How can a person draw upon his or her sociological knowledge in everyday life? This volume examines the ways that sociological understanding helps with daily experience. Each contributor works in the qualitative tradition, and the essays reveal how their observations of everyday life can affect research agendas, and vice versa, and reflect the desire to understand experiences in a broader context rather than as random and isolated events. The essays are organized around the notion of place: public places; family spaces; interior spaces; and workplaces.
Rosanna Hertz is the 1919 Reunion Professor of Sociology and Women's and Gender Studies at Wellesley College. She is the author of Single By Chance, Mothers By Choice: How Women are Choosing Parenthood Without Marriage and Creating the New American Family (Oxford Press, 2008). She is also the author or co-author of five edited collections which focus on the use of qualitative methods including Open to Disruption: Time and Craft in the Practice of Slow Sociology (Vanderbilt University, 2015) with Anita Ilta Garey and Margaret K. Nelson.
PART ONE: PUBLIC PLACES Not Even a Day in the Life - Candace West The Nursing Home - Lillian B Rubin Essaying the Personal - Sherryl Kleinman Making Sociological Stories Stick Enough Already! The Pervasiveness of Warnings in Everyday Life - Shulamit Reinharz Earn as You Learn - Clinton R Sanders Connections between Doing Qualitative Work and Living Daily Life Real Life Sexual Harassment - Christine L Williams PART TWO: FAMILY SPACES A Conversation about Parenting - Naomi Gerstel and Robert Zussman On the (Re)Production of Social Class - Susan E Bell Living In, With, and Beyond Elementary School The Personal, the Sociological, and the Intersection of the Two - Lynne Davidman "Are We Alone?" - Marjorie L DeVault Five Minutes - Peter K Manning PART THREE: INTERIOR SPACES The Pleasure of Slowness - David Silverman It's Boring - Peter Conrad Notes on the Meaning of Boredom in Everyday Life Memory and the Practices of Commitment - Barry Schwartz Performing Montana - Norman K Denzin A Personal Passage - Pepper Schwartz Identity Aquisition and Affinity Groups Standing on the Threshold and Tripping - Arlene Kaplan Daniels Awkwardness in Becoming a Field-Worker My Life with Xena and Billy - Joshua Gamson PART FOUR: WORKPLACES Affirmative Action and Me - Sharon M Collins Making Sense and Making a Difference - Derral Cheatwood Murder and College Administration Feeling at Home at Work - Barrie Thorne and Arlie Russell Hochschild Life in Academic Departments On the Nonnegotiable in Sociological Life - Robert Dingwall Is There a Philosopher in the House? - Jonathan D Moreno The Two Faces of Professional Discretion - Allan Schnaiberg A Vision from the Client's Bed Qualitative Sociology and Good Journalism as Demystifiers - Paul M Hirsch Talks between Teachers - Shirah W Hecht and Howard S Becker
