everyday life, sociologies of

everyday life, sociologies of The branches of sociology that investigate the organization and meaning of everyday life, usually (but not exclusively) identified with microsociology and with qualitative research into everyday experiences as diverse as pedestrian behaviour, sleep, telephones, work experiences, talk, and time. Jack Douglas's Understanding Everyday Life (1970) is an early statement of the field; Patricia A. Adler et al. , ‘Everyday Life Sociology’ (Annual Review of Sociology, 1987)
offers a less partisan and more recent overview.

Everyday life sociologies cover a broad theoretical range. In Andrew Weigert's Sociology of Everyday Life (1981), for example, he suggests four perspectives with this particular emphasis: Erving Goffman's dramaturgical work, which provides a theatrical metaphor for analysing how people present themselves in everyday life; Harold Garfinkel's ethnomethodology, focusing on the procedures through which people assemble their everyday lives; the phenomenology of Alfred Schutz, Thomas Luckmann, and others, which offers a philosophical foundation for the analysis and constitution of everyday consciousness; and Henri Lefebvre's critical theory, which examines the allegedly repressive contradictions of everyday living under capitalism. Only the last of these does not adopt a microsociological frame of reference.