Live methods and live things

Cultivating attentiveness to dormant things to develop a vital sociology of the everyday

Bibliographic Data

ID3204082
AuthorsSophie Woodward (0000-0001-5339-8153, University of Manchester, corresponding author)
Year2025
Volume73
Issue5
Pages1051-1065
Publication date2025-09-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueThe Sociological Review (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0038-0261 • E-ISSN: 1467-954X
PublisherSAGE Publications Inc (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1177/00380261251335487
OpenAlexW4410693181
LanguageEN
Citations received4
References cited28

This article focuses upon unnoticed objects in the home, such as those stuffed in a junk drawer, to explore how we can be attentive to the everyday in cultivating a 'live sociology' which illuminates the close at hand, locating the shared, public and moral in the everyday. I argue that attentiveness to the vibrancy of everyday things can expand the possibilities of a vital sociology. Attentiveness is a way to retrain the 'sociological gaze' away from the unusual to the unnoticed elements of everyday lives and objects. I consider here both what we are attentive to - affects, connections, potentials, materiality - as well as how we can cultivate attentiveness - through 'being-with' data and forms of slow scholarship. I do this by drawing on fieldwork in the UK on objects that are kept but not currently being used. Forgotten things covered with dust on a shelf may seem 'dead' or inert, yet framing these as 'dormant' exposes their histories, hauntings as well as imagined futures. The article takes case studies of junk drawers, bags of old cables, and other unnoticed objects to explore what happens when we are attentive to dormant things and how a seemingly personal and private collection allows the possibilities for connection and can materialise people's hopes, and expose social inequities. Finally, I develop the ethics of attentiveness as both a practical engagement in research as well as a core value of a vital sociology in how we tell people's stories

Aesthetics · Art · Environmental ethics · Epistemology · Everyday life · Sociology · Contemporary Sociological Theory and Practice · Management and Organizational Studies · Philosophy · Social and Cultural Dynamics

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