>This leads us to what I consider far more important and interesting
>questions: how do social and political relations produce and sustain
>certain perspectives about "actual life possibilities"? How do those
>culturally disseminated perspectives about "the way things are" in turn
>reinforce social inequalities? How can we practically change people's
>perceptions of "the way things are" to challenge the status quo? What
>disappoints me is that the type of philosophical analysis presented by
>the Heidegger fans onlist obscures these important questions rather than
>bringing them to the forefront.
>Miles
I wonder if philosophers think this is their task. As you know, sociologists influenced by German social theory and philosophy developed a tradition of practical inquiry into how "every day life" works the way you describe. There was a tradition, of course, that failed to dig deeply into power relations, but what some people call "critical ethnography" attempts to sort these questions out. I don't have time for a disquisition on the topic, but Dorothy Smith's work is instructive here. (Uh, so is my own. :) In several books, starting with _The Everyday World as Problematic_ she explores how the phenomenology of everday life is shot through by structures of domination. Micro-level interactions aren't just the 'way things are' but are so for systematic reasons: I just described a few at the blog re: academic norms that are upheld thru micro-interactions around rituals of deference and demeanor in everything from the way one writes the acknowledgements section of a scholarly book to the way one treats the blog writings of someone writing employed as a prof at Swarthmore.edu. Those rituals aren't just about deference and demeanor in and of themselves, but are about instantiating the structures of power in our lives so they come to be seen as normal and taken-for-granted.
For Smith, she wants to show how this is not about individuals making rational decisions on the basis of their own self-interest. Rather, she wants to show how that self-interest itself is social situated and structured by relations of ruling, domination, and power.
Bitch | Lab http://blog.pulpculture.org