Page 20 - Cultural Change and Ordinary Life

Concepts and theories of everyday and ordinary life 11

influence of this tradition, which is shown well by Highmore, is on the
documentary tradition of Mass Observation.
In Highmore’s account, Mass Observation ‘combines the legacy of Sur-
realism with an ethnographic approach to everyday life’ (2002: 74). In an
engaging discussion of the approach, Highmore brings out the tensions that
were involved:
From the start, Mass-Observation can be seen as characterized by ten-
sions and conflicts, both across its various practices and between the
perspectives of those involved in the project. Most of these tensions
are not only productive for the project, but an inevitable and neces-
sary response to its initial conception. Emerging as it does on the
fault-line between science and art, objectivity and subjectivity, ration-
alism and irrationalism, there is something necessarily unstable about
the project. While attempts for accounting for Mass-Observation often
end up privileging one side of this divide at the expense of the other, the
difficulty of maintaining the precarious balance of its conflicting aims is
often evidenced in the work of those who participated in it.
(Highmore 2002: 77)
Conceptualizing Mass Observation in this fashion reinforces the point
that the mundane and the ordinary can be conceptualized and studied in ways
that respect the meaningfulness of artistic production and consumption in
everyday life. This is of some significance for the overall argument of this book.
The final broad area that has been of significance in the study of everyday life
has come from the emphasis of feminist writers and related discussion of
gender. On the one hand, this is represented by the theoretical interventions
of writers such as Dorothy E. Smith (e.g. 1987), as discussed insightfully
by Gardiner (2000: 180–206) and, on the other, the emphasis on the chal-
lenge represented by feminist writers to ‘the negative values that are often
associated with the distinctive temporal rhythms of everyday life in its routine
and repetitive aspects, contending that these derive from a masculine prefer-
ence for linear and progressive constructions of time’ (Bennett and Watson
2002a: xviii).
At this point, it can initially be seen that these theories of everyday life
might be applied across a range of different aspects of everyday life that might
almost be a description of everyday life itself. Thus, Bennett and Watson’s
(2002b) edited collection contains examinations of the home, romance and
love, the street, the economy and consumption, the pub, community and
space. Likewise Silva and Bennett’s (2004) edited collection contains a simi-
larly diverse coverage of areas, and Inglis (2005) is also in such a vein. While
some of these of these areas will be considered in this book, I will focus on how
the media connect with processes of place and space, family and sociation,
work and enthusiasm. As will be seen, these derive from some of my own work
as well as the emphases of much of the literature (see, for example, Moores
2000; Morley 2000).