The Practice of Everyday Life
The Practice of Everyday Life is a book by Michel de Certeau which examines the ways in which people individualise mass culture, altering things, from utilitarian objects to street plans to rituals, laws and language, in order to make them their own. It was originally published in French as L'invention du quotidien. Vol. 1, Arts de faire' (1980). The 1984 English translation is by Steven Rendall. The book is one of the key texts in the study of everyday life.
The Practice of Everyday Life re-examines related fragments and theories from Kant and Wittgenstein to Bourdieu, Foucault and Détienne, in the light of a proposed theoretical model. Some consider it as being enormously influential in pushing cultural studies away from producer/product to the consumer.[citation needed]
Contents |
[edit] Introductory Chapter
The Practice of Everyday Life begins by pointing out that while social science possesses the ability to study the traditions, language, symbols, art and articles of exchange that make up a culture, it lacks a formal means by which to examine the ways in which people reappropriate them in everyday situations.
This is a dangerous omission, Certeau argues, because in the activity of re-use lies an abundance of opportunities for ordinary people to subvert the rituals and representations that institutions seek to impose upon them.
With no clear understanding of such activity, social science is bound to create nothing other than a picture of people who are non-artists (meaning non-creators and non-producers), passive and heavily subject to received culture. Indeed, such a misinterpretation is borne out in the term "consumer". In the book, the word "user" is offered instead; the concept of "consumption" is expanded in the phrase "procedures of consumption" which then further transforms to "tactics of consumption".
[edit] References
[edit] Bibliography
- de Certeau, Michel. The Practice of Everyday Life, trans. Steven Rendall, University of California Press, Berkeley 1984
- Cummings, Neil. Reading Things, Chance Books, London 1993
- Giard, Luce. Keynote Speech at Victoria and Albert Museum for Civiccentre, 15 April 2003
