Economics of everyday life. Strategies for maintaining everyday life in the normatively saturated world

Abstract

The presented text focuses on the analysis of the normative order of everyday life, in particular on dealing with situations of normative conflict. One of the tools used to achieve this goal is the economics of everyday life, which concerns the contextual and situational calculating, balancing and hierarchising of normative requirements. The economics of everyday life is qualitative in nature and is accompanied by concepts such as “too much”, “too little”, “less than”, “more than”, “similarly”, “at least”. Such measures are subjective and are made in a specific situational context – in the analysed cases at the moment of dysregulation and crisis of everyday life. Theoretically, the project is based primarily on the perspective of the sociology of everyday life and David Nicolini’s theory of practices, particularly the idea of the toolkit approach. The theoretical theses are based on several qualitative studies, which is in line with Kaufmann’s project of analytical induction, i.e. a theory built based on qualitative research and verified by subsequent research. The first part of the text describes the principles of everyday economics in the form of the principles such as “more is better than less”, “less is better than more”, “it is better not to risk”, “at least”, “by the way”. All of them show how individuals define a situation of normative conflict and how they balance and prioritise conflicting obligations. This is not a closed list and can be expanded in further empirical research. The text ends with a theoretical summary, in which the concept of everyday economics is developed in detail.