There has been a recent resurgence of interest in the everyday among social theorists from Habermas and Giddens to de Certeau and Maffesoli. Taking Habermas as a benchmark, it is argued that recent accounts of the everyday in divergent traditions of analysis converge on two suspect theses: that of the everyday as `taken-for-granted' and that of the everyday as `living history'. These two theses are related to Minotaur-like concepts of the everyday that are hybrids of `form' and `substance'. It is suggested that three myths - of unity, life and resistance - give life to the Minotaur of the everyday. The Minotaur of the everyday thus carries a great weight of theoretical baggage and its monstrosity serves, paradoxically, to preserve the homogeneity and purity of the social domain. It is argued that the mythologies of the everyday can be dissolved if a more far-reaching and monstrous heterogeneity is allowed to the social (or socio-technical) world.
Atkinson, J. M. and Drew, P. 1979. Order in Court: the Organization of Verbal Interaction in Judicial Settings. London: Macmillan.
2.
Bakhtin, M. 1968. Rabelais and His World. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.
3.
Bakhtin, M. 1981. The Dialogic Imagination. Austin: University of Texas Press.
4.
Beck, U. 1992. Risk Society: Towards a New Modernity. London: Sage.
5.
Bergson, H. 1944. Creative Evolution. New York: Random House.
6.
Bourdieu, P. 1984. Distinction. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. Chapter 7 and `Postscript'.
7.
Cohen, S. and Taylor, L. 1976. Escape Attempts: The Theory and Practice of Resistance to Everyday Life. London: Allen Lane.
8.
Crook, S. 1990. `The End of Radical Social Theory?' in R. Boyne and A. Rattansi (eds.), Postmodernism and Society. London: Macmillan.
9.
de Certeau, M. 1984. The Practice of Everyday Life. Berkeley: University of California Press.
10.
Featherstone, M.1992. `The Heroic Life and Everyday Life', Theory, Culture & Society9:159-182.
11.
Fiske, J. 1989. Understanding Popular Culture. Boston, Mass.: Unwin Hyman.
12.
Funkhouser, J. R. and Shaw, E. F.1990. `How Synthetic Experience Shapes Social Reality', Journal of Communication40:75-87.
13.
Garfinkel, H. 1967. Studies in Ethnomethodology. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall.
14.
Giddens, A. 1991. Modernity and Self-Identity: Self and Society in the Late Modern Age. Cambridge: Polity.
15.
Giddens, A. 1995. Beyond Left and Right. Cambridge: Polity.
16.
Goffman, E. 1974. Frame Analysis. Harmondsworth: Penguin.
17.
Gouldner, A. W. 1973. `Anti-Minotaur: The Myth of a Value-Free Sociology', in Gouldner, For Sociology, Harmondsworth: Penguin.
18.
Habermas, J. 1987. The Theory of Communicative Action (Volume Two), Cambridge: Polity.
19.
Habermas, J. 1990. Moral Consciousness and Communicative Action. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.
20.
Habermas, J. 1992, rev. edn.Autonomy and Solidarity: Interviews with Jürgen Habermas, (edited and introduced P. Dews). London: Verso.
21.
Harris, S. 1991. `Evasive Action: How Politicians Respond to Questions in Political Interviews', in P. Scannel (ed.), Broadcast Talk. London: Sage.
22.
Heath, C. 1992. `The Delivery and Reception of Diagnosis in the General Practice Consultation', in P. Drew and J. Heritage (eds.), Talk at Work. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
23.
Heller, A. 1984. Everyday Life. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.
24.
Kant, I. 1956. Critique of Practical Reason. Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill.
25.
Latour, B. 1991. `Technology is Society Made Durable', in J. Law (ed.), A Sociology of Monsters. London: Routledge.
26.
Latour, B. 1992. `Where Are the Missing Masses?' The Sociology of a Few Mundane Artifacts', in W. Bijker and J. Law (eds.), Shaping Technology/Building Society. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.
27.
Law, J. 1991. `Introduction: Monsters, Machines and Sociotechnical Relations', in J. Law (ed.), A Sociology of Monsters. London: Routledge.
28.
Lefebvre, H. 1991. Critique of Everyday Life. London: Verso.
29.
Lynch, M. 1993. Scientific Practice and Ordinary Action: Ethnomethodology and Social Studies of Science. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
30.
Maffesoli, M.1989. `The Sociology of Everyday Life (Epistemological Elements)', Current Sociology37:1-16.
31.
Maffesoli, M.1991. `The Ethics of Aesthetics', Theory, Culture & Society8:7-20.
32.
Maffesoli, M.1993a. `Introduction', Current Sociology41:1-5.
33.
Maffesoli, M.1993b. `The Social Ambience', Current Sociology41:7-15.
34.
Maffesoli, M. 1996. The Time of the Tribes. London: Sage.
35.
O'Neill, J. 1972. Sociology as a Skin Trade: Essays Towards a Reflexive Sociology. London: Heinemann.
36.
O'Neill, J. 1995. The Poverty of Postmodernism. London: Routledge.
37.
Smith, D. 1987. The Everyday World as Problematic: a Feminist Sociology. Boston, Mass.: Northeastern University Press.
38.
Spengler, O. 1932. Man and Technics: A Contribution to a Philosophy of Life. London: Allen & Unwin.
39.
Truzzi, M. (ed.) 1968. Sociology and Everyday Life. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall.
