This course aims to make you think sociologically about everyday life, by making the familiar strange. In other words, everyday life could be sociologically understood by making the familiar strange. This is possible when you are asked to suspend any taken for granted assumptions you have about the rules and routines of social life, and instead to question these patterns of behaviour from the perspective of an external observer. The course will introduce students to some interpretivist theories of everyday life, such as symbolic interactionism, ethnomethodology, and phenomenological-existential sociology. Based on these interpretivist theories of everyday life, substantive topics such as home, time, emotion, eating and drinking, shopping, leisure, health, and illness will be discussed in this course.
- Lecturer: DR. ONG BENG KOK
Skill Level: Beginner