{"resolved":true,"match_type":"uuid","source_type":"original_book","book_id":"1dc0854c-957b-4fb1-af9a-bb4fdb76b77e","title":"Time, Consumption and Everyday Life Practice, Materiality and Culture","author":null,"edition":null,"publisher":null,"year":null,"isbn":null,"requested_by":"printed_page","book":{"source_type":"original_book","book_id":"1dc0854c-957b-4fb1-af9a-bb4fdb76b77e","id":"1dc0854c-957b-4fb1-af9a-bb4fdb76b77e","uuid":"1dc0854c-957b-4fb1-af9a-bb4fdb76b77e","title":"Time, Consumption and Everyday Life Practice, Materiality and Culture","normalized_title":"timeconsumptionandeverydaylifepracticematerialityandculture","author":null,"edition":null,"publisher":null,"year":null,"isbn":null,"isbns":[],"parsed":true,"ai_readable":true,"document_type":"book","page_count":236,"navigation_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/ai/book/1dc0854c-957b-4fb1-af9a-bb4fdb76b77e","title_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/ai/title/Time%2C%20Consumption%20and%20Everyday%20Life%20Practice%2C%20Materiality%20and%20Culture","fixed_page_url_template":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/ai/book/1dc0854c-957b-4fb1-af9a-bb4fdb76b77e/page/{printed_page}","path_api_url_template":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/book/1dc0854c-957b-4fb1-af9a-bb4fdb76b77e/page/{printed_page}","read_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/read/1dc0854c-957b-4fb1-af9a-bb4fdb76b77e","page_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/books/1dc0854c-957b-4fb1-af9a-bb4fdb76b77e/page","search_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/books/1dc0854c-957b-4fb1-af9a-bb4fdb76b77e/search"},"page":{"printed_page":101,"pdf_page":104,"physical_index":104,"physical_index_base":0,"printed_page_status":"recognized","page_sha256":"408eaf58eba8079a202cc1aff891be722bc198ca10db171ed86245a85c569f1d"},"chapter":"List of Tables and Figures","content":"Polarities\n\nWe would like to start our discussion by exploring some of these polarities. The first one is the juxtaposition of routines as either constraining straitjackets or supportive corsets. There are routines described as (self-made) prisons of ingrained and inflexible habits that constrain actors or prevent people from changing their life, and then there is the opposite view of routines as a comforting and helpful supportive structure that offers security and predictability as well as making it possible to combine many tasks with other activities – from daydreaming to other kinds of multi-tasking. Routines thus may work as a liberating force, providing energy for other things.\n\nAnother polarity takes the degree of conscious reflection as a starting point. There is a continuum from mechanical – reflex-like – routines over to emotionally charged habits, collective traditions and symbolically elaborated rituals. Mundane activities can change both ways: rituals can turn into mindless reflexes, and even the most trivial routines may be transformed into more conscious acts, something people experience as reassuring, and comforting or give some symbolic meaning.\n\nThe third polarity has to do with ideas of routines as collective patterns as opposed to intensely personal ones. Habits may be described as sets of shared practices that make society possible – as something we are forced to do. Then there is the kind of routines that are described as intensely personal – a secret or mystical world that people create on their own and that become a central part of their self-definition.\n\nOur point is that polarities like the ones above may hide the constant possibilities of transformation found in routines. We are interested in the ways in which an unnoticed routine may become an everyday ritual, or how a routine can be transformed from a feeling of security to one of constraint. How may an unproblematic habit develop into a heatedly contested practice, and how may routines that are seen as intensely personal also show some striking collective, cultural patterns?\n\nQuestions like these call for an analysis of situations of transformation, crisis or confrontation, and our approach is to focus on at two major kinds of change: routines made or un-made.\n\nIntegrating and absorbing new tasks, skills, objects and ideas into the patterns of everyday affairs is a basic process in individual and social life. By repetition these novelties turn into effortless activities, slowly sinking into the unconscious – but how?\n\nOne way of approaching this question would be to develop detailed ethnographies. By observing and describing routines in detail, we ought to find out how they are put together and coordinated, how they are synchronized with other tasks and become part of a daily rhythm. From such ethnography we could move on to explore how they have been learned, perfected or changed.\n\nRoutines – Made and Unmade\n\n101","previous_page":100,"next_page":102}