Freshly Printed - allow 7 days lead
Couldn't load pickup availability
Making Sense of Everyday Life
Susie Scott (Author)
9780745642673, Polity Press
Hardback, published 12 June 2009
224 pages
23.6 x 16 x 2.5 cm, 0.508 kg
"This book is a wonderful introduction to sociology. It makes the reader rethink and re-evaluate the meaning and importance of everyday events such as gardening, shopping and eating out. It makes the familiar strange but not unrecognizable." "At last we have a study that brings together much of what we have learnt about everyday life from social thinkers over the past fifty years or so. Inspired by Goffman?s classic work, Susie Scott brings coherence to previously disparate fields. This book is much needed and long overdue. It provides an invaluable introduction, a unique and comprehensible synthesis. This is an indispensable gift to students of social psychology and social interaction." "A lucid and richly illustrated account of how the so-called little things loom large. Integrating theory and empirical work, this book will be invaluable to teachers and students of everyday life."
Phil Manning, Cleveland State University
Ken Plummer, Emeritus Professor of Sociology, University of Essex
Tia DeNora, University of Exeter
This accessible, introductory text explains the importance of studying 'everyday life' in the social sciences. Susie Scott examines such varied topics as leisure, eating and drinking, the idea of home, and time and schedules in order to show how societies are created and reproduced by the apparently mundane 'micro' level practices of everyday life. Each chapter is organized around three main themes: 'rituals and routines', 'social order', and 'challenging the taken-for-granted', with intriguing examples and illustrations. Theoretical approaches from ethnomethodology, Symbolic Interactionism and social psychology are introduced and applied to real-life situations, and there is clear emphasis on empirical research findings throughout. Social order depends on individuals following norms and rules which are so familiar as to appear natural; yet, as Scott encourages the reader to discover, these are always open to question and investigation. This user-friendly book will appeal to undergraduate students across the social sciences, including the sociology of everyday life, the sociology of emotions, social psychology and cultural studies, and will reveal the fascinating significance our everyday habits hold.
Detailed Contents vi Acknowledgements xi Illustration Acknowledgements xii 1 What is Everyday Life? 1 2 Theorizing the Mundane 10 3 Emotions 33 4 Home 49 5 Time 69 6 Eating and Drinking 92 7 Health, Illness and Disability 116 8 Shopping 139 9 Leisure 161 10 Researching Everyday Life 184 References 209 Index 233
Subject Areas: Sociology & anthropology [JH]
