Projects / Programmes
Social psychology and Sociology of Everyday Life
January 1, 2022
- December 31, 2027
| Code |
Science |
Field |
Subfield |
| 5.03.00 |
Social sciences |
Sociology |
|
| 5.09.00 |
Social sciences |
Psychology |
|
| Code |
Science |
Field |
| 5.04 |
Social Sciences |
Sociology |
| 5.01 |
Social Sciences |
Psychology and cognitive sciences |
macro/micro social level, everyday life, inequalities, exclusion, stigma, governmentality, individualisation, family, intimate partnership, education, migrants, consumption, sexuality, solidarity, gender, health, life trajectory, food, energy, resistance, qualitative research
Data for the last 5 years (citations for the last 10 years) on
April 18, 2024;
A3 for period
2018-2022
| Database |
Linked records |
Citations |
Pure citations |
Average pure citations |
| WoS |
117 |
625 |
573 |
4.9 |
| Scopus |
126 |
901 |
824 |
6.54 |
Researchers (13)
Organisations (2)
Abstract
The research programme is focused on studying everyday life in its macrosocial context. We are interested in how micro practices of everyday life are socially shaped and how social structures (macro level) are (re)produced at the level of everyday life (micro level). But since we treat individuals, social groups and movements as social actors too, we aim to analyse and demonstrate their capacity to respond, cope, resist, and potentially overcome socially constituted challenges in their constantly changing environment. The research programme is based on the analysis of social processes, shaped by the late modern process of individualisation where socially constituted risks, challenges, and vulnerabilities are being perceived as a matter of individual responsibility. On the grounds of these processes and conditions starting with economic crisis, fuelled by environmental degradation and climate change and an ageing population, and recently intensified by the COVID-19 pandemic and the reawakening of global political tensions and instabilities, everyday life is exposed to significant risks and uncertainties that need to be addressed at a structural level. Changes in labour market, familialisation, environmental and health risks, (unequal) opportunities to access and gain credible information and communication competences, (unequal) access to resources, rights and wellbeing, technologies of normalisation, etc. produce and legitimise asymmetrical power relations and inequalities, stigma, and various sorts of social exclusions. We focus on how these processes mark (the most vulnerable) individuals in their everyday lives: their health, life course and transition, their family life, intimate partnerships, and sexuality, consumption and their social and political activism. Our research interest is focused on otherwise overlooked and understudied aspects of particular topics and/or underrepresented social groups. We will explore subjective experiences of social barriers, exclusions, discrimination, and lack of opportunities as well as subjective adjustments, coping, resisting, individual and collective initiatives for social change, political and social justice and equality. The programme is based on a multidisciplinary analysis of everyday life. It requires the use of various analytical methodological procedures (quantitative and qualitative methods of collecting and analysing data). With regards to the research questions, we mainly employ biographical methods, in-depth individual and group interviews, critical discourse analysis, multimodal analysis, and content analysis, as well as ethnographic research procedures. Among the methods are also survey analysis, computer assisted analysis of large corpuses of texts, and document analysis (archival, theoretical, historical, and policy analysis), which grounds a study of the present in a historical perspective and as such provides an important interpretative background.
Significance for science
Our research proposal is strongly grounded in analysing not only the subjective experiences of objective conditions - of macro-level factors, such as governmental policies, and social structures as such, including asymmetrical power relations and inequalities - but also of practices of resistance and articulations of alternatives and potentialities. Our research program focuses on the most pressing social issues and challenges; it responds to social changes (e.g. COVID-19 pandemic) and addresses topics that are not only significant for individuals' everyday life, but are also newly emerging as research topics (e.g. digital health and tracking technologies, the future of food). Thus, we contribute to the development of new research direction on the grounds of gathered empirical data and theoretical and empirical sensitivity to micro stories of everyday life. We research people's strategies for managing everyday life in particular situations, for example coping strategies of specific social groups in emergencies, such as the current health (and consequently social and economic) crisis associated with COVID-19. We reveal social-psychological effects in relation to particular processes by not paying attention only to distress, risks and vulnerabilities, but also to ingenuity, creativity, and innovation in coping with imposed challenges, brought to people's everyday life by various situations. With regard to some of the presented research topics, we aim to test and upgrade existing and already established social psychological models for achieving behavioural change (e.g. post-mortem organ donation, digital health, sustainable eating, energy conservation, vaccination against COVID-19). Throughout our research, we rely on a combination of quantitative and qualitative methods to strengthen the participatory research approach. By adopting novel interdisciplinary oriented research methods, such as computer-assisted discourse analysis, the group contributes also to the development of new research directions (e.g. analysis of large corpuses at the intersection of social- and computing- sciences), and enables production of multidisciplinary knowledge. By introducing new research topics (e.g. digitalization of health (care), death and accepted processes of dying, food and energy related sustainable processes, migration and everyday life, practices of resistance), the group creates the basis for further research as well as for collecting new research data, for reconceptualization and theoretical advancements of the public-private-political relations as well as for the development of sociological and socio-psychological terminology in Slovene language. Thereby, the research group contributes to the development not only of specific subfields of social sciences (sociology of everyday life, of health, of family and intimacy, of youth, elderly and of life trajectories, of gender and sexuality etc.), but of sociology and social psychology as such by providing empirically based knowledge on macro issues.
Significance for the country
Among the proposed group's research topics, there are two that might have an important impact on economic development: health and sustainable consumption practices. Our focus on digital health will provide insight into how people use (wearable) devices and applications that monitor their bodily functions and behaviours, how they analyse the collected data and make sense of it and provide ideas how those practices could be integrated in the health-care area (m-health developers, managers of patient-physician relationships). Exploration of prosumption practices in the field of clean energy will inform existing energy providers and developers of technologies for clean energy production, sharing and storage on how to develop their business (and marketing) models that would contribute to faster dissemination of clean energy production and consumption practices in Slovenia. Exploring consumer behaviour and initiating behaviour change in the field of food consumption, especially the consumption of protein alternatives, which represent a sustainable solution in the future of diets, will provide valid insight for food marketers, food industry, the biotechnological sector developing protein alternatives and the green economy sector as such. Results will be important for both governmental and nongovernmental sectors engaged in designing food-related campaigns, interventions and policies. The research on food donations and food poverty will provide potential donors of surplus food producers, distributors, supermarkets, etc.) with understanding, knowledge and tools on how the donation chain is operating, what are the best practices of offering surplus food to end-users, how to approach organisations that offer food to end-users and what kind of donated food suits the healthy and can contribute to better health status of people living in poverty. The research will contribute to building efficient and effective relationships between policy makers, the economy, non-governmental organisations and other stakeholders that make decisions or have other important roles in food donation and poverty eradication policies and activities. In short, it will build grounds for the potential of corporate social responsibility to be realised as fully as possible. Computer-assisted analysis of large corpuses facilitate further analytical steps, allow us to track phenomena diachronically and across languages. The instrument developed for the automated news analysis will allow detection of semantic changes, cross-lingual analysis, and metaphors detection, which will represent an important step in Natural Language Processing. The outcomes of the project will be useful for media corporations, news agencies, and various private agencies that process and analyze textual data. In addition, the outcomes of this research represent an important step beyond the state of the art in the field of NLP and contextual embeddings, and strengthen the development of technological solutions for large-corpus data analysis. By conducting research at the level of everyday life, the group promptly identifies emerging social issues that are recognised as social rather than individual with a slight delay in public discourses. The research results contribute to and enable sensibilization of the scientific, professional and general public regarding the sources and forms of inequalities, the political and social injustice as well as the consequences of inequalities for individuals' everyday life, their construction of self and identity, and the social communities in general. By addressing the social inequalities, risks and uncertainties as the (contradictory) effects of the complex and simultaneous factors, the research program contributes to the formation of the comprehensive anti-discrimination public policies and recommendations and policies for greater equality that can reduce the possibilities of further stigmatization and victimization of the marginalized individuals, while at the same time contributes to the equality and democratization of society and more effective functioning of other social actors (NGOs, other professional public). The group will continue to implement their research findings and conceptualisations in their pedagogical work, thus contributing to the students' professional development across various disciplines. Despite our interest in how social inequalities are lived and persisted through, we are particularly interested in how those are being resisted and potentially transformed. As it is evident from the proposed research program, we aim to study practices on particular fields not only to reveal them and understand their mechanism better, but also to provide evidence-based guidelines and recommendations for inducing social change (for example, addressing existing inequalities and realising social potentialities in the name of social development). Thus, we aim to use the research results for influencing social change and boost social progress by encouraging and taking an active stance towards a dialogue with various stakeholders and relevant actors (governmental institutions, NGOs, professional communities, media etc.). The research results will contribute to the development of reflective ethics in major ethical dilemmas and judgments of people. People in everyday life accept many values and ethical principles without reflection: we accept a range of moral norms just like we accept habits. These moral norms represent the "ethics of the ordinary" or "everyday ethics". This ethics allows us to reduce the uncertainties before making decisions and makes it possible to avoid feelings of guilt afterwards. "Reflective ethics" involves asking questions, dilemmas, and contradictions; raising and addressing them. "Ethics of the ordinary" simplifies problems, while "reflexive ethics" involves the individual's ethical judgement and critical appraisal of the problem with the ethical dilemmas that may arise.
