sociology of everyday life: a nexus of sociological perspectives in the study of contemporary Thai society

Natcharee Suwannapat

Abstract

This article reviews the theoretical background of “the sociology of everyday life” and its influences on conceptual frameworks, methods, and epistemology in sociology and anthropology. It also specifically assesses the contribution of this approach to the study contemporary Thai society through three representative research over the past three decades. These studies exemplify the changing scopes and subjects of study from sociology of “the deviant” in the 1980s, to the study of “ordinary people” in the 1990s, and to the study that emphasizes on the notion of “agency” in the 2000s. The article discusses these works comparatively in terms of their subjects of study, approaches, and their consideration of the relationship between social structure and agency. Finally, this review suggests that the sociology of everyday life represents a nexus of sociological perspectives; as it challenges the mainstream structural/positivist sociology and at the same time constitutes a conceptual basis for the more recent sociological approaches.