Emergent in the wake of industrialization, studies of everyday life endeavor to bring into visibility and somehow make sense of our humble, taken-for-granted, seemingly unremarkable experience of the quotidian. The project has meant subjecting modern Western individuals to the kind of anthropological scrutiny more often reserved for non-Western peoples. The goal has been to explore patterns of behavior not because they are foreign but because they are so familiar as to fall beneath our notice.
Artists as well as social theorists in this tradition set out to register and evaluate the neglected minutiae of our daily lives : the ways we sleep and ambulate, ingest and eliminate, work and recreate, care for ourselves and others, slip in and out of self awareness, and interact with people, objects, and our surroundings. Generally speaking, everyday life studies is a science of the "small." Though usually framed in relation to larger social structures, the objects of attention are micro-moments and micro-actions - turning a street corner, stirring a pot, feeding and infant.
They are actions that take place without rising to the status of "event." They are moments in time that leave no historical mark (at least as "history" has traditionally been understood). As these examples suggest, such practices are "everyday" not only because they are "ordinary" but also because they typically occur every day, perhaps even every few hours. Whether tied to bodily rhythms or the rigors of wage work, the nonevents of everyday life are almost always characterized by patterns of repetition.
Theorists of the everyday, focusing on the effects of modernity, have taken various stances on the political implications of our daily routines. Some have tied their repetitive nature to the mechanization and alienation of labor in a capitalist society. For Michel Foucault, domination is not restricted to the factory floor; the workings of power are more diffuse and insidious than this, operating in the very interstices of our seemingly private lives. For Michel do Certeau, the quotidian is a site not of forcible conformity but of micro-opportunities to defy the dominant order.
Why is everyday life studies regarded as a science of the "small" in the passage?
Correct Answer: (d) Because it deals with events which are a part of our mundane processes and practices.
Solution:Everyday life studies regarded as a science of the "small" in the passage because it deals with events which are a part of our mundane (boring) processes and practices.
Hence, the correct answer is option (d).
