The numerous tasks and routines that shape our daily existence can seem mundane, even invisible—and yet they play an extremely powerful role in structuring and reproducing society. Exploring Everyday Life casts light on these so-called trivialities, serving as both a guide to the invisible world of the everyday and an instruction manual for first-time explorers. Ehn, Lofgren, and Wilk demonstrate how to use a broad array of ethnographic tools to discover, map, and document new and unexplored territories and guide readers through the process of cultural analysis. Their concrete examples shed light on how a study or paper assignment can evolve and point to how cultural analysis of everyday life can be practically applied in business, government, and other arenas outside of academia.

This carefully edited companion anthology provides provocative, eye-opening examples of the practice of sociology in a well-edited, well-designed, and affordable format. It includes short articles, chapters, and excerpts that examine common everyday experiences, important social issues, or distinct historical events that illustrate the relationship between the individual and society. The new edition will provide more detail regarding the theory and/or history related to each issue presented. The revision will also include more coverage of global issues and world religions.

Most of the stories we tell are about great feats, dangerous journeys, or daring confrontations—exceptional moments in our existence. But what about how we live every single day? In Everyday Life, Joseph A. Amato offers an account of daily existence that reminds us how important the quotidian is. Ranging across social, economic, and cultural history—as well as anthropology, folklore, and technology—he explores how and why the pattern of our lives has changed and developed over time. Amato examines the common facts and occurrences in lives from all spheres, whether of a pauper or a noble, a criminal or state official, or a lunatic or a philosopher. Such facts include basic aspects of human existence, such as play, work, conflict, and healing, as well the logistics of survival, such as housing, clothing, cleaning, cooking, animals, plants, and machines. Tracing core historical developments like efficiency of production and greater mobility, Amato shows how we became modern in everyday ways. He explores how, paradoxically, commerce, technology, design, industrialization, nationalism, and democratization—which have so undercut traditional culture and have homogenized, centralized, and secularized masses of people—have also profoundly transformed daily life, affording citizens with materially improved lives, individual rights, and productive and rewarding expectations. A wide-ranging account of lives throughout history, this book gives us new insights into our own condition, showing us how extraordinary the ordinary can be.

Navigating Everyday Life explores the special moments, big and small, that rupture the surface of everyday life and that can help readers adjust to the disrupting effects of major life crises. Peter Adams delves into the two forces, finitude (the aspects that constrain a person to a situation) and transcendence (those aspects that enable movement beyond such constraints). Building on this framework, Adams looks at the processes and circumstances that both facilitate and block the tensions between finitude and transcendence. He then illustrates how these tensions function in the personal and existential challenges faced by five members of a modern suburban family. Their stories traverse life transitions such as separation, depression, chronic illness, injury, violence, addiction, aging, death, and forgiveness. This book is recommended for scholars and others interested in the intersections between psychology and philosophy.

The topics explored in each chapter are based on hundreds of discussions the author has led with adult science learners over many years – people who came from all walks of life and had no scientific training, but had developed a burning curiosity to understand the world around them. This book encourages us to reflect on our own relationship with science and serves as an important reminder of why we should continue learning as adults. Praise for Why Icebergs Float 'Asking questions is an important scientific skill and sometimes we can only understand something when we can find the language to ask the right questions; books like this can be really helpful in this respect....This book is one of UCL’s open access books. This means that it can be downloaded as a free PDF from the UCL Press website. The commitment to making scientific works such as this freely available is very welcome. This book is very accessible and deserves to reach a wide audience.' - School Science Review 'Morris says in the prologue: ‘If you come away from this book with a greater interest in science and enhanced confidence about tackling it, the book will have served its purpose.’ So, don’t be afraid of science and give Why Icebergs Float a chance. You will absolutely enjoy it.' - Chemistry World '[Why Icebergs Float] draws on experiences and first-person narratives of adult learners who – out of genuine curiosity or embarrassment at their levels of scientific ignorance – have sought to catch-up on lost school science and get a better understanding of their surroundings as a result.' - Education Journal '‘The approach illustrates beautifully the influence of language on understanding. The author makes clear how common language can be misleading when scientists have used everyday words but given them very specific meanings.’ Physics Education

This work examines customs and habits such as crayfish parties, Christmas celebrations, and graduation rituals. The focus is not on the traditions as such, instead they provide a starting point for analyses of how the experiences of everyday life are manifested in a visible cultural garb. The text shows how many rituals serve to release people from the bonds of tradition, usually by creating a special cultural arena. Yet it also examines the ways in which habits and customs tacitly coerce thoughts, sometimes drawing attention to fundamental social and moral values but just as often acting as impediments to reflection. The contributors try to see how some features of everyday cultural identity can be easily replaced, while others may persist tenaciously.

The Internet in Everyday Life is the first book to systematically investigate how being online fits into people's everyday lives. Opens up a new line of inquiry into the social effects of the Internet. Focuses on how the Internet fits into everyday lives, rather than considering it as an alternate world. Chapters are contributed by leading researchers in the area. Studies are based on empirical data. Talks about the reality of being online now, not hopes or fears about the future effects of the Internet.