Social spatialization and everyday life

This editorial introduction discusses the problematic ‘demonology’ of spatial analyses that attempt to understand the logic of the social in terms of subject-based origins. Taking the poststructuralist notion of decentred subjectivity to task, it uses the metaphor of exorcism to approach everyday life as a haunted space. Instead of identifying the true demons behind the voices rendering an account of everyday life, it shifts methodological attention to the incommensurable multiplicity of traces through which we map and narrate a hermeneutics of becoming

Code, space and everyday life

In this paper we examine the role of code (software) in the spatial formation of collective life. Taking the view that human life and coded technology are folded into one another, we theorise space as ontogenesis. Space, we posit, is constantly being bought into being through a process of transduction – the constant making anew of a domain in reiterative and transformative practices - as an incomplete solution to a relational problem. The relational problem we examine is the ongoing encounter between individuals and environment where the solution, to a greater or lesser extent, is code. Code, we posit, is diversely embedded in collectives as coded objects, coded infrastructure, coded processes and coded assemblages. These objects, infrastructure, processes and assemblages possess technicity, that is, unfolding or evolutive power to make things happen; the ability to mediate, supplement, augment, monitor, regulate, operate, facilitate, produce collective life. We contend that when the technicity of code is operationalised it transduces one of three forms of hybrid spatial formations: code/space, coded space and backgrounded coded space. These formations are contingent, relational, extensible and scaleless, often stretched out across networks of greater or shorter length. We demonstrate the coded transduction of space through three vignettes – each a day in the life of three people living in London, UK, tracing the technical mediation of their interactions, transactions and mobilities. We then discuss how code becomes the relational solution to five different classes of problems – domestic living, travelling, working, communicating, and consuming

Measuring Everyday Life

Why do people act as they do? How can we improve our health and well-being? What can the past tell us about our future? Research can help us address such questions, but the journey to finding answers can be challenging and full of adventure. Curated from interviews featured on the public radio show, The Measure of Everyday Life, this collection reveals ways that we can ask useful questions. The book also offers insights from behind the scenes of social science research, communication campaigns and interventions, and community engagement projects. A wide range of audiences—including anyone interested in applying academic research to practical projects, new graduate students, and undergraduate students learning about research—should find useful material in the collection.Publishe

Everyday life in the real world

This paper aims to be both an example of how one may interpret an aspect of the ‘politics’ of everyday life and a critical comment on some of the emerging orthodoxy around the academic study of everyday life. These two themes are intertwined here but in summary the paper argues the following: • That the politics of everyday life are just as fruitfully approached through empirical study as they are via philosophical or cultural contemplation. • That the often stated idea that a ‘critique’ of everyday life can be readily built on the foundations of some small detail or other requires qualification. • That the orthodox distinction between everyday life and non-everyday life in terms of work and non-work realms needs qualification. Specifically, the paper concerns an empirical description, and subsequent analysis, of a series of everyday events, their effects and significant conse- quences; it describes changes, and the effects of these changes, occurring at Nottingham railway station over a short period of time (4 weeks from 29/09/02 onwards)

Book review: everyday life in British government

Steve Coulter reviews R.A.W. Rhodes’ fascinating and insightful work on the inner workings of the Whitehall machine, which lends truth to many of the rumours about the chaotic nature of New Labour

Everyday Life and Everyday Communication in Coronavirus Capitalism

In 2020, the coronavirus crisis ruptured societies and their everyday life around the globe. This article is a contribution to critically theorising the changes societies have undergone in the light of the coronavirus crisis. It asks: How have everyday life and everyday communication changed in the coronavirus crisis? How does capitalism shape everyday life and everyday communication during this crisis? Section 2 focuses on how social space, everyday life, and everyday communication have changed in the coronavirus crisis. Section 3 focuses on the communication of ideology in the context of coronavirus by analysing the communication of coronavirus conspiracy stories and false coronavirus news. The coronavirus crisis is an existential crisis of humanity and society. It radically confronts humans with death and the fear of death. This collective experience can on the one hand result in new forms of solidarity and socialism or can on the other hand, if ideology and the far-right prevail, advance war and fascism. Political action and political economy are decisive factors in such a profound crisis that shatters society and everyday life

The objectness of everyday life: disburdenment or engagement?

The article grew out of a conference paper, ‘The objectness of everyday life: engagement and disburdenment’, Material Geographies, UCL, September 2002. An expanded version of the paper was included in a special themed section of an issue of Geoforum. The paper intervenes into contemporary philosophical scholarship on the nature of use-value, usability, design and ethics. The article has been directly engaged with in an academic journal; Christensen, Carleton B. (2005) ‘The Material Basis of Everyday Rationality: transformation by design or education?’, Design Philosophy Papers No.4,)

Archaeo-mobility. Integrating Archaeological Heritage with Everyday Life

Underground mass-transit is the logical solution for the growing demand of mobility that presses the urban space of historical cities, but it has to deal with the palimpsest of the numerous layers the history of many cities is made of. The construction of subway lines is a unique opportunity to develop a contemporary and active display of the archaeological heritage and return it to the dynamics of urban life. Some projects in this direction have been attempted, too often crashing against bureaucratic and economic difficulties, or against inadequate methods for investigating and managing the archaeological heritage. New metro lines in Athens, Thessaloniki, Sofia, Istanbul, are showing pros and cons in techno-economical and cultural terms while interest and care for the heritage is growing everywhere as well as the awareness of handling it as a resource. Unfortunately, in most cases archaeological remains are simply extracted and arranged in banal museum-like displays while taking into no account the high potential of involving the urban context. Italy has the largest and most stratified archaeological heritage of the world and at the same time one of the smallest metro systems, but in the last two decades a vast program of upgrading has been developed, introducing important advances in archaeological investigation methods, excavation planning and architectural integration. Naples is nowadays world-renowned for its Art-stations, but in the Municipio station currently under construction, the collision of infrastructure and archaeological strata is managed with continuous adjustments to give a spatial response to the extraordinary finds as they are discovered in Europe's largest archaeological excavation site. New Line C is under construction in the very centre of Rome intersecting outstanding remains together with crucial urban nodes with stations in places like Colosseum or Imperial Fora; projects now under discussion are expected to set new standards in archaeo-mobility

Rethinking the 'everyday' in 'ethnicity and everyday life'

While ‘ethnicity and everyday life’ is a familiar collocation, sociologists concerned with racism and ethnicity have not engaged very much with the extensive body of social theory that takes the ‘everyday’ as its central problematic. In this essay, I consider some of the ways in which the sociology of the everyday might be of use to those concerned with investigating ethnicity and racism. For its part, however, the sociology of the everyday has tended to be remarkably blind to the role played by racism and racialization in the modern world. It is thus no less crucial to consider how the experiences of racialized groups might help us rethink influential accounts of the everyday. To this end, I provide a discussion of pioneering texts by C. L. R. James and W. E. B. du Bois, both of whom were driven by their reflections on racism and resistance to recognize the everyday not as an unremarked context, but as, precisely, a problematic one