Was Cicourel’s critique in Methods and Measurement in Sociology too radical?

This article is a contribution to a mini symposium on the 50th anniversary of the publication of A V Cicourel’s Method and Measurement in Sociology (1964). The central theme of the book is reviewed – the problem of the relationship between everyday language and cultural meanings, and the language of measurement in social research – and the lack of an adequate ontology of social actors is identified as being the cause of the problem. The solution offered by Alfred Schütz – that social scientific language should be derived from everyday language – is discussed and it is argued that this was probably too radical at the time the book was published, and is still generally neglected in the social sciences.     

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.     

Everyday shame

This article explores aspects of the everyday through a consideration of shame. Drawing on and extending Bourdieu’s notion of the habitus, notably in relationship to Silvan Tomkins’ affect theory, and to Bourdieu’s predecessor Marcel Mauss, the paper argues for the positivity of everyday shame. The very different although complementary privileging of the physiological in Tomkins and in Mauss allows for a radical rearticulation and understanding of the habitus and of everyday life. In this article, their understandings serve to provide a model that more fully comprehends the productive nature of shame within postcolonial societies.     

文化理性下的日常生活解读———以马歇尔·萨林斯的文化理论为研究视域

长期以来,人类的一切实践活动都被看作是利益最大化的过程,文化因此丧失了它的自主性和能动性,成为了功利的附属物。正是基于实践论和文化论的关系问题,马歇尔·萨林斯提出了文化理性和实践理性的范式对立,他认为人的实践活动并非一定要依赖于物质现实,而是根植于一个巨大的文化体系当中,也就是说,它是受文化约束的。萨林斯的文化理论在一定程度上消解了实践的功利主义,为我们解读日常生活提供了一个独特的视角,对于日常生活的批判与重建也有着非常重要的参考和借鉴作用。     

启蒙现代性之尴尬——与《五四遗事》有关的遗事

张爱玲的小说《五四遗事》写了两对五四青年追求高雅的爱情而最终落入世俗的故事。《五四遗事》是关于启蒙现代性的命运的叙事。启蒙现代性不仅为中国知识分子酿造了“启蒙”和“救亡”的国家意志,而且还构想出一种“伟大爱情”的神话,作为元叙事来教化和改造中国知识分子的日常生活。作为宿命论者的张爱玲,清楚地意识到了启蒙现代性的尴尬;她既拒绝审美救世主义者用诗意来超越日常生活,也无法像鲁迅那样以社会革命论的态度来对待日常生活。     

刑法语言的向度

理解刑法是从刑法的语言开始的。但刑法的内涵不是仅仅通过阅读法条的字面就可以获得的。刑法条文的字面只是为发现刑法提供了进路。刑法的内涵是由刑法规范的目的、规范的语境及其意义脉络所决定的。理解刑法语言的向度,应该注意刑法语言与日常用语、私法语言以及刑法内部同一语词的关系。     

Everyday tragedy and creation: Translated from the French by Karen Isabel Ocaña

In this essay, Michel Maffesoli exalts the poetry of the everyday, and a way of being that, paradoxically, opens one up to life through rituals that smack of a quest for divine nothingness. ‘Everyday Tragedy and Creation’ traces a series of connections: between Benjamin’s particular form of empirical mysticism and the notion of messianic time, the vitalism of Nietzsche (and tangentially his rediscovery of the Greek notion of tragedy and destiny), that of Bergson with his concept of duration, as well as the sociological hermeneutics of Dilthey. In the course of his discussion, Maffesoli invokes Verlaine, Rimbaud, street theatre and Eliot, and proposes a Zen-like approach to everyday happiness. More generally, Maffesoli rejects the temporality of modernism and drama and celebrates instead the ‘non-time’ of the tragedy of living in the present within a medium of communal images and practices.     

Calendars and keys: The classification of “home” and “work”

This article presents a discussion of the relationship between classification systems and individuals' everyday activities. The concept of “boundary work” is defined as the practices that concretize and give meaning to mental frameworks by placing, maintaining, and challenging cultural categories. “Home” and “work” provide a case study for examining boundary work across a range of realm relationships, from those that are highly “integrating” to those that are highly “segmenting.” Boundary practices involving calendars and keys, clothes and appearances, eating and drinking, money, people and their representations (like photographs and gifts), talk styles and conversations, reading materials and habits, and work breaks (including lunches and vacations) are discussed. Mary Douglas's work on categorical purity helps illustrate the relationship between cognitive order and visible behavior seen in the boundary work of home and work. This article includes material that was published in a larger study,Home and Work: Negotiating Boundaries Through Everyday Life (1996 University of Chicago Press), after it was presented at the 1995 Eastern Sociological Society meetings in Philadelphia.     

Accounting for Everyday Incivility: an Australian study

The question of how we live among strangers in daily life is an established concern in contemporary social analysis. A key topic has been the achievements of the individual in rendering daily life among unknown others possible. Yet, questions of residual failure await full development. The study aims to describe the results of an Australian study that examined the significance and meaning of interactional breakdown with strangers in everyday life for the contemporary individual. Focus group methodology is used to describe common threads of understanding that ordinary people have developed around such events in terms of prevalence, reasons and remedies. Noteworthy findings are (i) the use of period and generational kinds of historical thinking in lay reflections on the state of everyday incivility (ii) the materialization of excessive individualism, runaway capitalist values and diminished community as key ideas within lay talk about the generators of everyday incivility, and (iii) the articulation of communitarianism as a preferred panacea to everyday incivility for lay actors.     

论巴赫金思想的独特性

前苏联思想家巴赫金的思想独具特色。1950年代后期,他提出的对话主义理论和狂欢化美学享誉世界,成为当代学术甚至日常思维的关键词。对话和狂欢共同指向生长,从两个维度表达了巴赫金对世界的哲学思考。巴赫金的思想表达兼有哲学美学化的倾向和异语表意的特点,一个论点往往有多层理解的充分可能,形成了思想的复调风格。