Pragmatism and the conduct of everyday life

Introduction

Schraube and Højholt’s (2016) edited volume presents an orientation to a research domain framed in terms of the conduct of everyday life (COEL). In Psychology and the conduct of everyday life, they assert that the COEL is where agents are inseparable from the plurality of life contexts where they act (conduct life) in coordination with others. The book includes research from several authors who all explore the primacy of researching human actions in the contradictory and intersubjective contexts of everyday human life. Part of the elegant orientation of COEL is reticence and distrust of theorizing from a third-person perspective.

We noted that the COEL could be read as a form of pragmatism (Rorty, 2006, 2009). Our purpose is to briefly interrogate the degree to which the work on COEL addressed in Schraube and Højholt’s book represents a significant departure from pragmatism. Accordingly, we begin with the most obvious point of overlap between pragmatism, as it is characterized by Richard Rorty (2006, 2009), and the work on the COEL: an approach hostile to the presence of disengaged theorizing. We then present a discussion of subjectivity as it is discussed in COEL and pragmatism. Here, we see resonance but COEL could be seen as extending (if not slightly departing) from pragmatism. Our third section involves COEL and a critical antiestablishment ethos that it entails. COEL, again, potentially extends pragmatism by specifically undoing the private–public dichotomy that pragmatism runs the risk of enabling. We conclude that COEL is certainly pragmatist but extends current pragmatist efforts in generative directions.

Resistance to a priori theory

We will move to address more features of COEL below but we first seek to explicate a touch point between this theory and American Pragmatism that we see in contemporary authors like Rorty (2006, 2009). COEL is touted as an approach to everyday life and it holds the potential to shift the western psychological gaze to view personhood from the “ground up” as opposed to testing subjects against abstract a priori theories. For example, a chapter by Holzkamp explores the history of the study of living. He advocates for a subject-oriented science in which the COEL is entwined and meaning-making enacted by subjects (p. 92). He encourages researchers to have an awareness of how they impose structure and give direction to their own everyday life and so overshadow participants’ conduct of their lives. The result is that, rather than abstract structural theories that we see in many researchers’ orientations, he admonishes that attention be paid to intersubjective contextual tensions among conflicting interests across various life domains. Through the COEL, research in social and human sciences can discuss personhood in its own contextually laden terms, wherein lies a wealth of qualitative data useful for building understanding of how people enact their lives.

Research on the COEL eschews a priori theories about life to consider the conduct of life in its own terms. A chapter by Jurczyk et al., for example, applies such an approach to society as a whole by observing the everyday lives of subjects performing actions and resolving conflicts within it. This chapter illustrates the value of subject-oriented science without a priori theories in ethnographic research and subsequent descriptive endeavors. Other chapters like one by Hodgetts et al. challenge western structuralism by not defaulting to colonial language or imposing English meaning overtop of Māori experience. COEL involves deconstructing the research process, and one author argues for “continuously de-centering researcher’s perspectives on research questions, designs, and methods” (Kousholt, p. 241). This allows for a collaborative research process among subjects and researchers, who all accommodate research within the COEL.

There are several varieties of pragmatism (see Menand, 1997), but one mainstay of this orientation is an attempt to avoid theorizing in a way that is abstracted from life (see James, 1981/1907). We are going to focus on Rorty (2006, 2009) because he is a contemporary thinker that represents a prominent voice. Avoiding abstract theorizing resonates with the avoidance of a priori theories that supposedly come from a view from nowhere. Like COEL, pragmatism tries to suspend a priori theory in order to grasp life as lived by those that researchers attempt to understand.

Much like work in COEL, a pragmatist approach takes aim at those that treat truth as a subject-independent thing waiting to be discovered. Rorty (2006, 2009) does not deny reality or collapse into some sort of naïve idealism, but points out that truth is something that is tied to the practical living of life. A pragmatist approach maintains the skepticism of truth claims that emerged in the enlightenment but eschews enlightenment claims to objectivity and rationalism. Rorty argues that there is no neutral space from which one can position oneself in order to see things as they truly are and so cuts off the potential to settle arguments through appeals to subject-independent reality.

Rorty (2009) notes that a central turn in pragmatism is to note that there is a difference between the claim that the world is out there and the claim that the truth is out there. Truth can be discussed from within the purview of those that live and manage what counts as true in the course of life. A key means by which pragmatists turn to life as it is lived comes through an orientation to language. Rorty argues that the truth cannot be out there because sentences are not out there independent of speakers. Truth becomes an issue when people make claims and their utterances involve the management of what is taken as truth in everyday life. Notions like truth are a concern when speakers make claims because interlocutors must then work out the verisimilar objectivity of these claims. This turn to language raises the issue of what Rorty calls “final vocabularies” and these are discourses that seem obvious and true to those who live within them. They are marked, argues Rorty, by how they involve irreducibly circular discourses that cannot be defended by appeal to an outside criterion when challenged. Claims to truth are utterances that often take the form of final vocabularies and pragmatists note that the theory used by researchers is often final vocabularies. Pragmatism questions such a priori positions and promotes comparing vocabularies to each other rather than against some sort of fact fabricated by such vocabularies.

For Rorty (2009), engaging others involves attempts at redescription that challenges theories instead of leaving them as taken-for-granted foundations and this project resonates exceptionally well with COEL. The orientation to language seems curiously downplayed in COEL, but we could not see a place where the approach to theory presented in Schraube and Højholt’s book misaligned with pragmatism on this point. The chapters described above resonate with the approach to truth that we see in pragmatism and so the COEL could easily be presented as a pragmatist enterprise on the basis of how theory is addressed.

Subject-oriented frame

COEL involves a subject-oriented framework that attempts to dwell in the perspective of the person as actor, whose actions are simultaneously reenactments of socionormativity and individual management of unique self-expressions. Jurczyk et al. offer a chapter that summarizes the orientation of a subject as a “bundle of decision-making rules for everyday situations, which the actor uses as a point of reference when making everyday decisions” (p. 52). It is in this context that editors Schraube and Højholt write a chapter that proposes three dimensions characterizing the subject conducting her everyday life. The first dimension is the cyclical organization of everyday living and it refers to the specific way a subject reconciles actions and activities with those of other subjects in order to accommodate the divergent goals across contradictory life contexts. Such reconciliation involves a constant practice of mutual attunement with others. Holzkamp’s chapter elaborates on this idea where he asserts that subjects assume responsibility for their actions which first become cycles, then routines, and which are finally structured with everyday regularity.

A second dimension involves deviations from routine that constitute extraordinary experiences and activities that fall outside the rhythms of a subject’s everyday life. Such moments necessitate reorganizing everyday life in order to accommodate extraordinary experiences. Responsive organization may constitute a momentary deviation from everyday living wherein cyclically organized living is temporarily adjusted. In some cases, specific extraordinary experiences and activities may recur with enough frequency to be reorganized within a subject’s everyday life, at which point the extraordinary quality is lost. For example, Schraube and Marvakis write a chapter where they assert that the increase in use of digital learning in universities alters the way that students conduct their everyday lives. The digitization of learning constitutes an extraordinary experience for a learning subject who is familiar with traditional educational settings. Digitization decenters the everyday life of the learning subject from the physical setting of the university, constituting deviation requiring reorganization (p. 222). From a subject-oriented frame, a researcher may explore how the learning subject accommodates the benefits and limitations afforded by digital learning.

The third dimension involves integrative sensibilities and ways of sense-making and it addresses how a subject draws meaning out of the process of organizing activities in light of the first two dimensions. For example, Haug’s chapter discusses the COEL with the intersubjective goal of happiness. Subjects construct a contextual scene or image for themselves and other subjects in order to “endow [them]selves with coherent meaning, creating the image of [them]selves in which [they] believe” (p. 233). Striving toward self-representation within a scene provides a subject within meaningful purpose with which to assign priority to some acts, cycles, and routines over others.

In defining these dimensions, Schraub and Højholt set a thematic highlight of COEL: social coordination and conflict from a subject-oriented frame. This theme aligns with pragmatism in a generative way and the touchpoint we have in mind is Rorty’s (2009) discussion of the contingency of selfhood. He argues that subjectivity is tied to the languages that people speak. Vocabularies are regular discourses that are part of routine and they are deeply pervasive in that they are means by which we constitute subjectivity. This claim is very similar to the idea that people establish themselves in the cyclical organization of everyday living.

Pragmatists like Rorty note that not all vocabularies are unchallenged and there are moments when vocabularies collide. These languages are not separate from our subjectivity and so the interruption of these languages is the interruption in ourselves as we take them to be. Rorty uses these phenomena to articulate his notion of the contingency of selfhood. Selfhood is contingent on vocabularies that we speak but their contingency breaks into awareness at the moment a vocabulary is challenged. Our position is that this notion resonates with the discussion of extraordinary experience seen in COEL. It looks like Rorty’s discussion of the radical awareness of contingency grapples with the same phenomena in COEL.

Rorty (2009) highlights the outcome of the dawn of one’s awareness of contingency and it is the challenge to make oneself distinctive. He notes how one becomes aware that one is contingent but also the curtain that obscures our tacitly lived social behavior is pulled back. We become aware of how what felt authentic is just another expression of a social group and so is painfully dull. The impulse to weave a subject that is other than a replica involves coming to grips with the terror of capitulation. Strength, argues Rorty, is to appreciate one’s own contingency despite the potentially devastating force of such revelation. It is a mark of a civilized person when one can recognize the contingency of oneself and still remain faithful to a mode of living.

Rorty’s (2009) position resonates with COEL and the discussion of sense-making or integrating. Redescription and the management of different vocabularies lies very close to notion of dealing with extraordinary experiences and the rupture of routines. Both approaches thereby make room for a discussion of the tensions that emerge as a subject acts in the space among socionormative expectations. That is, both approaches bring forward a discussion of how individuality emerges in the project of managing socionormative phenomena. COEL, however, does seem to foreground the mundane regularity of such projects. It foregrounds that these types of moments are the regular stuff of life in a way that is less dramatic than Rorty. As such, the distinction between these approaches is not necessarily one of kind because if they both address something similar. COEL brings the discussion down to the everyday experience and so offers a more robust discussion of the phenomena.

Critical resistance

The contributors in Schraube and Højholt’s (2016) book also highlight structural inequalities by building links between them and the first-person COEL. For example, a chapter by Højholt affirms the complexity of conducting everyday life and the ensuing problem with researchers making top-down generalizations about groups of people. Social conflicts, per Højholt, produce conflictual circumstances for subjects, emphasizing the bidirectional relationship between society and the individual. Osterkamp’s chapter draws out the limitations of individualist thinking and acting, asserting instead that we consider the impact of intersubjective collaboration to conquer disempowering conditions. Osterkamp resists a priori theory in arguing that one cannot critique the societal constructs from a detached perspective because detachment cannot incite change. Rather, one must assume a subject-oriented frame which reveals systemic inequality, thereby empowering subjects to band together to facilitate change.

According to a COEL framework, as subjects attempt to resolve conflicts within their everyday lives, they simultaneously manage social inequalities. A chapter by Federici discusses social solidarity and the idea that we cannot look at social life from the viewpoint of an abstract, universal, and sexless social subject. Sexual and racial hierarchies characterize the division of labor in capitalist and neoliberal societies. Federici defines reproduction in everyday life, from a feminist COEL, as a “structured reality, organized around a specific process of production, the production of human beings” (p. 193). In a similar way, Teo situates the study of everyday life in the embodied concepts of habitus, performativity, and culminated privilege and discusses how “habits, presence, and body contribute to oppression” by reinforcing social configurations which normalize dominant practices (p. 119). He argues that researchers ought to include the perspective of the intersubjective other, who can identify privileges of which the subject may be unaware. Caffenzis’ chapter asserts that a relationship with monetary capital that revolves around debt is problematic for everyday life, as debt causes alienation from others who are in debt, as well as from the “sense of class oppression” (p. 184). Being in debt contributes to repression of its collective experience. Education is brought into this discussion by Ingold. Ingold explores the metaphor of walking through a labyrinth as a way to think of education where learners and pedagogues walk together. The traditional model of education as transference encourages conformity to an accepted COEL, while the labyrinth metaphor allows individuals to experience everyday life in a fuller sense that does not merely involve capitulation to knowledge regimes.

In his discussion of pragmatism, Rorty (2009) spends a significant amount of time arguing that pragmatism is about community and agreement on what is real. He replaces the notion of truth determined by reference to external reality to truth determined by agreement in a community: solidarity. A challenge that Rorty deals with is that this replacement can lead to situations where ethnocentrism marks such solidarity. Feelings of solidarity, he argues, are a matter of which similarities strike us as salient due to social processes. Others who do not participate in the same community may be subject to injunctions that amount to a tyranny of the majority. The risk of no longer worshipping anything or treating nothing with divinity—even science—is that we fail to address the structures of power that solidarity enables.

Pragmatism thereby addresses how we are going to establish a liberal society predicated on persuasion and dialog as opposed to ethnocentric violence. Rorty (2009) claims that public affairs revolve around how to balance peace/wealth/freedom when public needs to “get along” demand that peace, wealth, and/or freedom must be sacrificed. By this he means that challenges to the status quo are challenges to solidarity and challenges to solidarity have the veneer of challenges to peace and order. Those who are free are those that fall into solidarity with the status quo. Challenges to solidarity emerge in the light of those from other groups rejecting the vocabularies and descriptions constituted therein. People want to be described according to their own minority groups’ standards of solidarity. The problem with redescription is that it feels like it may bring an end to peace and so forth. It raises instability where people can question if the other will redescribe them in another vocabulary. Herein lies resonance with critical resistance that we see in COEL.

However, Rorty (2009) takes pragmatism in a different direction from COEL at this juncture. A key for Rorty is an ironic mode where one learns not to take one’s community too seriously but he insists upon a split between the public realm and the private realm where irony dwells. His defense of the ironic depends upon distinction between public and private because he places irony as an individual mode. This split between the private and the public diverges from COEL that erodes this split. COEL highlights how critical resistance is always at the level of everyday life because the private–public split is misguided. In this way, the COEL offers a grounding for negotiating tensions that emerge when we develop a critical consciousness. Rorty points out the importance of an ironic mode that informs how tensions and sociopolitical can be relativized by not taking them seriously while COEL blends the public–private in a way that offers a vision for how negotiation can take place.

Conclusion

COEL offers a way of doing psychology in which psychologists can be both pragmatists and socially aware members of society. Considering the intersubjective perspective of individuals allows researchers to participate in the COEL of communities that have formed a pragmatic solidarity. Incorporating COEL with pragmatism contributes to a generativity in research that a detached perspective does not allow. An awareness of social structures and the perspectives of the people who abide by them provide psychologists with the ability to challenge power structures and bring about change, rather than observing from afar.