This new study from Ben Highmore looks at the seemingly banal world of objects, work, daily media, and food, and finds there a scintillating array of passionate experience. Through a series of case studies, and building on his previous work on the everyday, Highmore examines our relationship to familiar objects (a favourite chair), repetitive work (housework, typing), media (distracted television viewing and radio listening) and food (specifically the food of multicultural Britain). A chair allows him to consider the history of flat-pack furniture as well as the lively presence of inorganic ‘stuff’ in our daily lives. Distracted television watching and radio listening becomes one of the preconditions for experiencing wonder through the media. Ordinary Lives links the concrete study of routine existence to theoretical reflection on everyday life. The book discusses philosophers such as Jacques Rancière, William James and David Hume and combines them with autobiographical testimonies, historical research and the analysis of popular culture to investigate the minutiae of day-to-day life. Highmore argues that aesthetic experience is embedded in the mundane sensory world of everyday life. He asks the reader to reconsider the negative associations of habit and routine, focusing specifically on the intrinsic ambiguity of habit (habit, we find out, is both rigid and adaptive). Rather than ask ‘what does everyday life mean?’ this book asks ‘what does everyday life feel like and how do our sensual, emotional and temporal experiences interconnect and intersect?’ Ordinary Lives is an accessible, animated and engaging book that is ideally suited to both students and researchers working in cultural studies, media and communication and sociology.

Ordinary Lives, Death, and Social Class focuses on the evolution of the Dublin City Coroner's Court and on Dr Louis A. Bryne's first two years in office. Wrapping itself around the 1901 census, the study uses gender, power, and blame as analytical frameworks to examine what inquests can tell us about the impact of urban living from lifecycle and class perspectives. Coroners' inquests are a combination of eyewitness testimony, expert medico-legal language, detailed minutiae of people, places, and occupational identities pinned to a moment in time. Thus they have a simultaneous capacity to reveal histories from both above and below. Rich in geographical, socio-economic, cultural, class, and medical detail, these records collated in a liminal setting about the hour of death bear incredible witness to what has often been termed 'ordinary lives'. The subjects of Dr Byrne's court were among the poorest in Ireland and, apart from common medical causes problems linked to lower socio-economic groups, this volume covers preventable cases of workplace accidents, neglect, domestic abuse, and homicide.

The Mysticism of Ordinary Life: Theology, Philosophy, and Feminism presents a new vision of Christian mystical theology. It offers critical interpretations of Catholic theologians, postmodern philosophers, and intersectional feminists who draw on mystical traditions to affirm ordinary life. It raises questions about normativity, gender, and race, while arguing that the everyday experience of the grace of divine union can be an empowering source of social transformation. It develops Christian teachings about the Word made flesh, the indwelling of the Holy Spirit, and the Christian spiritual life, while exploring the mystical significance of philosophical discourses about immanence, alterity, in-betweenness, nothingness, and embodiment. The discussion of Latino/a and Black sources in North America expands the Western mystical canon and opens new horizons for interdisciplinary dialogue. The volume challenges contemporary culture to recognize and draw inspiration from quotidian manifestations of the unknown God of incarnate love. It includes detailed studies of Grace Jantzen, Amy Hollywood, Catherine Keller, Karl Rahner, Adrienne von Speyr, Hans Urs von Balthasar, Michel Henry, Michel de Certeau, Luce Irigaray, Julia Kristeva, Gloría Anzaldúa, Ada María Isasi-Díaz, Alice Walker, M. Shawn Copeland, and more.

How important are the media? How is culture changing? How is ordinary life being transformed? How do we belong? This ground-breaking book offers a new approach to the understanding of everyday life, the media and cultural change. It explores the social pattern of ordinary life in the context of recent theories and accounts of social and cultural change. Brian Longhurst argues that our social and cultural lives are becoming increasingly audienced and performed and that activities in everyday life are changing due to the ever-growing importance and salience of the media. These changes involve people forging new ways of belonging, where among other things they seek to distinguish themselves from others. In Cultural Change and Ordinary Life, Longhurst evaluates changes in the media and ordinary life in the context of large-scale cultural change, especially with respect to globalization and hybridisation, fragmentation, spectacle and performance, and enthusing or fan-like activities. He makes the case that analysis of the media has to be brought into a more thorough dialogue with other forms of research that have looked at social processes. Cultural Change and Ordinary Life is key reading for students and researchers of sociology, media studies, cultural studies and mass communication.

Not everyone will become rich and famous! For many of us, life will be simple and humble, and perhaps just plain ordinary. But life does present opportunities for making decisions that can lead to happiness, satisfaction, and joy. Our personal stories can be deeply rewarding and filled with lessons even if we dont find riches and fame along the way. In Vignettes of an Ordinary Life, author Marian Adams invites us to share in her life spanning nine decades and bridging two centuries. Marians ability and training in teaching propelled her economically and socially through a broad spectrum of experiences which transformed her seemingly ordinary life into an extraordinary one. Through opportunities such as directing church choirs and teaching Sunday school, she interacted with many different people and built strong relationships. Inspired by the Holy Spirit to write about the life and times in which she lived, decade by decade, Marian reflects on the political, financial, cultural, career, and family changes that influenced her otherwise ordinary life. From her early years in the Roaring Twenties through the challenges of the Great Depression, World War II, and beyond, Marian paints a compelling picture of her ordinary life as she searches for the path God planned just for her, knowing that God leads His believers to accomplish the extraordinary according to His purpose.

William L. Randall shows how narrative psychology is integral to how we navigate everyday life. He makes the case that all people function as narrative psychologists by continually storying their lives - as well as those of others - in memory and imagination. The book weaves anecdotes of encounters its author experiences with speculations on his own life story, probing the narrative complexity of our memories, emotions, and identities, and our experience of everything from romance to rumour and history to religion.

Do you ever wonder, somewhere deep in your heart, if all those things the nuns or your Sunday school teacher taught you are really true? Does doubt ever taunt you, whispering in the silence, I just dont believe all that stuff anymore? Do you hold close the unspoken worry of what will really happen to you when you die? It is easy to feel God in the flowers of spring, the solitude of a world blanketed in snow, or the laughter of children at play. It is never hard to imagine the hand of our Creator in the sunrise over the ocean, the majesty of the Rockies, or the billions of stars visible on a clear night in the country. What of the dark times, though? Where is God when your business fails, or you lose your job, or a loved one is injured in an accident or diagnosed with cancer and dies? Is God there when you struggle to make ends meet, when your child is hurt in a fall or, when you think yourself alone and abandoned? When Jesus said, With God all things are possible, He meant it. We pray that by sharing our ordinary lives, our extraordinary God will bless and encourage you.