Undergraduate module @Department of Sociology and Social Research, University of Trento. By Alice Dal Gobbo

Programme for academic year 2022/2023

This module has the aim of introducing social science students to the broad theme of everyday life for how it relates to processes of social transformation. The intersection of the two problematisations looks somehow counterintuitive and it is not much studied. Everyday life, in fact, seems a rather repetitive space where the social order is reproduced rather than contested. Social transformation, on its part, is normally understood as relying on social mobilisations and movements, or on ‘big’ politics. This ‘banal’ realm where life is reproduced through habitual gestures might seem apart from History and societal developments. Yet, theorists have recognised that everyday life is also a space of resistance and invention, especially when crises uproot the normal flow of existence. As the Covid-19 pandemic has potently made clear, what seems a ‘private’ dimension is always intermeshed with, and affected by, big historical events – to which it responds with creativity. Throughout the lectures and seminars, different approaches to the study of everyday life will be proposed – from the “classical” studies of Erving Goffman to the recent study of the “new environmentalism of everyday life – asking to what extent the creative capacities of daily practices can hold a properly political and transformative character.

By the end of the course, students should have acquired a comprehensive knowledge of the theoretical approaches to the study of everyday life, in their historical evolution and different streams. This will primarily be the aim of the frontal lectures. Seminars will be devoted to more empirical and substantive approaches to everyday life, as well as to current debates: from existing inquiries to a discussion of the methodologies available.

Assessment will be based on lectures attendance, participation to collective discussions, and the submission of a coursework that will be presented during the final lecture.

There is no single handbook for the course, and readings will be suggested (and provided) lecture by lecture based on the contents to be discussed. A suggestion for a useful reader is the following:

Highmore, B. (ed.) (2002) The everyday life reader. London ; New York: Routledge.

For those who do not attend the lectures, there will be a selection of recommended readings from the above publication and from the following book:

Monticelli, L. (ed.) (2022) The Future Is Now: An Introduction to Prefigurative Politics. S.l.: Bristol University Press.

Lectures programme

WEEK 1 – INTRODUCTION

1 Introducing everyday life and social transformation

Compulsory reading:

Highmore, B. (ed.) (2002) The everyday life reader. London ; New York: Routledge, Introduction: Questioning everyday life.

Suggested readings:

Haas, H. de et al. (2020) ‘Social transformation’. Available at: https://hdl.handle.net/1887/3147204 (Accessed: 1 September 2022).

2 From founding figures to current problematisations

Compulsory reading:

Kalekin-Fishman, D. (2013) ‘Sociology of everyday life’, Current Sociology Review, 61(5–6), pp. 714–732. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1177/0011392113482112.

Suggested readings:

Lefebvre, H. (1987) ‘The Everyday and Everydayness’, Yale French Studies, (73), pp. 7–11. Available at: https://doi.org/10.2307/2930193.

WEEK 2 – MAKING THE EVERYDAY

3 The construction of everydayness. Symbolic interactionism and ethnomethodology

Compulsory reading:

Goffman, E. (2007) The presentation of self in everyday life. London: Penguin Books, pp. 13-27, 109-117

Suggested readings:

Garfinkel, H. (1984) Studies in ethnomethodology. Cambridge, UK: Polity Press, chapter 2.

4 The everyday as practice: from Bourdieu to the theory of social practices

Compulsory reading:

Bourdieu, P. (2008) The logic of practice. Reprinted. Stanford, Calif: Stanford Univ. Press, chapter 5 and 3 (optional).

Suggested readings:

Shove, E., Pantzar, M. and Watson, M. (2012) The Dynamics of Social Practice: Everyday Life and how it Changes. SAGE, chapter 1.

WEEK 3 – MARXIST PERSPECTIVES

5 Ideology or everyday revolutions? From the Frankfurt School to situationism

Compulsory reading:

Horkheimer, M. and Adorno, T., W. (2002) Dialectic of the Enlightenment. Philosophical Fragments. Stanford: Stanford University Press, chapter 4: The culture industry

Suggested readings:

Williams, R. 1958. Culture is ordinary. In: Highmore, B. (ed.) (2002) The everyday life reader. London ; New York: Routledge, chapter 9.

6 Lefebvre and the critique of everyday life

Compulsory reading:

Lefebvre, H. (2014) Critique of Everyday Life: the one-volume edition. One-vol. ed. London: Verso, Foreword, esp. pp. 25-32, 105-120.

Suggested readings:

Lefebvre, H. (2014) Critique of Everyday Life: the one-volume edition. One-vol. ed. London: Verso, chapter 3.

WEEK 4 – QUESTIONING SOCIAL REPRODUCTION

7 The everyday as problematic

Compulsory reading:

Smith, D.E. (1987) The Everyday World as Problematic: A Feminist Sociology. University of Toronto Press.

Suggested readings:

Dalla Costa, M. (2019) Women and the Subversion of the Community: A Mariarosa Dalla Costa Reader. PM Press, chapter 2.

8 The capitalist organisation of everyday life as social reproduction

Compulsory reading:

Fraser, N. (2017) Crisis of care? On the social-reproductive contradictions of contemporary capitalism. In: Bhattacharya, T. (ed.) Social reproduction theory: remapping class, recentering oppression. London: Pluto Press.

Suggested readings:

Cavallero, L. and Gago, V. (2021) A feminist reading of debt. London: Pluto Press (Mapping social reproduction theory).

WEEK 5 – THE CONSTRUCTION OF NEEDS

9 The construction of needs and social criticism

Compulsory reading:

Keucheyan, R. (2021) I bisogni artificiali: come uscire dal consumismo. Verona: Ombre corte, chapter 1.

Suggested readings:

Heller, Á. (2016) Everyday life. London New York: Routledge Taylor & Francis Group, extract TBD.

10 Lab. Everyday life, care, and the pandemic

Readings:

Rispoli, T. and Tola, M. (2020) ‘Reinventing Socio-Ecological Reproduction, Designing a Feminist Logistics: Perspectives from Italy’, Feminist Studies, 46(3), pp. 663–673. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1353/fem.2020.0035.

or

Graziano, V., Medak, T. and Mars, M. (2021) ‘When care needs piracy: the case for disobedience in struggles against imperial property regimes’, Soundings, 77(77), pp. 55–70. Available at: https://doi.org/10.3898/SOUN.77.04.2021.

WEEK 6 – CONDUCTS AND COUNTER-CONDUCTS

11 Foucault: discipline and counter-conducts

Compulsory reading:

Foucault, M. (1991) Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison. London: Penguin, extract TBD.

Suggested readings:

Foucault, M. (1998) The History of Sexuality, Volume 1. An Introduction. London: Penguin, The repressive hypothesis.

12 De Certeau: the invention of everyday life

Compulsory reading:

Certeau, M. de (2013) The practice of everyday life. Berkeley, Calif.: Univ. of California Press, chapter III.

Suggested readings:

Gago, V. (2017) Neoliberalism from below: popular pragmatics and baroque economies. Durham: Duke University Press (Radical Américas), Introduction.

WEEK 7 – BLACK (EVERYDAY) LIVES MATTER

13 From the margins

Compulsory reading:

hooks, b. (1990) ‘Homeplace (A Site of Resistance)’, in Yearning: Race, gender, and cultural politics. Boston, MA: South End Press.

Suggested reading:

Hill Collins, P. (2009) Black feminist thought: knowledge, consciousness, and the politics of empowerment. 2nd ed. New York: Routledge (Routledge classics), chapter 3.

14 Lab. Decolonising the everyday

Readigs:

Janer, Z. (2007) ‘(IN)EDIBLE NATURE: New world food and coloniality’, Cultural Studies, 21(2–3), pp. 385–405. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1080/09502380601162597.

or

Pickering, K. (2004) ‘Decolonizing Time Regimes: Lakota Conceptions of Work, Economy, and Society’, American Anthropologist, 106(1), pp. 85–97.

WEEK 8 – DAILY AFFECTS AND DESIRES

15 Everyday libido from psychoanalysis to schizoanalysis

Compulsory reading:

Stewart, K. (2007) Ordinary affects. Durham London: Duke University Press, pp. 12-30.

Suggested readings:

Deleuze, G. and Guattari, F. (2019) Anti-Oedipus: capitalism and schizophrenia. London; New York: Bloomsbury Academic, pp. 15-35.

16 Lab. Desiring change and transformation

Readings:

Dal Gobbo, A. (2020) ‘Everyday Life Ecologies: Crisis, Transitions and the Aesth-Etics of Desire’, Environmental Values, 29(4), pp. 397–416. Available at: https://doi.org/10.3197/096327120X15868540131297.

or

Federici, S. (2019) Re-enchanting the world: feminism and the politics of the commons. Edited by P. Linebaugh. Oakland, California: PM Press, pp. 175-197.

WEEK 9 – CONSUMPTION

17 Everyday life and consumption (Francesca Forno)

Compulsory reading:

TBD

Suggested readings:

TBD

18 Political consumerism: “from the streets to the shops” (Francesca Forno)

Compulsory reading:

TBD

Suggested readings:

TBD

WEEK 10 – THE EVERYDAY IN MOVEMENT

19 Crisis, prefiguration and pathways of “direct social action”

Compulsory reading:

Monticelli, L. (ed.) (2022) The Future Is Now: An Introduction to Prefigurative Politics. S.l.: Bristol University Press, introduction.

Suggested readings:

Bosi, L. and Zamponi, L. (2020) ‘Paths toward the Same Form of Collective Action: Direct Social Action in Times of Crisis in Italy’, Social Forces, 99(2), pp. 847–869. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1093/sf/soz160.

20 Lab. Everyday environmentalism: from post-materialism to sustainable materialism

Readings:

Inglehart, R. (2007) Postmaterialist Values and the Shift from Survival to Self‐Expression Values. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199270125.003.0012.

or

Schlosberg, D. and Coles, R. (2016) ‘The new environmentalism of everyday life: Sustainability, material flows and movements’, Contemporary Political Theory, 15(2), pp. 160–181. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1057/cpt.2015.34.

WEEK 11 – CONCLUDING LABS

21 Lab. Everyday methodologies.

Readings:

Back, L. (2015) ‘Why Everyday Life Matters: Class, Community and Making Life Livable’, Sociology, 49(5), pp. 820–836. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1177/0038038515589292.

or

Kimpson, K., A. (2015) ‘Stepping off the road: A narrative (of) inquiry’, in L. Brown and S. Strega (eds) Research as Resistance: Critical, Indigenous, and anti-oppressive approaches. 2nd edition. Toronto, Ontario: Canadian Scholars’ Press Inc.

22 Lab. Everyday life as a space of change and transformation?

Readings:

de Moor, J., Catney, P. and Doherty, B. (2019) ‘What hampers “political” action in environmental alternative action organizations? Exploring the scope for strategic agency under post-political conditions’, Social Movement Studies, pp. 1–17. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1080/14742837.2019.1708311.

or

Brand, U. and Wissen, M. (2021) The imperial mode of living: everyday life and the ecological crisis of capitalism. Translated by B. Jungwirth. London ; New York: Verso, chapter 8.

WEEK 12 – WRAPPING UP

23 Q&A. Contested issues and open avenues

24 Presentation of coursework and general discussion