Abstract

The concept of everyday life in social psychology is all too often taken as a given. Both cognitive social psychology and the theory of social representations focus on social knowledge - they are concerned with how people make sense of the world around them and how they make sense of their own and other people's behavior in everyday interactions. Yet, in their study of social knowledge, both cognitive social psychology and the theory of social representations largely neglect the fundamental dimension of the everyday. The concept of everyday life, in these two disciplines, merely constitutes the background on which interactions take place. Conversely, in our analysis, the concept of everyday life acquires pride of place. We define everyday life as the outcome of shared social processes that imply the transformation of explicit knowledge into implicit knowledge. This transformation occurs through processes of familiarization, routinization and ritualization of individual and group experiences. From a phenomenological perspective, we emphasize the structuring and regulatory power of the everyday with respect to processes such as thought, behavior and affections. Moreover, we suggest that the phenomenology of everyday life constitutes a bridge between cognitive social psychology and the theory of social representations.