This paper concerns the ways in which futures are enacted, and thus mobilized, by publics, participants and practitioners, and especially by social scientists. In particular, the paper is interested ...in the assortment of futures within which we are seemingly embroiled, and how we analytically deal with the proliferation of futures. This is approached through the dramatization of futures as ‘Big’ or ‘Little’ in which change is more or less widespread and far-reaching. The aim is to chart some of the ways in which Big Futures are analytically or rhetorically transformed into Little and vice versa, and thus to throw into relief the mutability of futures per se. This discussion is developed by drawing on a particular area of social scientific inquiry, namely the ‘public understanding of science’ (PUS) which also includes the field of ‘public engagement with science and technology’ (PEST). The role for Big Futures (indexed by ‘controversiality’) in this field, and the Big Future claims made by PUS/PEST practitioners are contrasted to the Little Futures of everyday life. With the aid of a ‘speculative’ sensibility, Little Futures are then shown to be potential sources of Big Futures. The paper ends with a preliminary attempt to theorize the complex interactions of Big and Little Futures through Isabelle Stengers’ (2010) notion of an ‘ecology of practices’.
In sociology, rituals are considered a social practice with powerful effects, and a prerequisite for functioning and sustainment of society itself. It was Durkheim who first identified the need for ...repeated ritual encounters among humans, in the sense of providing recurrent and cohesive emotions of joy, ecstasy, comfort, shame, pride, etc. However, the theory of rituals which took human emotions into account was proposed much later. This paper will argue for the social importance of everyday, mundane, or leisure rituals such as sports matches, music concerts, and routine conversations, gossip, or meetings over a drink or coffee, as ritual interactions strongly mediated by social emotions. These leisure interaction rituals create important personal experiences and meaningful personal histories, while having significant effects for the society as a whole. The paper claims that societies are not being "held together" by some abstract entity, such as social system or culture, but only through the pockets of micro-solidarity occurring when individuals ritually meet in emotionally charged interactions. It is the social interaction in leisure that generates essential social emotions, social ties, and group solidarity, thus representing the actual glue that holds society together.
The article describes the methodological features of conversation analysis (CA) and a special understanding of sociology which is embedded in its program and reflected in the categories of ...observational science, radical empiricism, micro-interactions and “talk-in-interaction”. The interpretation of the concept of social order incorporated in the program of conversation analysis is presented. “Turn-taking” concept and “one speaker at a time” principle are discussed. They are shown to be crucial for the (re-)production of the local structure of a conversation. Finally, the article includes the overview of transcript preparation and analysis procedures developed in CA research.
En människa bland andra? Iversen, Clara; Redmalm, David; Flinkfeldt, Marie ...
Sociologisk forskning,
2021, Letnik:
58, Številka:
1-2
Journal Article
Recenzirano
Odprti dostop
A person among others? Older people’s understandings of their everyday life during the Covid-19 crisis
This article examines how older people make sense of their situation in calls to a helpline a ...few months into the Covid-19 pandemic. By drawing on the sociology of everyday life to analyse callers’ various understandings of the crisis, the article nuances current knowledge about older people’s situation. The thematic analysis shows that the callers make sense of the crisis linked to social relations on a personal, anonymous, and abstract level. The callers’ responses to challenges to their everyday routines – adjustment or critical evaluation – are connected to different approaches to trust: basic trust in a shared social reality with someone or regulating trust in a set of norms independent from that other. Whereas the calls demonstrate very few positive adjustments in personal relations, they show that anonymous and abstract relations serve as important resources for both maintaining and re-evaluating everyday life during a crisis. Although older people’s lack of secure personal relations during the pandemic points to vulnerability, their resourcefulness is apparent in their active engagement in important anonymous and abstract relations.
The article considers silence as the most important component of vipassana (meditation technique from early Buddhism) as it is taught in the tradition of S.N. Goenka. As a religious vow, silence is a ...condition for the successful meditation retreat. Although meditative silence does not seem to form sociality, vipassana courses are a collective practice. After the end of courses, the desire of people to meet and meditate together proves the need not in a ‘solitary’ silence but in a group that produces special collective silence. The author considers the silent co-presence of people in the meditation center ‘here-and-now’ as a special interactive situation, a social feature of the meditation practice, and shows how the subjective success of this interaction and its methods depend on the technical and spatial conditions of the meditative center. The empirical basis of the article is mainly the author’s participant observation (in the role of a new student). Based on the concepts of sociology of everyday life, the author describes the key mechanisms of the production of sociality in various situations of joint forced silence during the vipassana course - from collective meditation in the common room to the silent organization of joint activities in the meditation center. By partially reproducing the basic social conditions of the center at home - silence and the support of those around them - meditators manage to ensure the continuity of the practice and to successfully integrate it into their daily lives outside the meditation center.
This delightful, thought-provoking book tackles head-on the assumption that laughter and humour are necessarily good in themselves. The author proposes a social theory that places humour central to ...social life. Billig argues that all cultures use ridicule as a disciplinary means to uphold norms of conduct and conventions of meaning.
A person among others? Iversen, Clara; Redmalm, David; Flinkfeldt, Marie ...
Sociologisk forskning,
2021, Letnik:
58, Številka:
1-2
Journal Article
Recenzirano
Odprti dostop
This article examines how older people make sense of their situation in calls to a helpline a few months into the Covid-19 pandemic.By drawing on the sociology of everyday life to analyse callers' ...various understandings of the crisis, the article nuances current knowledge about older people's situation.The thematic analysis shows that the callers make sense of the crisis linked to social relations on a personal, anonymous, and abstract level. The callers' responses to challenges to their everyday routines - adjustment or critical evaluation - are connected to different approaches to trust: basic trust in a shared social reality with someone or regulating trust in a set of norms independent from that other. Whereas the calls demonstrate very few positive adjustments in personal relations, they show that anonymous and abstract relations serve as important resources for both maintaining and re-evaluating everyday life during a crisis.Although older people's lack of secure personal relations during the pandemic points to vulnerability, their resourcefulness is apparent in their active engagement in important anonymous and abstract relations.
Risk and Everyday Life Tulloch, John; Lupton, Deborah
2003, 2003-07-23, 2003-07-24, 20030101
eBook
This book examines how people respond to, experience and think about risk. The authors stress the need to take into account the cultural dimensions of risk and risk-taking and consider the influence ...that gender, social class, ethnicity, sexual orientation, occupation, geographical location and nationality have on our perceptions of risk.
This study suggests the importance of focusing on lost objects after disasters and gauging the emotional registers and impacts of object loss to best understand and assist in wildfire victims' ...recovery process. Because objects and materiality are a focus of research in the sociology of culture and the sociology of emotions, I assess these sub-field of interest in object and emotion, along with surveying the various fields dealing with disasters and their aftermaths. Participants were from a small, semi-rural community in the central hill country of Texas. A participant-observer design allowed for working alongside fire survivors. Grounded theory and situational analysis frameworks were used to analyze 54 survivors' narratives related to the importance of everyday household objects in their recovery– things resurrected from the wildfire. The findings suggest that it would be wise to ponder material objects in situated context—in a new manner and with new respect.
Появившись относительно недавно, в 2014 г., умные колонки (портативные колонки с интегрированным голосовым помощником) уже стали для многих пользователей привычной частью домашней обстановки. В ...данной работе рассматривается, какие трансформации происходят в социальных практиках в результате появления в домохозяйствах умных колонок. В статье анализируются два аспекта одомашнивания искусственного интеллекта при использовании умных колонок: 1) включение умных устройств в повседневную домашнюю культуру, 2) формы и способы взаимодействия с умными устройствами. Преобразование домашней социальности, к которому приводит появление умных колонок, заключается, с одной стороны, в изменении рутинных домашних практик (приготовления еды, уборки, прослушивания музыки, установки будильника, выяснения прогноза погоды и т.д.). В некоторых случаях умные колонки меняют только фон деятельности, но в других случаях трансформируют способ и частоту ее осуществления. С другой стороны, появление умных колонок приводит к новым формам коммуникации, которые ранее были непривычны для домашней жизни. Например, пользователи чаще используют громкую речь, избегают определенных фраз и выражений для сохранения приватности или начинают фразы с обращения к собеседнику. В статье с опорой на данные существующих исследований, автоэтнографические наблюдения автора и анализ фрагментов разговоров с умной колонкой показывается, что, несмотря на стремление разработчиков умных колонок сделать их использование «естественным», подобные разговаривающие устройства требуют от пользователей не просто применения к искусственному интеллекту привычного способа взаимодействия, а выработки новых форм взаимодействия и социальности. Благодарность. Статья подготовлена в сотрудничестве с Лабораторией геймификации Сбербанка.
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