Understanding Everyday Life

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Understanding
Everyday Life

• Principles of Sociology
• SOC 101
• DCCC
• Michael T. Ryan

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Introduction

• What difference do the social sciences make in
  helping us understand everyday life in the Modern
  World-why is common sense insufficient?

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Topics of Discussion

• Appearances are not always what they seem to be
• a problem specific to Modernity
• The taken for granted qualities of social
  relations and social structures
• a generic problem in every form of society

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Topic One Appearances are not always what
they seem to be!

• Skepticism about the attempts to apply scientific
  method to human actions
• Scholars in the Humanities A demeaning and
  dehumanizing project!
• individuals exercise free will and know what they
  are doing
• Scholars in the Natural Sciences The social
  sciences lack rigor!
• no universal laws like E MC2
• modest correlations
• prediction and control?

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• Non scholars/Just Folks Mystifying jargon!
• social scientists elaborate the obvious
• insider jargon simply creates opportunities for
  scientists to decode their observations to the
  public
• From whom do we derive our common sense knowledge
  of how our social world operates?

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• Generic sources of common sense knowledge
• Lived experience/personalobservations
• Parents, siblings and significant others
• Authoritative resources
• clergy, teachers, government agents
• Mass media
• TV, radio, films, newspapers, internet

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• How valid, and how reliable are the different
  sources of our stocks of knowledge?
• For example It is 7pm in the Terminal Lounge on
  Friday, two hours into Happy Hour, and as you
  stride into the bar, you observe a smiling
  other across the room.
• Is it possible to interpret the meaning of that
  smile simply by observing it?
• What could that smile mean?
• How does one proceed?
• a series of possibilities
• a series of hypotheses

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• Search for the social relations and underlying
  social process(es) that have produced that smile
  on the surface of this interaction.
• It requires further observations
• Hypothesis testing
• Chronic monitoring of actions and situations by
  actors in everyday life
• Insights from Freud, Goffman and functionalist
  concepts and theories
• Appearances are not always what they seem to be!

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• In most everyday situations common sense and good
  sense will be sufficient actors are quite
  knowledgeable about their social situations.
• But in other everyday situations social
  scientific concepts and theories will be
  necessary to get at the underlying process, or
  processes, that produce the appearances on the
  surface.
• Do family and friends always give us valid and
  reliable knowledge?

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• Often critical sources
• Often provide knowledge with your interests in
  mind ....from their perspective
• But their knowledge is limited by their sources
  and their ignorance
• Grandma Shaughnessys weather predictions
• Appearances are not always what they seem to be!
• Do the experts always give us valid and reliable
  knowledge?

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• Sometimes
• But often one sided, partial perspectives
• Oft confusing their interests with our interests
• Presidential peace candidates?
• Anal Roberts?
• Sir Cyril Burt?
• Appearances are not always what they seem to be!
• Do the mass media always give us valid and
  reliable knowledge about our everyday social
  world?

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• Perry Mason and criminal justice?
• Weather forecasts sunrise and sunset?
• News reports?
• Does McDonalds Do it all for you?
• Modern men and women Adrift in a sea of
  signifiers (Jean Braudrillard)
• Appearances are not always what they seem to be!

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• Why are the appearances in Modernity so
  deceptive?
• Commodity form and structure in Modernity
• Opaque market mediated production relations
• transparent production relations in premodern
  societies
• Global scale and complexity of Modernity
• Millions of citizens in Modernity
• face to face unmediated relations in small
  pre-modern villages and towns

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Topic Two The taken for granted quality of
everyday life

• Why do we tend to take everything for granted in
  our society?
• First, society precedes the existence of its
  individual members in time.
• the social practices and processes
• the social relations
• the structure of both relations, processes, and
  practices
• Society is already there in motion.

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• Every practice, process, relation and structure
  appears to be natural
• working for wages
• paying taxes
• taking vacations
• marrying for romantic reasons
• spectator forms of leisure
• urbanization
• bureaucratization

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• But none of these social relations, practices,
  processes, and structures are natural!
• Each has a history, although its historical
  origins are concealed in its chronic reproduction
  in everyday life
• Each is socially constructed, one strategy among
  many possibilities for organizing work, family
  relations, power, leisure, etc
• Each form has its advantages and disadvantages

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• Second, society also shapes the way we think
  about it.
• It penetrates and shapes our individual
  consciousness
• We think through the medium and structure of
  language which is already there
• We use words (signs) to name our
• experiences
• social relations
• social practices

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• But sometimes language can be used in ways to
  mystify what is actually going on in a situation.
• The Peoples Republic of China ???
• Coke adds life ???
• Central Intelligence Agency Sanction Mike Ryan
  with extreme prejudice. ???
• Did it really hurt your parents more than it hurt
  you when they sanctioned you with some degree of
  prejudice?

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• So in this sense, we carry society in our minds
• Society is internal to the individual as
  Interactionists see it
• Society is also external to the individual as
  functionalists see it
• Knowledge formed and accumulated in this fashion
  makes it difficult to achieve critical distance
  from a social world that we take for granted
• It becomes difficult to see social relations,
  structures and practices as socially constructed
  with histories
• Hence, when analyzing social phenomena
  Interrogate reality!
• Take nothing for granted!

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Topic Three The problem of consciousness

• How is it possible to think about a society where
  social relations are either not transparent or
  appear to be natural?
• When do we become conscious of the routine, taken
  for granted nature of everyday life?

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• On occasions of personal triumph or failure
• The day you graduated from college
• The day you met the love of your life
• The day she dumped you
• The day you totaled your dads car
• The day your father died

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• On occasions of social triumph and tragedy
• Holidays and festivals
• Christmas 1949
• Drifting across Ireland 2003
• Harborfest in Norfolk, Virginia
• The day that President Kennedy was assassinated
• World War II
• C. Levi-Strauss/Structuralism
• Viet Nam and the social movements of the
  1960s/1970s
• 9/11/2001

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• On these occasions the flow of everyday life
  comes to a halt
• we become conscious of some of the relations that
  we normally take for granted
• In moments of social conflict or in eras with
  important social movements
• Social relations, structures, processes and
  practices become more visible as they are
  challenged
• 1930s Labor movement/class domination
• Civil rights movement/racial domination
• Women's movement/male domination
• Anti-globalization movement/multi-national
  corporate domination
• The birth of sociology the social conflicts,
  class struggles and the economic crises of early
  Industrial Society

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Everyday LifePower and Poverty

• Ethnomethodology (Harold Garfinkel) has focused
  on the power of everyday life and the social
  construction of
• Individuals
• Their social relations
• The structure of these relations

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• Post-marxists, Henri Lefebvre and Jean
  Baudrillard, have focused on the poverty (as well
  as on the power) of everyday life with the
  negative as a force for change
• everydayness
• organizing everyday life with the
• bureaucratic, commodity and advertising
• forms
  
• boredom and monotony
• the return of the same
• repetition, cyclical actions
• 
  

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• the everyday
• everyday life as lived experience
• everyday life and self creation
• everyday life as a level and foundation
• of Modernity
  
• the possibilities for change
• possibilities that are currently
• repressed by the bureaucratic
• society of controlled consumption-
• generalized self-management
• possibilities for less work and a more
• playful and leisurely everyday life
• everyday life as a permanent festival

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Summary

• But as long as everyday life is livable for the
  majority of the populace, Modernity will continue
  to be reproduced in its current forms and
  structures
• In situations when it is no longer livable, we
  observe change, or attempts to change it
• 1776-89 American Revolution Part I
• 1861-65 American Revolution Part II
• 1789 French Revolution
• 1917 Russian Revolution
• 1968 May events in France

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