Everyday Life and Identities

Recommended Prerequisites

NA

Teaching Methods

In class, the contents of the course unit will be systematized and there will be collective debate around the bibliography of the syllabus. Other materials will be used in class, such as press texts, videos, documentaries, images, statistical data. It will be also important to use artistic elements or objects that could be regarded as reports of social daily life and identities. It is in this logic, in fact, that the students will make presentations in class using an object or image that they will bring with them as the starting point of a commentary.

Learning Outcomes

Goals

a) familiarization with the theoretical interpretative frameworks of daily life and identities; b) understanding the main dynamics related to domestic life and the dimensions of corporeality, sensoriality and emotionality of social life; c) evaluation of the ways in which daily life and identity dynamics are marked by historicity, by various forms of power and by different (trans)national logics; d) to understand the ways in which, in the contemporaneity, the daily life and the identities are related to cultural, professional and urban processes.

Skills

a) to critically discuss and apply theoretical elements in the approach to phenomena and processes regarding daily life and identity dynamics; b) to explain the ways in which the knowledge of everyday life and identities makes it possible to problematize the public / private dichotomy; c) explain and relate daily life dynamics and identities referring to multiple dimensions and spheres of social life.

Work Placement(s)

No

Syllabus

1) Everyday life and identities: theories, themes and sociological problems; 2) The boundaries of private life and its questioning: 2.1) domesticity, ways of inhabiting and social change; 2.2 body, emotions, sensorial experience and society; 3) Daily life and identities - historicity, forms of power and (trans)national paths: 3.1) the civilizational process; 3.2) Powers and practices of resistance; 3.3) cultural diversity and dynamics of deterritorialization and reterritorialization; 3.4) national identities and cosmopolitanism - discourses, representations and practices; 4) The spaces, times and social meanings of culture, work and leisure in contemporary societies: 4.1) art, city and urban tribes; 4.2) professional experiences, precariousness and personal trajectories; 4.3) consumption, lifestyles and material culture in everyday life.

Assessment Methods

Assessment
Periodic or by final exam as given in the course information: 100.0%

Bibliography

Almeida, A. N. de (coord.), 2011, História da vida privada em Portugal: Os Nossos Dias. Lisboa, Círculo de Leitores.

Appadurai, A., 2004, Dimensões culturais da globalização. Lisboa, Teorema.

Castells, M, 2003, O poder da identidade. Lisboa, Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian.

De Certeau, M., 2014, A invenção do cotidiano. vol.1, Petrópolis, Vozes.

Elias, N., 1990, O Processo civilizacional. 2ºv. Lisboa, D. Quixote.

Elliott, A. (ed.), 2019, Routledge Handbook of Identity Studies. 2ª ed., London, Routledge.

Giddens, A., 1994, Modernidade e identidade pessoal. Oeiras, Celta.

Goffman, E., 1993, A apresentação do eu na vida de todos os dias. Lisboa, Relógio D’Água.

Jacobsen, M. H. (ed.), 2009, Encountering The Everyday: An Introduction to the Sociologies of the Unnoticed. New York, Palgrave.

Maffesoli, M., 2001, O eterno instante – o retorno do trágico nas sociedades pós-modernas. Lisboa, Instituto Piaget.

Pais, J. M., 2015, Sociologia da Vida Quotidiana. Lisboa, ICS.