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

Abstract

‘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’.