From Everyday Life:

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Top-Down Civic Projects Are Not Grassroots Associations: How The Differences Matter in Everyday Life

Research on civic associations blurs an important distinction between the unfunded, informal, ongoing associations that theorists like de Tocqueville described versus current participatory democracy projects that are funded by the state and large nongovernmental organizations, are open to all, and are usually short-term. Based on a long-term ethnography of youth programs in the United States, this paper shows that entities like these, which participants and researchers alike often called “volunteer” or “civic” groups, operate very differently from traditional civic groups. The ethnography systematically details prevalent tensions that actors face when they try to cultivate the civic spirit in these increasingly typical organizations.

Comic Relief In Everyday Life: Dramaturgic Observations On A Function Of Humor*

The comic relief of the theater has an everyday analog. It is seen in the momentary humorous respites from the seriousness or lengthy concentration on a collective task commonly found in certain spheres of daily life. These respites facilitate the completion of that task by refreshing the participants. Observations of social comic relief made during a series of rehearsals and performances of an amateur theater company are reported. The nature and function of this sort of humor is considered, first in theater, and then in other similar settings. A comparison of social comic relief as a function of humor with selected philosophical and psychological relief theories of humor follows. A concluding section considers the place of creativity and wit in social comic relief.     

Inside Out: Postcolonial Subjectivities and Everyday Life Online

What gets overlooked amid the hype surrounding the Internet/world-wide web is that these are a newer communicative means and medium for people to gather from all over the place, not only to meet each other but also to discuss a wide range of issues. Discussion Forums and News Groups are important and long-standing examples of these sorts of non-commercial online interactions. This article argues that this sort of onlineness constitutes emergent (cyber)spatial practices of everyday life. These entail complex gender-power relations that encompass struggles for ownership and control of ICTs, on the one hand, and the intimate, public and political nature of online discussions visà-vis lived lives offline on the other hand. One way of seeing these dynamics at work in everyday life online is when women from non-western diasporas talk about their personal-public lives and changing sociocultural obligations on Internet discussion forums. Such discussions provide newer, electronically mediated (re)articulations of the 'public-private' problematic and a (re)articulation of how the 'personal is political'. In so doing they recall feminist and postcolonial critiques of the androcentric and eurocentric nature of the public-private dichotomy itself. The article explores the intersection between these critiques, the practice of everyday life for postcolonial diasporas and the advent of the Internet/world-wide web. Through the reconstruction of someof these open andintimate online discussions between older andyounger women from the Samoan and Tongan diasporas, the article argues that postcolonial everyday uses of the Internet/www are challenging assumptions about what constitutes access, ownership and control of ICTs. These have implications for equitable research and development of ICTs in terms of the practice of everyday life online and offline and the future of public cyberspace(s) in a neo-liberal world order.     

Displaying Gender: Transgender People's Strategies in Everyday Life

Drawing upon data from in‐depth interviews with transgender people in Portugal and in the United Kingdom, this article critically reflects upon different ways through which transgender people recreate their gender displays, particularly in terms of gender embodiment and aesthetics, in order to navigate their everyday lives. I focus on four strategies of articulating gender displays with one's own gender subjectivities: “blending in,” “masking,” “naturalizing,” and “subverting.” These strategies are not exclusive of one another. They are used differently throughout the participants' own lives in accordance to the social contexts they were in.     

It's Boring: Notes on the Meanings of Boredom in Everyday Life

Qualitative Sociology -     

Understanding Everyday Life: Generic Social Processes and the Pursuit of Transcontextuality

This paper joins earlier interactionist projects in advocating for an analytical attentiveness to generic social process (GSP). This dynamic form of theorizing is indebted to the thought of Herbert Blumer and the extended phenomenological and pragmatist traditions. Rather centrally, the study of GSPs draws upon the foundational concepts of duration, intersubjectivity, and the self. Such concepts have contributed to some of symbolic interactionism's most enduring, empirically grounded and theoretically robust work. Drawing on a series of ethnographic research projects, this paper offers a research agenda for engaging GSPs transcontextually. Specifically, I argue for extending the study of GSPs through the examination of management in everyday life, the creation of subcultural value, and the social construction of doubt.     

A Cartography of Passing in Everyday Life

This analysis of student narratives explores various forms of passing encounters whereby individuals are not who they claim to be. I distinguish between (a) passing along highly stigmatized identities and everyday passing across less threatening ones; and (b) proactive passing, which individuals initiate, and reactive passing, in which individuals embrace an identity others have mistakenly assigned to them. These strategies are complex processes whereby individuals interactively negotiate definitions of the situation and sometimes give idealized performances. They underscore through contrast the sense of an authentic identity that enhances the stability of self. Although theorists claim that passing is inconsequential for the individual, the narratives in this study suggest that masking a central identity can be emotionally costly.     

Betting on Life: Associations Between Significant Life Events and Gambling Trajectories Among Gamblers with the Intent to Quit

Considerable evidence has suggested that problem gambling may be transitory and episodic, with gamblers routinely moving in and out of clinical thresholds. Findings in qualitative and quantitative studies have converged on identifying preliminary evidence for the role of life events as motivators and contributing factors for gambling changes over time. The aim of this study was to conduct an exploratory analysis of the relationship between life events, their respective experience as positive or negative, and gambling trajectories among problem gamblers intending to quit. Life event occurrence and ratings as positive or negative, and changes in gambling severity were analyzed over a 12-month period for 204 adult problem gamblers intending to reduce or quit their gambling. Overall, mixed effects models revealed several relationships between life events and both the magnitude and direction of gambling change over time. In particular, gamblers who experienced a greater number of positive events or specific events such as legal events, the adoption/loss of a child, or negative changes to their social relationships, finances, work environments or social/health activities were more likely to exhibit greater gambling reductions over time. Conversely, gamblers who experienced a greater number of negative events, such as family bereavement, the dissolution of a marriage, or negative changes to their residence exhibited smaller gambling reductions or increases in gambling severity. Possible mechanisms which may explain the findings and the importance of examining the subjective experience of life events are discussed. Recommendations for future studies examining associations between life events and gambling trajectories are provided.     

When the Management of Grief Becomes Everyday Life: The Aftermath of Murder

This study examines how others indicate that our emotions violate social norms and how people feel about and respond to those indications. The data come from in‐depth interviews with thirty‐two people who had recently lost a loved one to murder (“bereaved victims”). Through the symbolic interaction process, bereaved victims came to appreciate the burden their grief imposed on others, and some of them took steps to minimize that burden. Despite their awareness of the burden, however, many of the bereaved expected others to express heartfelt sympathy for their loss. Instead, people offered inappropriate (and even hurtful) responses, including avoiding the topic of their loss, offering unnecessarily dramatic responses to the loss, and telling them to move on. The responses suggest that current feeling rules and emotion norms surrounding grief do not reflect the true extent of bereaved people's actual experiences, creating awkward situations for potential supporters and the bereaved.     

Human Inquiry Systems: Understanding Everyday Social Life And Its Stresses

Abstract

Ever since the rise of modern psychology questions arose as to how to scientifically study human behavior, whether from a socio-cultural perspective (geisteswissenschftlich) or by means of a more rigorous (positive) approach. However once psychology was defined as the study of behavior, it included animal behavior, and the positive approach became the dominant orientation in academic psychology, which made little differentiation between the methods employed in studying man or animal in the laboratories. This article examines the underlying proposition of these two paradigms, including their critical shortcomings and offers a complementary, more humanistic alternative to the study of human behavior, namely hermeneutics and discursive psychology. It will be argued that these alternatives offer a deeper understanding of human actions in a situated field because they attempts to take into account the motives and aims of people's conduct. Ultimately this approach attempts to assess a person's sense of social reality (in addition to the reality of a physical word) in the hope that a dialectic synthesis of laboratory research and hermeneutic understanding will lead to the manifestation of a greater emancipatory interests.     

Soundtracking Everyday Life: The Use of Music in Redefining Situations*

As a result of technological advances, music is presently widely available as a means of modifying social occasions. As with other artifacts, the use of music requires technical knowledge. Leaving aside the more crystallized segments of this knowledge, such as musical therapy and movie soundtracking, the study sought to explore the functional correlation college students established between types of music and social occasions. The existence of a body of consistent, though uncodified, technical knowledge is confirmed. This knowledge prescribes types of music appropriate for social occasions, and specifies the particular effects that can be obtained and the role played by some of the music's elements.     

The Money Taboo: Its Effects in Everyday Life and in the Practice of Psychotherapy

A cultural taboo regarding discussion of money affects psychotherapists as well as the lay public. As a result, the psychological literature regarding money is sparse while issues relating to money are seldom addressed in our training, our self analyses, or the treatment of our patients. This article cites some of the literature that does exist, discusses the reasons for and effects of the money taboo, provides a psychological definition of money, and offers some case material that should help to focus thinking about money through the lens of psychodynamic, object relations, and self psychological theories.