropolis – film by Fritz Lang

• The process of modernization is complex, multilayered and sometimes even contradictory.

• In Sociology on Culture, Hall, Neitz and Battani suggest culture and everyday life were altered: ‘ a growth in rationality, increasing routinization of everyday life, and the development of market society and individualism’ (Hall et al, 2003: 118)

Sociology on Culture (2003)…

The authors add:

• ‘As the cities grew, there were changes in where and how people lived. There were changes in the kind of work people did… There were changes in their pursuits during leisure time and in choices available to the for consumption’ (Hall et al 2003:118).

• We might highlight two terms used by Hall, Neitz and Battani:

(1) Rationalization: the process by which an activity is taken over by ‘rational’ or efficient means of doing it.

(2) Routinization: the organization of social life so that sequences of action are repeatable and become predicable.

• Modern culture is above all else a rational and bureaucratic one; focused on rules, and codification of rules.

• Principles bureaucracy have, according to Max Weber colonized all aspects of everyday life in modernity.

• (Iron cage).

• Work culture is increasingly professionalized. Each profession is bureaucratically organized and policed.

• Emotions in a modern work life are also regulated, for example, the professional role of a carer. There are certain ‘feeling rules’ for professionals and service workers...the friendly smile, ‘have a nice day!’, Enjoy!

Space is increasingly rationalized:

e.g. the soccer game.

Games become sports. Blood sports

(rat baiting, cock fighting) all

disappeared. Games taken out of the

streets and placed in special locales.

(stadia, swimming pools etc).

In the 19th century, games became

codified into sports. With their own

rules, local, national and

international.

• ‘By placing soccer and other forms of play in dedicated arenas with demarcated rule-governed pitches , the rhythm of play was speeded up, with more goals

and more moments of tension in front of the goal mouth being made possible.

The development was crucial as throughout the 20th century sports became

more and more organized on a commercial basis – the point of sport became

increasingly to make money for the people who organized them’

(Inglis 2006: 50)

• This trend has continued. Sports have become highly bureaucratically

organized forms of entertainment with the aim of making profits.

The spaces in which sports were played were laid out in ways which allowed the sports to clearly follow the rules. ( e.g. swimming pools all made to a certain precise length).

• These spaces, soccer fields, cricket ground, tennis courts and so forth were standardized across nations.

• As a result of these changes the pace of the game changed. For example: soccer.

There is an endless number of processes and product in our everyday life that has been subject to rationalisation: time, road system, traffic lights, production line, the queue, etc.

Routinization connected to the idea of rationalization. Idea that there is increasing standardization of time in modernity.

Social life becomes increasingly repeatable and predictable.

Connected to urbanization.

• From 18th century on , increasingly clock time replaced

sidereal time, the time of the seasons.

• Even holidays are increasingly routinised and rationalised. ( eg:

Camping).

Key point: With modernity work and leisure increasingly separated. With

urbanization and industrialization, leisure becomes an activity one does

outside work.

Routinization establishes – normality, conformity, etc.

•The coming of the electronic and information age

•Flux and uncertainties

•Relentless pursuit of progress

•Signs, commodities, consumerism

•High degree of mobility of labour and capital

Postmodern societies

Post-industrial or Postmodernity : the emergence of an economy based on culture.

• The fastest growing sectors of most economies are the ‘cultural economies’ (i.e. advertising, print media, publishing, computer games, architecture, design, fashion, art, music) and cultural tourism.

• The cultural economy has created new patterns of employment and led to the formation of a new social class called the ‘creative class’ or ‘cultural intermediaries’ – these are the primary consumers for postmodern cultural goods (Lash and Urry, 1989) . Notably also service oriented (less emphasis on production or manufacturing).

Tokyo, Shibuya (postmodern cityscape)

• Guggenheim museum in Bilbao (capital of the Basque region in

Spain) , designed by Frank Gehry, opened in 1997. In its first year,

the museum attracted 1,300,000 visitors.

Televised live on

Postmodernity: living in a mediated World?

• Much of our life is now mediated by information and technology and many of our experiences are ‘virtual’ or simulated (i.e., we experience the copy rather than the real thing). In this context, what is truth and what is reality?

• The emergence of a new reality: ‘hyper-reality’. Different to a copy; simulations are realities of their own. Baudrillard on the Gulf War – a perfect simulation that resembled a movie/Nintendo game about a war rather than a ‘real’ war.

Social transformation:

Pre- modern

Modern Post-

modern Global

GLOBAL SOCIETY Greater connection and interdependency

Blurring of national borders Geopolitical realities shape our lives today

Greater uncertainties and risks Calls for global governance & greater global human

awareness

•Network society (Manuel Castells 1996)

The book discusses how the global economy is now characterized by the almost

instantaneous flow and exchange of information, capital, and cultural

communication. These flows order and condition both consumption and

production. The networks themselves reflect and create distinctive cultures.

Both they and the traffic they carry are largely outside national regulation. Our

dependence on the new modes of informational flow gives to those in a position

to control them enormous power to control us.

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Risks such as those produced in the late modernity

differ essentially from wealth. By risks I mean above

all radioactivity, which completely evades human

perceptive abilities, but also toxins and pollutants in

the air, the water and foodstuffs, together with the

accompanying short- and long-term

effects on plants, animals and people. They induce

systematic and often irreversible harm, generally remain

invisible, are based on causal interpretations, and thus

initially only exist in terms of the (scientific or anti-

scientific) knowledge about them. They can thus be

changed, magnified, dramatized or minimized within

knowledge, and to that extent they are particularly

open to social definition and construction. Hence the

mass media and the scientific and legal professions

in charge of defining risks become key social and

political positions. (Beck, 1992)

Global warming/Climate change, diseases (Zika, Ebola, Avian flu),

terrorism, ‘asylum seekers/refugees’, etc.

The everyday is

riddled with

paradox.

• The everyday is

obvious yet elusive.

• Everyday life

appears to be outside

history, but in reality it

is a product of history.

• Everyday life seems

‘natural’ yet many

aspects of everyday

life are very much tied

up with power

relations.

Defining the ‘everyday’

The everyday is all around us but it is somehow

invisible

What everyday life is not: - Important moments in life

- Major events and incidents

- Festivities

- Holidays

- Confined to the profane

- Confined to common or so-called

everyday people

- Synonymous with private life

BUT – all are episodes of everyday life in the wide meaning of the term and

should include both the profane and the

sacred, private and public domains and

people from all walks of life.

1. The time of everyday life is repetitive but punctuated by the unpredictable

• Everyday life is a temporal term.

• Repetition sometimes associated negatively with boredom, but repetition is key to the gradual

formation of social identity. We become who we are through acts of repetition (Durkheim).

• Repetition is not necessarily in opposition to innovation. Rather, the opposite is true. Repetition

may in fact enable creativity.

• The repetitive nature of everyday life is also sometimes punctuated with unexpected,

unpredictable events.

2. The everyday is synonymous with habit.

• Habit is not exactly the same as repetition though it is linked. Habit describes

not just an action, but also an attitude or state of mind.

• Marcel Mauss, French anthropologist in ‘Techniques of the body’ it is possible

to distinguish between ‘squatting mankind and sitting mankind. . . People with

chairs and people without chairs ( 1914:81).

• Mauss says that ‘bodily habits are ‘assembled by and for social authority’

Example: eating around a dinner table. Who sits where?

• Coined the word ‘habitus’. Idea of ‘habitus’ is the idea of acquired ability. It is

something much stronger than habit (Bourdieu talked about ‘durable

dispositions’).

‘Habitus’ is taught not just by word but by imitation. For Bourdieu, these ‘durable

dispositions were strongly influenced by class as well as gender and they applied to all

sorts of aspects of life, from eating to how we decorate the home, to the TV programs we

watch.

But also an important body dimension:

• ‘the book from which children learn their vision of the world is read with the body’

(Bourdieu [1972] 1977:90).

3. The spaces of everyday life are spaces of familiarity

• What are these spaces? What constitutes a strange place?

• Home is seen as a privileged symbol of everyday space. Like everyday life

itself, home constitutes a base, a taken-for-granted grounding that allows us to

make forays into other worlds.

‘Ontological security’(Anthony Giddens), or the confidence or trust we have in

the world around us, both in terms of the things and the people with which we

share our lives, and hence which provide stability and a continuity to our

identity.

4. The ‘feel’ of everyday life is the feel of ‘normality’

• Daily rituals (bathing, cleaning, eating) and routines (meal times, studying,

working) are simply accepted as part of our normal everyday lives. These

practices are controlled by conceptions of normality and profoundly shaped by

cultural and economic forces. (e.g. how often you have a shower or brush your

teeth).

5. Everyday feels ‘natural’ but is actually inhabited and shaped by

politics and power.

Example: the lecture room. The configuration of the space, teacher-student

relationship, technology, etc.

Example: The Family home. Gender differences/hierarchies, gendered

spaces/objects, etc.

6. Everyday Life has a history

• Firstly, The subject ‘everyday life’ has an intellectual history. It is associated with various

theorists : e.g. Erving Goffman; Harry Garfinkel,

Emile Durkheim; Georg Simmel, Henri Lefebvre; Pierre Bourdieu; Marcel Mauss, Mary

Douglas; Norbert Elias; Max Weber; Karl Marx.

• Secondly, according to Henri Lefebvre, the centrality of the everyday as a ‘social

category’ seems to have emerged at a particular time in history: that of modernity…..

• The everyday becomes more visible in the 19th century. Lefebvre points to the impact of

capitalism and industrialization on human experience and perception. As bodies are

massed together in big cities under modern conditions there is new attention given to the

uniform and repetitive acts of human lives.

• Growing interest in microhistories and the nature of everyday life. That is, what was it

like living in the post-war period, in the 1960s, 1970s, or 1980s etc.

• In the age of the internet and social media, ordinary peoples’ preoccupation with

documenting and sharing snippets (especially images/video or comments) of the

everyday have exploded.

Defining the ‘everyday’ (summary) • The time of everyday life is repetitive but punctuated by the unpredictable. We

become who we are through acts of repetition (Durkheim).

• Everyday life is a temporal term.

• The everyday is synonymous with habit and acquired abilities known as habitus

(Bourdieu)

• The spaces of everyday life are spaces of familiarity.

• The ‘feel’ of everyday life is the feel of ‘normality’.

• Everyday life has a history (intellectual) and the centrality of the everyday as a

‘social category’ seems to have emerged at a particular time in history.

• Everyday feels ‘natural’ but is actually inhabited and shaped by politics and

power.

Waiting for the bus

• Unglamorous/disempowering

• Low status

• Embody social difference

• Disproportionate spending of public

money (especially Western Sydney area

– poor public transport infrastructure and

highly car dependent households)

• Raises questions about the delivery of

public services

• Privatization of public services/transport

• Commercialised and bland

private/public spaces

•Social activity

• Affordable and most efficient mode of

travel

• Minimize traffic congestion

• Climate change

Street

furniture/

clutter?

Commercial

space?

Public space or

private space?

JCDecaux

ADSHEL

Social space? Interactive?

“Encounter with strangers”

The Sociology of the Queue

• An embryonic social system – a certain pattern of social order and violation

of this order is punishable.

• Self-managed (by the individual) and collectively (queue- community).

• The individual must regulate ones actions in the presence of others

(Goffman). Members of the queue community serve as eyes informally

governing individuals action.

• Queuing is an exemplary behaviour found in ‘civilized societies’.

• Different types of queues (physical, virtual, mobile, ‘informal’, regulated).

• Moral order or queue ethics.

More on queuing - see Schwartz, Barry (1975) Queuing and Waiting: Studies in the Social Organization of Access and Delay. Chicago: Chicago University Press.

Chat and Cut

Waiting in line

A new person lines up in one of the currently shortest queues. ‘The system is unfair’.

Old system at the Saarbrücken Central Station

New system at the Saarbrücken Central Station The processing time is shorter (according to the mathematical calculation half a minute was saved at the desk), making the system appear fairer and therefore people less grumpy!

Source: http://www.leda-tutorial.org/en/official/ch02s07s01.html

THE LINE

THE LINE 2

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• Mid-18th Century urban authorities begin to separate those on foot from other road users.

• As early as 1863, Melbourne began advising pedestrians to keep to the right as was the practice in London.

• For public space scholar, the side-walk is a public space, urban designers relatedly, treat it as a civic arena and mobility scholars treat it as a site for walking.

• ‘Pedestrianism understands the side walk as a finite public resource that is always threatened by multiple, competing interests and uses. The role of the authorities, using law as needed, is to arrange these bodies and objects to ensure that the primary function of the sidewalk is sustained: that being the orderly movement of pedestrians from point a to point b (page 3)

Stop and Chat