Reconceptualising the Mundane and the Extraordinary: A Lens through Which to Explore Transformation within Women’s Everyday Footwear Practices

TY - JOUR

T1 - Reconceptualising the Mundane and the Extraordinary

T2 - A Lens through Which to Explore Transformation within Women’s Everyday Footwear Practices

AU - Robinson, Sandra Victoria

PY - 2015/10/1

Y1 - 2015/10/1

N2 - This article explores the transformatory potential of the lived realities of people’s everyday social lives, seen here to be patterned by a dynamic interplay between the ‘mundane’ and the ‘extraordinary’. Their interaction acts as an interpretive device that can generate new, empirically grounded theoretical insights. Thus, I argue for greater recognition and focus on relationality and connectedness, or rather, that is to say, a meso-level in between structure and agency that individuals both contribute to and are influenced by within everyday life. Using data from a qualitative three year ESRC-funded study of identity, transition and footwear, the article weaves these concerns together with a focus on women’s agency, as seen through the interpretive capacity of the mundane and the extraordinary. In so doing, the boundaries and relationship of the mundane and the extraordinary are reconceptualised.

AB - This article explores the transformatory potential of the lived realities of people’s everyday social lives, seen here to be patterned by a dynamic interplay between the ‘mundane’ and the ‘extraordinary’. Their interaction acts as an interpretive device that can generate new, empirically grounded theoretical insights. Thus, I argue for greater recognition and focus on relationality and connectedness, or rather, that is to say, a meso-level in between structure and agency that individuals both contribute to and are influenced by within everyday life. Using data from a qualitative three year ESRC-funded study of identity, transition and footwear, the article weaves these concerns together with a focus on women’s agency, as seen through the interpretive capacity of the mundane and the extraordinary. In so doing, the boundaries and relationship of the mundane and the extraordinary are reconceptualised.

KW - agency

KW - everyday

KW - extraordinary

KW - femininity

KW - footwear

KW - meso-level

KW - mundane

KW - transformation

UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=84942918989&partnerID=8YFLogxK

U2 - 10.1177/0038038515591942

DO - 10.1177/0038038515591942

M3 - Article

AN - SCOPUS:84942918989

VL - 49

SP - 903

EP - 918

JO - Sociology

JF - Sociology

SN - 0038-0385

IS - 5

ER -