The sociology of everyday life: A research program on contemporary sociality

2017 ◽  
Vol 56 (4) ◽  
pp. 526-543 ◽  
Author(s):  
Maurizio Ghisleni

‘Everyday life’ is a sphere of social relations that has gained increasing attention. The rediscovery of the ‘ordinary’, stimulated by the so-called ‘sociologies of everyday life’ during the 1960s–1990s, has reshaped the subject matter itself of the discipline. This article reviews the intellectual experience represented by the 1960s–1990s sociologies of everyday life. Through comparison with the normative structuralism of Durkheim and Parsons, the most influential sociological version of structuralism in the period immediately after the Second World War, the intention is to pursue two main goals. First, to establish the ‘scientific attitude’ and ‘research program’ developed by such sociologies. Second, to explain why the time has come for the sociologies of everyday life to begin a new phase – in particular given that the present technologization of everyday cultures has changed the order itself of interaction through the advent of a ‘mass knowledge society’.

1992 ◽  
Vol 26 (3) ◽  
pp. 337-355 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tor Egil Førland

The subject of this article is the foreign policy views of singer and songwriter Bob Dylan: a personality whose footprints during the 1960s were so impressive that a whole generation followed his lead. Today, after thirty years of recording, the number of devoted Dylan disciples is reduced but he is still very much present on the rock scene. His political influence having been considerable, his policy views deserve scrutiny. My thesis is that Dylan'sforeign policyviews are best characterized as “isolationist.’ More specifically: Dylan's foreign policy message is what so-called progressive isolationists from the Midwest would have advocated, had they been transferred into the United States of the 1960s or later. I shall argue that Bob Dylan is just that kind of personified anachronism, seeing the contemporary world through a set of cognitive lenses made in the Midwest before the Second World War – to a large extent even before the First (or, indeed, before the American Civil War).


2016 ◽  
Vol 43 (4-5) ◽  
pp. 763-777 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nicola Short

This paper explores how to consider the far right in historical-material and psychoanalytic perspective in the current conjuncture. Since the early post-Second World War interventions in this register, both the social relations of capitalism and psychoanalytic theory have evolved, while the problematic of the far-right had been somewhat marginalized as an object of research. This discussion revisits these broad concerns with attention to developments in the characterization of contemporary character structures and social relations. It examines two psychoanalytic approaches – drawn from Kohut and Lacan – that have been mobilized to examine the dominant character structures of late capitalism to consider their complementarity (and differences) with respect to certain psychological functions – defenses, affect and identification – that may offer insight into the far-right in the contemporary moment.


Antiquity ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 94 (376) ◽  
pp. 1084-1087
Author(s):  
J. Eva Meharry

The discipline of archaeology in Afghanistan was at a turning point when the original editions of The archaeology of Afghanistan and the Archaeological gazetteer of Afghanistan were published in 1978 and 1982, respectively. The first three decades of modern archaeological activity in Afghanistan (1920s–1940s) were dominated by French archaeologists who primarily focused on the pre-Islamic past, particularly the Buddhist period. Following the Second World War, however, Afghanistan gradually opened archaeological practice to a more international community. Consequently, the scope of archaeological exploration expanded to include more robust studies of the prehistoric, pre-Islamic and Islamic periods. In the 1960s, the Afghan Institute of Archaeology began conducting its own excavations, and by the late 1970s, national and international excavations were uncovering exciting new discoveries across the country. These archaeological activities largely halted as Afghanistan descended into chaos during the Soviet-Afghan War (1979–1989) and the Afghan Civil War (1989–2001); the Afghan Institute of Archaeology was the only archaeological institute continuing operations. The original editions of the volumes under review were therefore timely and poignant publications that captured the peak of archaeological activity in twentieth-century Afghanistan and became classic texts on the subject.


Modern Italy ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 23 (1) ◽  
pp. 69-84
Author(s):  
Walter Stefano Baroni

This article compares the autobiographical practices used by the Partito Comunista Italiano (PCI) in the aftermath of the Second World War with those developed by Italian neo-feminism from the late 1960s onwards. The former involved a repeated injunction for activists to write about and express themselves upon joining the party, in what amounted to self-criticism. The latter, meanwhile, took shape as a result of self-consciousness exercises practised by feminist groups in various cities across Italy. The terms of comparison of this article aim to describe what changed and what remained the same in the technologies used to produce the political self within the Italian Left in the twentieth century, beginning from its split in the 1960s. In this context, the paper reveals that the communist and feminist experiences were supported by the same discursive mechanism, which hinged on a paradoxical enunciation of the self. Communist activists and feminists thus faced the same difficulty in political self-expression, which was resolved in two different ways, both equally unsatisfactory. In conclusion, examining the communist autobiographical injunction allows a radical critical reappraisal of the idea that the use of the first person and the political affirmation of subjectivity are determining features exclusively bound to the feminist experience.


2015 ◽  
Vol 12 (4) ◽  
pp. 539-555 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kevin M. Flanagan

This article traces Ken Russell's explorations of war and wartime experience over the course of his career. In particular, it argues that Russell's scattered attempts at coming to terms with war, the rise of fascism and memorialisation are best understood in terms of a combination of Russell's own tastes and personal style, wider stylistic and thematic trends in Euro-American cinema during the 1960s and 1970s, and discourses of collective national experience. In addition to identifying Russell's recurrent techniques, this article focuses on how the residual impacts of the First and Second World Wars appear in his favoured genres: literary adaptations and composer biopics. Although the article looks for patterns and similarities in Russell's war output, it differentiates between his First and Second World War films by indicating how he engages with, and temporarily inhabits, the stylistic regime of the enemy within the latter group.


2006 ◽  
Vol 65 (2) ◽  
pp. 134-152
Author(s):  
Luc Vandeweyer

Hendrik Draye, opponent of the carrying out of the death penaltyIn this annotated and extensively contextualised source edition, Luc Vandeweyer deals with the period of repression after the Second World War. In June 1948, after the execution of two hundred collaboration-suspects in Belgium, the relatively young linguistics professor at the Catholic University of Leuven, Hendrik Draye, proposed, on humanitarian grounds, a Manifesto against the carrying out of the death penalty. Some colleagues, as well as some influential personalities outside the university, reacted positively; some colleagues were rather hesitant; most of them rejected the text. In the end, the initiative foundered because of the emphatic dissuasion by the head of university, who wanted to protect his university and, arguably, the young professor Draeye. The general public’s demand for revenge had not yet abated by then; moreover, the unstable government at that time planned a reorientation of the penal policy, which made a polarization undesirable. Nevertheless, Luc Vandeweyer concludes, "the opportunity for an important debate on the subject had been missed".


2019 ◽  
Vol 82 (1) ◽  
pp. 3-31
Author(s):  
Fabio Massaccesi

Abstract This contribution intends to draw attention to one of the most significant monuments of medieval Ravenna: the church of Santa Maria in Porto Fuori, which was destroyed during the Second World War. Until now, scholars have focused on the pictorial cycle known through photographs and attributed to the painter Pietro da Rimini. However, the architecture of the building has not been the subject of systematic studies. For the first time, this essay reconstructs the fourteenth-century architectural structure of the church, the apse of which was rebuilt by 1314. The data that led to the virtual restitution of the choir and the related rood screen are the basis for new reflections on the accesses to the apse area, on the pilgrimage flows, and on the view of the frescoes.


2006 ◽  
Vol 93 (1) ◽  
pp. 106-137 ◽  
Author(s):  
FRANK MORT

ABSTRACT Historians of the sexual and cultural changes associated with the ““permissive”” moment of the 1960s have tended to emphasize a progressive narrative of reform focused on national policies and their social outcomes. This article explores a diffierent dynamic, highlighting the ways in which a series of scandalous and transgressive events, associated with particular networks of metropolitan culture in London, played a significant role in reshaping sexual beliefs and attitudes within English society during the postwar period.


1997 ◽  
Vol 21 (2) ◽  
pp. 19-27 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Bohman

The following article by Professor Michael Bohman begins with a brief historical analysis of child development theory in relation to adoption and fostering after the end of the Second World War. The author goes on to review research findings from a series of Swedish adoption surveys which began under his supervision in the 1960s and continue to this day. Much attention is given to the significance of genetic and environmental factors towards shaping the development of adopted children into adulthood. Problems of social and psychological adjustment are discussed, as are the genetic aspects of criminality and alcohol misuse in a group of adult adopted people.


2007 ◽  
Vol 34 ◽  
pp. 273-296 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kate Skinner

As the pioneering generation of postwar British academics retired, some produced autobiographical texts which revealed the personal circumstances and intellectual influences that brought them to the study of Africa. Edited volumes have also provided broader reflections on the academic disciplines, methodologies, and institutions through which these scholars engaged with the continent. In one such text, Christopher Clapham and Richard Hodder-Williams noted the special relationship between extramural studies (also known as university adult education) and the academic study of Africa's mass nationalist movements:The impetus for this study came to a remarkable degree from a tiny group of men and women who pioneered university extra-mural studies in the Gold Coast immediately after the [Second World War], and to a significant extent established the parameters for subsequent study of the subject [African politics]. Gathered together under the aegis of Thomas Hodgkin […], they were led by David Kimble […], and included among the tutors Dennis Austin, Lalage Bown and Bill Tordoff, all of whom were to play a major role in African studies in the United Kingdom over the next forty years.


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