Mundane Studies
From Cyborg Anthropology
Revision as of 22:01, 25 September 2011 by Caseorganic (Talk | contribs)
Definition
The study of the events and systems that comprise the experiences of everyday life.
Purpose
Studying everyday life is important in a changing culture, especially one that is defined and recreated constantly by technology. As a participant in a rapidly changing culture, one becomes used to change. It is only by studying the everyday that one can understand how much things have changed from one year to the next. In addition, the mundanities of one culture can be extremely different from another culture. One can thus study the differences between one culture, demographic or totem group simply by charting out and comparing their everyday lives.
History
"In 2000, sociologist Wayne Brekhus published "A Mundane Manifesto," in which he "call(ed) for analytically interesting studies of the socially uninteresting." Brekhus continues, "I argue that the extraordinary draws disproportionate theoretical attention from researchers. This ultimately hinders theory development and distorts our picture of social reality. This manifesto paves the way for an explicit social science of the unmarked (mundane). It is hoped that a similar manifesto can be written for the humanities." Finally, he suggests, "Although there are many deviance journals to explicitly analyze socially unusual behavior there is no Journal of Mundane Behavior to explicitly analyze conformity."
"Thus, well before Ryman does so, Brekhus argues that the focus on the "extraordinary" shifts our focus away from the "ordinary" and, ultimately, blinds us to the immediacy of the here and now. Instead, he calls for an explicit turn to the immediate and the mundane" [1].
External Links
- Journal of Mundane Behavior
- An Online Journal With Nothing Exciting to Report by Scott Martelle. L.A. Times, October 12, 2001.
- The Cappuccino Community : cafés and civic life in the contemporary city by Eric Laurier & Chris Philo Department of Geography & Topographic Science, University of Glasgow G12 8QQ Scotland
- Journal of Mundane Behavior on Archive.org
