Sociological paradigms in the analysis of daily life

Abstract

In this article one wants, first of all, to present a critical panorama of the main theoretical currents that have influenced the sociological analysis of daily life, namely formalism, symbolic interactionism, marxism and phenomenology. From the characterization and critique of those currents, one tries to discuss the concept, the object and focus of sociology daily life. The author is concerned in insolating and underlining the basic theoretical perspectives fit for the constitution of the guiding reference points of this branch of sociology. On the other, the author deals with the daily life spaces and temporalities and, from an epistemological point of view, the relation between common sense and cognitive sociology, making his critique of the structuralistic and phenomenological excesses in the analysis of daily life and rejecting, at the same time, the submission of the analysis of daily life to the theoretical perspectives of a microsociology. At last the author tries to show how the sociological analysis of daily life - placing itself in a dialectical relation between microanalysis and macroanalysis of social behaviours and structures - is to be configured as a kind of weaver's shuttle, moving itself from one side to another and interweaving, in the social universe, the social micro and macrostructures and the corresponding social behaviours.