Everyday Understanding Research Articles

Contested categories in the context of international migration: introduction to the special issue

ABSTRACT In this introduction to the special issue Contested Categories in the Context of International Migration, we argue for the importance of critically engaging with state-created categories and classification systems. We advocate doing so in the particularly convoluted context of international migration, where states use categories to manage migrants’ entry, reception, and residence, making categorisation extremely consequential for individual migrants, even though bureaucratic documentation and everyday understandings of categories often differ greatly between migrants’ home countries and receiving states. We outline some of the scholarship on categorisation that has inspired our thinking, discuss why migration is such an important and generative site for examining categories and processes of categorisation, and finally consider how the contributions in this special issue attest to this.

Counter-Extremism and ‘Critical Thinking’ as a Measure of the Human

Educational approaches to counter-extremism are proliferating globally, claiming to foster ‘critical thinking’ amongst those deemed vulnerable to extremism. These projects ‘make sense’ through two mutually-reinforcing discourses: a psychological discourse that adjudicates the moral value of different ways of thinking through scientific measures; and an ethical discourse of liberal education that idealizes critical thinking as essential to human development – becoming more human and humane. Counter-extremism mobilizes both to over-represent a ‘dominant genre of being’, to take Sylvia Wynter’s phrase, as if it were the only way of being human. Such projects show how expert and everyday understandings of ‘critical thinking’ have been shaped by psychology’s history as a race science and liberal understandings of education that have legitimated hierarchies of being human. I argue that these conditions of possibility that shape critical thinking must be grappled with in any critical pursuit against hierarchies of being human.

Urban Crime in the Lagos Traffic: An Ethnography at the Crossroads of Multiple Codes of Ethics

ABSTRACT This article is an ethnographic investigation into hawking, pickpocketing, and other crimes perpetrated during traffic situations in contemporary Lagos. Scholarship on street hawking in Nigeria – Lagos in particular – has overlooked certain issues associated with street hawking within Lagos traffic and has failed to counter the everyday understanding that itinerant traders are major actors in the recurring crimes that occur in traffic hold-ups. Through immersive fieldwork and based on my personal experience as a street hawker, I challenge some of these beliefs that urban crimes such as pickpocketing and armed robbery during hold-ups are predominantly perpetrated by street hawkers. I argue that street hawkers are distinguishable from the real criminals, despite police discourse and common beliefs. The criminalization of hawkers in the public mind and in administrative practices is due to categorical stereotypes unfairly produced by the government about itinerant traders during the city's feared traffic hold-ups. I show how the unfair criminalization of itinerant traders has been used to justify curbing street hawking within the traffic in Lagos.

Prayer for Family and Friends: The Body and Religion in Eighteenth-Century Britain

AbstractThis article explores how writers, predominantly adhering to a variety of different Christian denominations but also including Jewish writers, discussed religion and the body in letters throughout the long eighteenth century. It draws on a corpus of over 2,500 familiar letters written by men and women of different denominations between 1675 and 1820. That these letters were not chosen because of their religious content makes them a good ‘test’ of the role of faith in everyday understandings of the body. This article underscores the continued centrality of religious discourse and devotional practice in eighteenth-century everyday life. Our research finds that religion was a commonplace register deployed when discussing bodily matters throughout the long eighteenth century. Significantly, this was the case for individuals who otherwise made scant reference to their faith. Discussion of the physical body encouraged recourse to providence, a public discussion of doctrine, and the shared expression of devotion. The ongoing force of religion in people’s lives was thus intimately tied to their embodied experiences. Letters not only expressed but actively maintained this widely shared religious framework for understanding the body.

Language matters for biodiversity

Abstract Language is central to the way people learn about the natural world. A salient concern of the biodiversity conservation arena has been to understand how language can be employed by scientists to communicate knowledge to nonexpert audiences and build ecological literacy. The use of analogy and narrative by scientists are prominent techniques. In this article, we consider how these two modes of language-based reasoning extend into ordinary conversational language use by the public, specifically when articulating everyday understanding and experiences of biodiversity. Drawing on a process of public engagement in a UK woodland environment, a typological framework based on principles of analogical and narrative reasoning is developed to characterize the precise character of processes of everyday biodiversity sense making. The implications of the framework are discussed in the context of future biodiversity research, particularly its participatory and educational dimensions.

Emotions in Positum

The article aims to develop a definition of emotions that would be both theoretically and practically applicable in psychotherapy (prescriptive), while also aligning with the everyday (descriptive) understanding of the term. The arguments are grounded on sound review of relevant theories that help to grasp the somatic and psychological mechanisms that enable the experience and utilization of emotions. Emotions are differentiated from feelings and stress. The intratheoretical consistency of the newly formulated understanding of emotions with the model of conflictogenesis of positive psychotherapy has been demonstrated.

“What Is an Opportunity?”: From Theoretical Mystification to Everyday Understanding

Expressions about opportunities are used unproblematically in everyday contexts. Yet, the question “What is an opportunity?” has posed a difficult riddle in the academic study of entrepreneurship. Drawing on the philosophy of Ludwig Wittgenstein, we explain that such perplexities are common when words are removed from ordinary language and intellectuals try to grasp what they name. Approaching the opportunity riddle differently, we ask, “How do entrepreneurs use the word opportunity?” and elucidate an actualization theory of entrepreneurship attuned to the everyday understandings that underlie the meaningful use of the word. Bringing implicit understandings to the foreground contributes to (1) the dissolution of the mystification over the nature of “opportunity”, (2) the clarification of the conceptual foundations of entrepreneurship theory, and (3) the reorientation of the field toward more conceptually precise ways of thinking about Knightian uncertainty, entrepreneurial success, and the entrepreneurial process. This paper also contributes to the methodology of management studies, by demonstrating how attention to the logic of ordinary language can alert us to theoretical dead-ends and enable the development of theory that bridges academic and everyday understandings.

Where Craft Starts

This essay illustrates my pedagogical approach on the MA in Critical Craft Studies (MACR) and explains some of the philosophical commitments that underpinned my teaching there. Working as Core Faculty on the program for three years, I regularly led students through embodied ethnographic trials as a way to help them tune their attention to the kind of everyday understanding so often overlooked in academic research. In addition to being the kind of understanding usually expressed in craftwork, this bodily perceptual engagement is – I argue here – our most basic and fundamental way of knowing. With the closing of the MACR program, we lose one of the few spaces with a dedicated focus on this kind of learning.

‘Man can make great natatorial progress’: swimming as a white sporting racial project

ABSTRACT This article examines the sport of swimming to demonstrate how systems of racial privilege and inequality are built. I use Ben Carrington’s (2010) sporting racial project as a tool to understand how race is constructed through sporting practices by examining early-twentieth century texts produced by swimming coaches, physical educators, and sports scientists. Such texts rationalized and standardized swimming techniques and practices within the racialized (and gendered and colonizing) discourses of modern sport science. Early elite practitioners shaped (and continue to shape) swimming and its meanings that inform our everyday understandings of sport and ‘race’ while constructing Whiteness.

Into the Hills: Challenges of Writing Postemancipation Agency in the Caribbean

Abstract As Caribbean postemancipation scholarship has deepened so richly in recent decades, writers have been able to shake major distortions such as the progressive teleologies of freedom that lurk as the very scaffolding of congratulatory imperial records. The full dynamism of repression directed at postslavery generations still demands attention, as does the difficult task of reconstructing communities’ and individuals’ responses to these serious restraints, efforts that sometimes yielded nothing. Especially given archival difficulties, Johnson’s exhortation to seek everyday understandings and actions, ineffable registers like love and fear, and internal community politics, including discord, continue to present high aims for scholars seeking to conceive and describe agency in such an archivally and politically difficult era.

Dementia caregiving in Nigeria: is stigma a motivator for care, a barrier to care, or both?

AbstractBackgroundSome Nigerians struggle to make sense of symptoms resulting from Alzheimer’s disease and related dementias (ADRD). This may not be surprising as there is no word for dementia in its over 500 local languages. Thus, some Nigerians use words to explain ADRD symptoms that may stigmatize people living with dementia and their families.MethodOur qualitative descriptive study while focusing on the everyday understanding of dementia, aims to highlight the influence of stigma on the caregiving experiences of informal female Nigerian dementia caregivers. Semi‐structured interviews were conducted with a purposive sample of 12 adult informal female caregivers in Nigeria. We analyzed the interview transcripts for themes. Then, the findings were shared with focus groups of 21 adult Nigerians residing in the United States to gain more contextual insight on the initial findings.ResultThe three major themes identified in the study include: 1) misconceptions about ADRD symptoms, 2) stigma as a negative motivator, and 3) stigma weakens family support.ConclusionOverall, we argue that a combination of limited ADRD knowledge and awareness, and traditional beliefs drive ADRD‐related stigmatization. This consequently affects access to caregiving and family support. Strategies such as culturally appropriate ADRD awareness campaigns and formal long‐term care policies are urgently needed. These would help reduce the risk of ADRD‐stigmatization and strengthen informal dementia caregiving in Nigeria.

Diversity in Lay Perceptions of Social Class Among Finnish Youth

This study explores young Finnish people’s lay perceptions of social class with a focus on the class terms used to form hierarchies based on their everyday understanding. Our approach is based on cultural class research, which focuses on diversity and subtle nuances of class. The participants were 519 young people ages 15 to 25. The data were collected using the word association method and analyzed by quantitative and qualitative content analyses. While 254 participants perceived Finland as having social classes, their perceptions differed from each other. Half of them formed class hierarchies with more explicit logic, and the other half used more implicit ways of forming hierarchies with diverse class terms based on themes of economy, employment, power, majority/minority, and education. Our findings show ample diversity in both the vertical and horizontal perceptions of social class among young lay people.

Streets, Suites, and States: John Hagan’s Contributions to the Study of Law, Power, and Inequality

We start this special issue with two perspectives. First, that the sociological study of crime and law often intersects with the study of inequality, power, the state, and life chances. Second, that the study of crime and law are deeply interconnected—institutionally, politically, and culturally. Legal institutions build on normative ideas, organizations, careers, and power to govern, to criminalize, and to punish (and, conversely, to ignore or absolve), and everyday understandings of crime are deeply tied to cultural understandings of legality, perceptions of justice and injustice, and hopes for everyday life. Law and crime are thus dynamically tied to social aspirations, fears, and divisions, and are political and social contests over what unites and what divides societies.

Community as a category of empire: ‘The work of community’ among Burmese Indians in Myanmar

ABSTRACT In this article I argue that ‘community' is a category that is inextricably bound up with the historical development of the British empire. It was in this context that modern social theory took root, including, eventually, publications on community in anthropology and sociology that profoundly influenced nineteenth- and twentieth-century thought and that continue to shape everyday understandings of the category within and beyond academia. I first elaborate what type of work the category ‘community' was intended to do in the British empire. I then introduce two key figures who were responsible for designing, distributing and implementing two contrasting imperial theories of community. Subsequently, I sketch the migratory history of the category following the ancestors of today's so-called ‘Burmese Indians' across the Bay of Bengal from India to Burma. The final part of the article presents the repercussions ‘community' has in contemporary Myanmar, drawing on recent legislation around ‘race and religion’ as well as my own ethnographic data from religious processions of ethno-religious minorities who find themselves in a subaltern position vis-à-vis the Buddhist majority population and an ethnonationalist state.

The value of dignity: Health insurance, ethics and court cases in Brazil

This article examines court cases brought by clients against private health insurance companies and against Brazil’s public health system. When clients take private health insurers to court, they successfully claim that the insurer violated their dignity, which entitles them to a moral damage payment. Similar cases against the state did not include moral damage claims. In relation to public healthcare, it is somehow not possible to equate dignity with economic value. One might conclude that the dignity of consumers in the market is worth more than that of citizens vis-à-vis the state. Instead, I argue for a more subtle approach by concentrating on the ethics of incommensurability. What legal and ethical considerations lead to such a fundamental incommensurability between personhood and economic value? How do the actors involved in court proceedings (claimants, prosecutors, judges, and insurers) perceive the differences between cases against insurance companies and against public health authorities? What can we make of the differences between the legal and everyday understandings of dignity and morality?

Is Religion More than a Hobby? Social Media Debates on Germany’s Religious-Political Order during COVID


 This study uses social media comments on news reports about the exemption of religious communities in Germany from COVID-19 restrictions as empirical data for researching a contemporary, everyday understanding of religion as suggested by Michael Bergunder (2014). To analyse the discourse on religion, a qualitative content analysis is applied, which pre-structures the corpus. This allows for diverse attitudes towards policies on religion, as well as their correlations to understandings of religion to be identified. The results show that the contested role of religion in society and its relationship to the state is linked to the struggle over the filling of the concept of religion. Finally, a critical assessment following Bergunder’s approach is applied, emphasizing the need to research the current understanding of religion as a contested concept.

From Sanitation Science to Geroscience: Public Health Must Transcend ‘Folkbiology’

Abstract Folkbiology refers to people’s everyday understanding of the biological world. The early twentieth-century pioneers of public health C.-E.A Winslow (1877–1957), and his mentor H. Biggs (1859–1923), conceptualized public health as the ‘purchasable’ science of preventing disease and death from unfavorable economic and living conditions. Their ideas were foundational in shaping public health’s strategy of a ‘war against disease’ (Winslow, 1903), a strategy that was very successful in preventing the early-life mortality risks from infectious diseases, and was eventually extended to combating the chronic diseases of late life (like cancer). However, the initial framing of public health, through the lens of sanitation science, was predicated upon folkbiological premises that geroscience must abate in order to direct public health interventions toward the goal of improving the quality of life for older persons in the twenty-first century. Three folkbiological premises of sanitation science’s ‘war against disease’ are identified and critiqued: (i) the belief that health is the ‘normal’ condition of the human mechanism and disease ‘unnecessary’; (ii) the belief that the proximate causes of disease are the only modifiable risk factors public health interventions can alter; and (iii) the belief that the rate of biological aging is universal.

The use of cultural repertoires of everyday nationhood and citizenship in national identity boundary-drawing: The case of Syrian refugees in Turkey.

Elaborating on salient contextual factors, such as historical conditions, national history, militarised masculinity, and language, this study looks at how repertoires of everyday nationhood are deployed in relation to boundary-drawing in the context of the recent refugee influx in Turkey. Drawing on ethnographic observations, semi-structured interviews and focus groups with ordinary Turkish citizens in Adana, this paper sheds light on the complexities of everyday understandings of citizenship and nationhood with regards to the emergence of 'insider versus outsiders' notions. Results suggest that ordinary citizens evoke various notions of nationhood in everyday life in drawing boundaries against 'outsiders' (i.e., refugees) by deploying historically rooted national identity constructions (militaristic, unitary) and symbols (language, flag). This article, therefore, reveals a national identity boundary-drawing mechanism involving widespread adherence to a militarised sense of nationhood, related more to other ideas of belonging than ethnicity. It further indicates that ordinary citizens, in their narratives, link such constructions and symbols with historical and current political contexts (e.g., the conflict between Turks and Arabs during WW1, or; current military operations in Syria).

It’s (not) just a matter of terminology: Everyday understanding of “mass panic” and alternative terms

Although the idea of mass panic is quite common in reports on accidents involving crowds, most experts consider it to be erroneous. In a nutshell, they argue that panic and animalistic behavior of humans are not the main causes of crowd accidents, but that it is rather an organizational issue. However, few of the existing studies have addressed the question of what lay people associate with the term. With our mixed-method study, we sought to shed light on people’s underlying ideas and assumptions about mass panic. Additionally, we were interested in how these ideas change using two alternative terms, namely “mass accident” and “mass disaster”. Results showed that participants in the questionnaire (N = 282) and interview (N = 17) study indeed strongly associated the term “mass panic” with irrational and selfish behavior, and less with orderly behavior. In addition to the organizers, people in the crowd were seen as responsible for such accidents. Besides, most actions judged appropriate to defuse the situation were related to the advice “Don’t panic”. Deviating from the concept, however, it was indicated that helping behavior can be found in critical situations. The questionnaire in which participants only saw one of the three terms revealed no change in the everyday understanding with the alternative terms. Nevertheless, interviewees found their own “mass panic explanation” insufficient but also had no alternative ideas of what causes such accidents. Therefore, replacing the problematic concept of mass panic requires not only alternative terms, but also the dissemination of scientific explanations.

Understanding Gender and Sex: Clarifying Terminology and Exploring Human Variations

This scientific paper aims to clarify the confusion surrounding various notions related to gender and sex by providing simple explanations, and emphasize their independent significance; additionally, it seeks to bridge the gap between scientific terminology and everyday understanding. This paper explores also the concept of sexual orientation and the diverse terms associated with it, by examining existing literature and research findings, this study provides a comprehensive analysis of these interconnected concepts, revealing their significance in understanding human diversity and fostering inclusivity, it cites relevant research and expert opinions to provide a comprehensive understanding of human variations.