Living with Mess

2019 ◽  
pp. 178-197
Author(s):  
Anna Strhan
Keyword(s):  
Social Life ◽  
Local Area ◽  
Hierarchical Order ◽  
The Everyday ◽  
Riverside Church

Through ethnographic focus on ‘Messy Church’ at Riverside Church (open evangelical), Chapter 7 turns to examine shifting ethical currents within conservative, charismatic, and open evangelical cultures. Considering the contemporary significance of ideas of ‘mess’ and ‘messiness’ at Riverside and St George’s churches, the chapter argues that this turn to ‘mess’ at both churches is shaped by both a strategy of differentiation from conservative evangelicalism—which emphasizes a desire for hierarchical order within church, self, and society—and by an ethics of responsiveness to the everyday needs of those in their local area, marked by heightened socio-economic polarization. How groups engage with ideas of ‘order’ and ‘mess’, the chapter argues, is significant for understanding how different groups respond to fragmented experiences of social life, and how they enact modes of difference and belonging in the contemporary moment.

scholarly journals The idea of community and its practice: Tensions, disruptions and hope in Glasgow’s urban growing projects

2021 ◽  
Vol 69 (2) ◽  
pp. 484-499
Author(s):  
Helen Traill
Keyword(s):  
Social Life ◽  
Participant Observation ◽  
Community Gardening ◽  
Conceptual Approach ◽  
The Everyday ◽  
Community Theory ◽  
Communal Space ◽  
Work Done ◽  
Do So

The question of what community comes to mean has taken on increasing significance in sociological debates and beyond, as an increasingly politicised term and the focus of new theorisations. In this context, it is increasingly necessary to ask what is meant when community is invoked. Building on recent work that positions community as a practice and an ever-present facet of human sociality, this article argues that it is necessary to consider the powerful work that community as an idea does in shaping everyday communal practices, through designating collective space and creating behavioural expectations. To do so, the article draws on participant observation and interviews from a community gardening site in Glasgow that was part of a broader research project investigating the everyday life of communality within growing spaces. This demonstrates the successes but also the difficulties of carving out communal space, and the work done by community organisations to enact it. The article draws on contemporary community theory, but also on ideas from Davina Cooper about the role of ideation in social life. It argues for a conceptual approach to communality that does not situate it as a social form or seek it in everyday practice, but instead considers the vacillation between the ideation and practices of community: illustrated here in a designated community place. In so doing, this approach calls into focus the frictions and boundaries produced in that process, and questions the limits of organisational inclusivity.

scholarly journals Divorce, kinship, and errant wives: Islamic feminism in India, and the everyday life of divorce and maintenance

Ethnicities ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 146879682199990
Author(s):  
Sagnik Dutta
Keyword(s):  
Social Life ◽  
Law Reform ◽  
Islamic Feminism ◽  
Escape Route ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Family ◽  
The Everyday ◽  
Movement Building ◽  
Muslim Communities ◽  
Feminist Movements

This article is an ethnographic exploration of a women’s sharia court in Mumbai, a part of a network of such courts run by women qazi (Islamic judges) established across India by members of an Islamic feminist movement called the Bharatiya Muslim Mahila Andolan (Indian Muslim Women’s Movement). Building upon observations of adjudication, counselling, and mediation offered in cases of divorce and maintenance by the woman qazi (judge), and the claims made by women litigants on the court, this article explores the imaginaries of the heterosexual family and gendered kinship roles that constitute the everyday social life of Islamic feminism. I show how the heterosexual family is conceptualised as a fragile and violent institution, and divorce is considered an escape route from the same. I also trace how gendered kinship roles in the heterosexual conjugal family are overturned as men fail in their conventional roles as providers and women become breadwinners in the family. In tracing the range of negotiations around the gendered family, I argue that the social life of Islamic feminism eludes the discourses and categories of statist legal reform. I contribute to existing scholarship on Islamic feminism by exploring the tension between the institutionalist and everyday aspects of Islamic feminist movements, and by exploring the range of kinship negotiations around the gendered family that take place in the shadow of the rhetoric of ‘law reform’ for Muslim communities in India.

scholarly journals Correspondence of S.F. Platonov and M.M. Bogoslovsky

2021 ◽  
pp. 174-184
Author(s):  
Andrey V. Melnikov ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Social Life ◽  
Educational Institutions ◽  
Historical Science ◽  
The Public ◽  
Significant Events ◽  
The Everyday ◽  
Science In Russia ◽  
Public Consciousness ◽  
History Of ◽  
Academy Of Sciences

The article is devoted to the source features of a unique documentary complex – the correspondence of two major Russian historians S.F. Platonov (1860–1933) and M.M. Bogoslovsky (1867–1929). The epistolary dialogue of scientists is of considerable interest not only in terms of studying their life and work. The confidential correspondence reflects significant events in the scientific and social life of Russia, Moscow, Petersburg-Petrograd-Leningrad. Correspondence is a valuable historical and historiographic source not only for understanding the development of historical science in Russia, the formation of Moscow and St. Petersburg historical schools, but also for studying the public consciousness of the Russian humanitarian intelligentsia at the end of the 19th — first third of the 20th centuries, in-depth knowledge of the culture of a turning point in the history of Russia. The letters contain valuable information about the everyday life and life of the professors, the organization of scientific life at the Academy of Sciences, the Archaeographic commission, at Moscow university and the Moscow theological academy, at the Moscow higher courses for women, at the Institute of history of the RANION, the Historical Museum, other higher educational institutions and scientific societies two capitals, they reflect the international ties of domestic historical science with scientists from Great Britain, Germany, France, USA, Czech Republic.

Refracted visions: Street photography, humanism and the loss of innocence

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Justin Carville
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Politics ◽  
Social Relations ◽  
Social Life ◽  
Traumatic Experiences ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Everyday ◽  
Visual Expression ◽  
Politics Of Religion ◽  
Street Photography

Justin Carville draws on recent debates in relation to photography and the everyday in order to examine the role of street-photography in the cultural politics of religion as it was played out in the quotidian moments of social relations within Dublin’s urban and suburban spaces during the 1980s and 90s. The essay argues that photography was important in giving visual expression to the social contradictions within the relations between religion and the transformation of Irish social life, not through the dramatic and traumatic experiences that defined the nation’s increased secularism, but in the quiet, humdrum and sometimes monotonous routines of religious ceremonies and everyday social relations.

The Brief History of the New-York Coffeehouse Company Limited

2021 ◽  
pp. 95-104
Author(s):  
Sára Czina ◽  
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Social Life ◽  
Joint Stock Company ◽  
Stock Company ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Great Depression ◽  
Company Limited ◽  
The Everyday ◽  
The World ◽  
History Of

At the turn of the 20th century, Budapest was famous for its Coffeehouse Culture. One of the most popular Café was the New-York Coffeehouse; today, it is remembered for its literary life. After 20 years of operation, in 1913, new people bought the tenant’s rights and established the first Coffeehouse joint-stock company in Hungary, called New-York coffeehouse Company Limited. This paper aims to analyze the operation of the Company in relation to the stock transfers, analysis of its profitability, and the changes in the transformations in the shares. The main goal was to figure out how the profitability and the stock transfers were connected to the contemporary social and economic circumstances. The years of the World Wars, Revolutions, the Great Depression, and the cultural/social life of the twenties had their deep effects on the life of the Company. The changes were perceptible for the public, too. Many articles were published about the hardships of the Company and the changing atmosphere of the Coffeehouse. These were different; not all of them damaged the interest of the Company Limited equally. Still, the difficulties influenced the stock transfers, profitability, and the everyday life of the Managers and Shareholders. These circumstances are parallel to the changes of the Company.

scholarly journals Digital media: Promoting healthy screen use in school-aged children and adolescents

2019 ◽  
Vol 24 (6) ◽  
pp. 402-408 ◽  
Author(s):  
Keyword(s):  
Children And Adolescents ◽  
Digital Media ◽  
Social Life ◽  
Family Routines ◽  
School Aged Children ◽  
The Everyday ◽  
Potential Benefits ◽  
Physical Effects ◽  
Mental And Physical Health ◽  
Screen Use

Abstract Digital media are integrated into the everyday lives of children and adolescents, with potential benefits and risks for learning, mental and physical health, and for social life. This statement examines the cognitive, psychosocial, and physical effects of digital media on school-aged children and adolescents, with a focus on family routines, context, and activities. Evidence-based guidance for clinicians and families involves four principles: healthy management, meaningful screen use, positive modelling, and balanced, informed monitoring of screen time and behaviours.

At the End of the Post-Communist Transformation? Normalization or Imagining Utopia?

2009 ◽  
Vol 12 (3) ◽  
pp. 321-336 ◽  
Author(s):  
Larry Ray
Keyword(s):  
Economic Crisis ◽  
Social Theory ◽  
Social Life ◽  
Left Behind ◽  
The Everyday ◽  
Global Economic Crisis ◽  
Collapse Of Communism ◽  
Communist Countries ◽  
Nationalist Parties

This article reviews the implications of the collapse of Communism in Europe for some themes in recent social theory. It was often assumed that 1989 was part of a global process of normalization and routinization of social life that had been left behind earlier utopian hopes. Nothing that utopia is open to various interpretations, including utopias of the everyday, this article suggests, first that there were utopian dimensions to 1989, and, second, that these hopes continue to influence contemporary social and political developments. The continuing role of substantive utopian expectations is illustrated with reference to the politics of lustration in Poland and the rise of nationalist parties in Hungary. This analysis is placed in the context of the already apparent impact of the global economic crisis in post-communist countries. It concludes that the unevenness and diversity of the post-1989 world elude overly generalized attempts at theorization and demand more nuanced analyses.

Power, Social Life, and Public Memory in Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan

Inner Asia ◽  
2010 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 25-48 ◽  
Author(s):  
Timur Dadabaev
Keyword(s):  
Central Asia ◽  
Social Life ◽  
Public Perceptions ◽  
The Public ◽  
Central Asian ◽  
The Everyday ◽  
Soviet Time ◽  
Historical Discourses ◽  
Soviet Central Asia ◽  
Soviet Historiography

AbstractThis article attempts to analyse the memory of people through recollections of the everyday life of people in Soviet times in the Central Asian republics of Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan. By using extensive interviews with seventy-five elderly people in Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan regarding their Soviet-time experiences, this article argues that the public view of history in post-Soviet Central Asia often falls in between Soviet historiography advocating advances of Soviet past and post-Soviet historical discourses rejecting the Soviet past. Public perceptions of history in Central Asia are mostly shaped by and related to the everyday needs, experiences, identifications and mentality of people as opposed to the ideologies and political doctrines of the time. They often reflect not only the perceptions of people regarding their past but also their perceptions regarding their present.

scholarly journals From Affective Arrangements to Affective Milieus

2021 ◽  
Vol 11 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul Schuetze
Keyword(s):  
Social Life ◽  
Cultural Theory ◽  
Affect Studies ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Everyday ◽  
Social Dynamic ◽  
Recent Developments ◽  
Analytical Research ◽  
Affect Dynamics

In this paper, I develop the concept of affective milieus by building on the recently established notion of affective arrangements. Affective arrangements bring together the more analytical research of situated affectivity with affect studies informed by cultural theory. As such, this concept takes a step past the usual synchronic understanding of situatedness toward an understanding of the social, dynamic, historical, and cultural situatedness of individuals in relation to situated affectivity. However, I argue that affective arrangements remain too narrow in their scope of analysis since their focus mainly lies on local, marked-off, and unique constellations of affect relations. They neglect the more mundane and day-to-day affect dynamics of social life. Hence, I introduce the notion of affective milieus, which brings to light the everyday, ubiquitous affective engagements of individuals with their socio-material surroundings. Affective milieus specifically call attention to how commonplace affect relations create territories in the social universe which form and mold individuals all the time. In that way, this paper apprehends and advances recent developments in the research on situated affectivity.

scholarly journals A post-truth pandemic?

2020 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 205395172096561
Author(s):  
Taylor Shelton
Keyword(s):  
Social Life ◽  
Social Issues ◽  
The United States ◽  
Data Driven ◽  
Single Individual ◽  
Right Wing ◽  
Public Authorities ◽  
The Everyday ◽  
Data Infrastructures ◽  
Media Channels

As the coronavirus pandemic continues apace in the United States, the dizzying amount of data being generated, analyzed and consumed about the virus has led to calls to proclaim this the first ‘data-driven pandemic’. But at the same time, it seems that this plethora of data has not meant a better grasp on the reality of the pandemic and its effects. Even as we have the potential to digitally track and trace nearly every single individual who has contracted the virus, we have no idea exactly how many people have had the virus, been hospitalized, or died because of it, largely due to a confluence of factors, particularly active obfuscation and mismanagement by public authorities and misinformation spread through social media and right-wing media channels. But beyond these dynamics, there also lies the less nefarious ways that the everyday, subjective practices of data collection, analysis and visualization have the potential to themselves (re)produce these very same dynamics where data is at once valorized and ignored, preeminent and completely useless. That is, the pandemic has revealed only the general inadequacy of our data infrastructures and assemblages to solving pressing social issues, but also the more general shift towards a ‘post-truth’ disposition in contemporary social life. But, as this paper argues, it would be a mistake to see the centrality of data as being somehow the opposite from the larger post-truth apparatus, as the two are instead fundamentally intertwined and co-produced.

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