Psychology and the Conduct of Everyday Life

Ernst Schraube, Charlotte Højholt, Ernst Schraube, Charlotte Højholt

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2015
• eBook ISBN: 9781317599692
• Topic: Psychology
• Subtopic: History & Theory in Psychology
• Index: Psychology

Psychology and the Conduct of Everyday Life moves psychological theory and research practice out of the laboratory and into the everyday world. Drawing on recent developments across the social and human sciences, it examines how people live as active subjects within the contexts of their everyday lives, using this as an analytical basis for understanding the dilemmas and contradictions people face in contemporary society.

Early chapters gather the latest empirical research to explore the significance of context as a cross-disciplinary critical tool; they include a study of homeless M?ori men reaffirming their cultural identity via gardening, and a look at how the dilemmas faced by children in difficult situations can provide insights into social conflict at school. Later chapters examine the interplay between everyday life around the world and contemporary global phenomena such as the rise of the debt economy, the hegemony of the labor market, and the increased reliance on digital technology in educational settings. The book concludes with a consideration of how social psychology can deepen our understanding of how we conduct our lives, and offer possibilities for collective work on the resolution of social conflict.

1 Conduct of Everyday Life

Implications for Critical Psychology

Ole Dreier

DOI: 10.4324/9781315746890-1

The concept of conduct of everyday life was introduced in sociology about 100 years ago by Weber (1952, 1978) and taken up again about 20 years ago by an interdisciplinary research group of, mostly, sociologists (Jurczyk & Rerrich, 1995; Jurczyk et al., 2015, chap. 2 in this volume). But the concept of conduct of everyday life also holds important potential for psychology. Above all, it is a powerful tool for capturing human subjectivity from the standpoint of where and how subjects live their everyday lives in societal structures of practice. Such an approach may transform psychology into a truly concrete science of the subject that captures psychological phenomena based on the functions and qualities they obtain in and for the everyday lives of subjects. Moreover, the concept of conduct of everyday life is a powerful tool for critical psychology. Critique acquires a more firm and concrete grounding when it is couched from the standpoint of subjects’ conduct of their everyday lives. Such an approach introduces new critical perspectives on the discipline of psychology, on its theories and practices and on the societal arrangements of scopes for living everyday lives and their impacts on subjects’ well-being, functioning and troubles. It thus offers new insights for subjects to reflect critically on their practice and guide its conduct.

Holzkamp (2013, 2015, chap. 3 in this volume) introduced the concept of conduct of everyday life into the theoretical framework of critical psychology, which is the background of my work too. In this chapter I take up how the concept of conduct of everyday life is integrated into critical psychology and used to develop this framework. First, I present the key reasons for introducing the concept into critical psychology. Then I go into important dimensions of the concept and the important challenges it raises for critical psychology – and for psychology in general. As I do so, the concept of conduct of everyday life is also developed further in order to fulfill its potential for contributing to the development of the framework of critical psychology. Since the topic is immense, I must select some dimensions and challenges but set aside others. The reasons for these choices will be made clear on the way. The chapter is an overview, and not a complete review, centering on dimensions and challenges that emerged in my work and comparing it closely with work by others that I was involved in.

Introducing the Concept of Conduct of Everyday Life into Critical Psychology

Critical psychology (Holzkamp, 1983; Schraube & Osterkamp, 2013) theorizes human beings as social beings living in societies by taking part in re-producing and changing their social conditions of life. It argues that psychology must study human beings from the standpoint and perspective of individual subjects in their immediate situation within an overall social structure. The individual subject encounters and experiences the possibilities and restrictions of the social world in her first-person perspective in the situation where she is located. Her reasons for acting in one way or another are also given to her in her first-person perspective in relation to her situation, as are her mental states, observations, thoughts, memories, emotions and motivations. This is so when she seeks to comprehend the socio-structural mediation of her possibilities and conflicts in her immediate situation, as well as when she merely orients herself by their immediate appearances within it. According to critical psychology, we must grasp the psychological functioning of persons in the first-person perspective of situated subjects whose psychological processes serve as their resources in dealing with their situations. Psychology must be couched as a science of the subject from the standpoint and perspective of the subject.

Human subjectivity becomes more tangible and comprehensible by studying how subjects function and develop by involving themselves in the world they live in. Psychology becomes richer and worldlier by considering thoroughly and broadly what it means and takes to live in the world. Our understanding of subjectivity and world are then expanded together, as a nexus. By contrast, mainstream psychology tends to view the world and the psyche as separate entities. It is so keen on getting the world into the head – as represented and as the object of internal mechanisms – that it tends to bypass the fact that the head is in the body in the world with others, in situated activity. But it is odd to imagine that we gain a richer psychology by reducing, or abstracting from, the significance of the world subjects are in for their psychological functioning.

Critical psychology was already a very wide-ranging theoretical approach to psychology before the concept of conduct of everyday life was introduced into it. But it had to be expanded further. It became clear that the concept of situation is too abstract – pseudo-concrete, really – to provide a sufficiently solid, concrete grounding of a worldly approach to subjectivity. After all, subjects are not merely located in a situation. Their immediate situation is a particular part of their ongoing everyday life. The subjective meaning of a situation and how a subject engages in it depend on what part it forms of her ongoing everyday life. We must, therefore, grasp how a subject lives her everyday life and grasp a situation as belonging to it. The foundation for the formation of subjectivity and experience is her everyday life and not a situation. This insight expands our analytic gaze from an immediate situation to an everyday life that is going on from day to day in a particular, subjectively and socially grounded and arranged way. Furthermore, everyday life contains many different situations in different places and spheres of activity. So it is not adequate to analyze a subject’s situation in the singular in general terms. Situations must be grasped in the plural as different across the diverse contexts of a subject’s everyday life.

These insights are central in the concept of conduct of everyday life. But when we relate this concept to the discipline of psychology, we must take into account that psychology is not just meant to study the everyday life – or the style of life – of a culture or a population. How persons conduct their everyday life comes closer to the core issues of subjectivity where what it takes to live in a particular way must be of primary interest.

We can now see why the concept of conduct of everyday life must be added to the theoretical framework of critical psychology. It brings our analyses closer to what it means and takes to be a subject living in a society. We gain a richer and more adequate grasp of persons as social beings by analyzing how they conduct their everyday life. It also lets us inquire into how the abilities, experiences, reasons, understandings, concerns, etc. of persons are associated with their conduct of life and affected by it, as well as how socio-structural forces affect their conduct of life.

The inclusion of the concept of conduct of everyday life also raises challenges in developing the framework of critical psychology. Like previous challenges, they arise from aspiring to overcome reductions in the analysis of subjectivity. The concept of conduct of everyday life is built into an existing theoretical framework in order to develop it further. As we shall see, the meaning of the concept depends on its status in relation to other concepts in this framework. In the process of developing this framework, the concept must therefore also be expanded and modified.

When Holzkamp introduced the concept into critical psychology, inspired by Jurczyk and Rerrich (1995), he highlighted the following characteristics: First, in our societies everyday life stretches across several, diverse social spheres of life – such as family, work and school – which raise different demands and call for different abilities and activities. Second, persons must hence coordinate their various activities, tasks and relationships with their various co-participants across different times and places. Third, they must seek to integrate their pursuit of these diverse demands and engagements in a coherent conduct of their everyday life. Fourth, in doing so, they must seek to manage what is necessary and important for them to get done. Fifth, establishing routines assists them in managing this. Sixth, they must develop a self-understanding guiding their conduct of life. Seventh, conducting an everyday life is an active accomplishment that may succeed or fail in various ways. And, eighth, there are important social differences and inequalities between how persons may accomplish this.

This brief overview of key dimensions of the concept of conduct of everyday life serves as background for what will be addressed below. But these dimensions will only be taken up insofar as they were elaborated, revised and led to new challenges in my ongoing work on conduct of everyday life in relation to topics of personhood, psychotherapy, intervention, family life, development and learning.

In accordance with the concept of conduct of everyday life, I first spell out implications of the societal arrangement of everyday life for research on persons and their conduct of everyday life in critical psychology. Next, I take up issues about self-understanding that can then be grounded and discussed in relation to the conduct of life of persons in structural arrangements of everyday social practice. Afterwards I turn to issues about the relations between overall, societal structures and persons conducting their life in structures of everyday social practice, as seen from the standpoint and perspective of these persons in their conduct of everyday life. Finally, I briefly characterize the current state of research on conduct of everyday life in critical psychology and mention some challenges we are now facing.

The Societal Structuring of Everyday Life

In our societies, everyday life is arranged in such a way that members, in the course of their day and night, ordinarily take part in several social practices by moving into and across the contexts where these practices take place. The practices of family, work, school, leisure activities, sleep and so forth take place in different contexts and during different periods of time in the day and night. The basic sequence of the everyday movements of persons across places is, thus, socially arranged and this social ordering gives everyday life a rudimentary measure of ordinariness. On the basis thereof, persons establish and conduct an ordinary everyday life that also holds degrees of variation because they participate in some social practices/contexts on a daily basis, but in others only regularly, occasionally, during a particular period of time or just once.

When persons move into other contexts, they enter other practices. They take part in the arrangements and relations of these other practices, occupy other positions and face other co-participants, demands, responsibilities and possibilities for what they may do. So they take part in other ways, which call for other abilities and are grounded in and give rise to other subjective experiences, concerns and reasons. That is, for instance, evident when persons leave home and enter work, school, etc. This contextual functioning of persons introduces a many-sidedness and complexity into human personhood that is usually overlooked in psychological research (Dreier, 2008a, 2009, 2011b, 2015a).

Moreover, the social practices in different contexts are linked in a social structure of practices. Particular links are structurally arranged between the social practices in particular contexts. Their purposes overlap or must be pursued across several contexts. Particular relations of power exist and are exercised between them. Arrangements specify who has which access to them and across them. And persons taking part in linked social practices develop overlapping concerns and reasons for participating in each of them. As a result, what goes on in one context affects and interferes in the practices of other contexts.

Social practices of expertise are typically arranged in such a way. Take, for example, the practice of school in relation to family. Against the background of what goes on in school and in pursuit of the concerns of school, teachers and other experts associated with school affect, and may interfere in, the lives of families in an indirect and direct way. In doing so, they consider how to achieve such an impact on the lives of families of schoolchildren, or of particular children, so that these children do well in school and overcome various school-related difficulties and troubles. Likewise, parents consider their options for caring indirectly for their children in school, that is, how they may contribute from home to their children’s learning, development and overcoming of troubles in school. They also consider how to care for their children by involving themselves directly in aspects of school practice. Besides, they watch out to forestall unwanted interferences from school in the life of their children and family. Children must find out how to do well and live well in each context, and how to balance the diverse demands on their participation in each in their conduct of everyday life. So, these links and concerns affect the conduct of life of individual family members differently as well as how they, together, conduct their joint family life. They also affect how teachers and other school-associated experts conduct their work. In fact, each party in this pursuit of concerns across contexts is affected differently. They take part in school practice and family practice and use the links between them in different ways, develop different positioned concerns and are caught in different conflicts (Dreier, 2008a, 2011c; Højholt, 2015, chap. 7 in this volume).

Many social practices are arranged so that they must be pursued across several diverse contexts. Thus, social practices of education involve pursuits of learning across a variety of contexts (Dreier, 2008b) as seen in, for example, studies on academy of music educations by Nielsen (1999) and Dahlberg (2013). Likewise, supplementary training courses are meant to affect everyday work practices elsewhere (Jurow & Pierce, 2011) and therapy sessions are meant to affect particular troubles in everyday life elsewhere (Dreier, 2000, 2008a, 2011a). Persons entering these social practices must find out how to pursue their concerns in the training courses or therapy sessions and in their various involved everyday social contexts so that they take advantage of the particular possibilities for doing so that these diverse contexts offer. To accomplish this, they must participate in particular situated ways in these diverse contexts. At the same time, their various situated pursuits must hang together in such a way that they may reach their desired outcomes and avoid unwanted outcomes. Moreover, they must integrate what they come to want to do differently into their ordinary conduct of everyday life within and across their home, work, school, etc. with diverse co-participants, arrangements, demands, positions, possibilities, concerns and stakes. This often involves changing their conduct of everyday life, too.

The contexts of training courses, therapy sessions and so forth become particular, temporary parts of the everyday life that persons conduct together with the more long-term contexts of their families, work practices, schools, etc. in which these expert practices are meant to work. But much else matters and must be accomplished in the complex everyday life of persons than the pursuits associated with their temporary participation in, for example, therapy sessions. In order to be sustained, these pursuits must, hence, be carried out in between much else that goes on and happens on the way. And persons must often change their conduct of everyday life to be able to carry out these pursuits and sustain them in the future.

Persons as Participants

The arguments above underline that individual persons live by taking part in social practices – not by their own efforts alone. Persons, literally, are participants in social practices. We must recognize this fact of life in theoretical terms by conceptualizing persons as participants in social practices. This fundamental, social character of personhood is seen in the partial and particular ways in which persons take part in social practices. Persons live by selecting and realizing some of the countless aspects and relations of social practices while setting aside and bypassing many others. In other words, the participatory character of personhood not only refers to how subjects relate to other subjects and exchange ...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• List of Contributors
• Introduction Toward a Psychology of Everyday Living
• 1 Conduct of Everyday Life Implications for Critical Psychology
• 2 Conduct of Everyday Life in Subject-Oriented Sociology Concept and Empirical Research
• 3 Conduct of Everyday Life as a Basic Concept of Critical Psychology
• 4 The Maze and the Labyrinth Walking, Imagining and the Education of Attention
• 5 Embodying the Conduct of Everyday Life From Subjective Reasons to Privilege
• 6 The Ordinary in the Extra Ordinary Everyday Living Textured by Homelessness
• 7 Situated Inequality and the Conflictuality of Children's Conduct of Life
• 8 “There is No Right Life in the Wrong One” Recognizing this Dilemma is the First Step Out of it
• 9 Everyday Life in the Shadow of the Debt Economy
• 10 From Crisis to Commons Reproductive Work, Affective Labor and Technology in the Transformation of Everyday Life
• 11 Frozen Fluidity Digital Technologies and the Transformation of Students' Learning and Conduct of Everyday Life
• 12 The Politics of Hope Memory-Work as a Method to Study the Conduct of Everyday Life
• 13 Collaborative Research with Children Exploring Contradictory Conditions of the Conduct of Everyday Life
• Index