Analysing Everyday Experience

NIAMH STEPHENSON teaches Social Science, Social Theory and Public Health, and Qualitative Research Methods at the School of Public Health & Community Medicine, the University of New South Wales, Australia.DIMITRIS PAPADOPOULOS teaches Theory of the Social Sciences, Critical Psychology, and Social and Cultural Theory at the School of Social Sciences, Cardiff University, UK, and at the Department of Education and Psychology, Free University of Berlin, Germany.

• Acknowledgements Prologue PART I: THE PROBLEM OF EXPERIENCE Interrupting Neo-Liberal Subjectivities The Political Project of Articulation PART II: WORKING WITH A MOVING TARGET IN SOCIAL RESEARCH The Collective Subject of Memory-Work The Sociability of Experience PART III: EXPERIENCE AND SOCIO-POLITICAL TRANSFORMATION Self/Freedom Rethinking Collectivity PART IV: CONTINUOUS EXPERIENCE Three Paradigms of Experience Experience after Representation References Index

'Few social scientists have successfully provided us - as persons and as social researchers - with ways to act on and transform our world. In their brilliant analysis of experience and their elucidation of the complex relationship between the socio-political and the everyday, Stephenson and Papadopoulos have done just that.' - Susan Kippax, co-author of Emotion and Gender: Constructing Meaning from Memory and Sustaining Safe Sex and director of the Australian National Centre in HIV Social Research'The concept of experience has always represented the touchstone of every approach in philosophy. The epistemology of subjectification developed in this book not only measures up with regard to sociological dimensions of experience, but even reaches towards the ontological fabric of research. A collective effort. A continuous effort. A historical effort. When, in a revolutionary moment, we started to develop an inquiry into the workers' class composition, we used a method we then called 'co-research', and basically we moved towards a similar approach in doing research. How wonderful to see this experience completely developed here.' - Antonio Negri, author of Insurgencies: Constituent Power and the Modern State, Empire, Multitude: War and Democracy in the Age of Empire'Stephenson and Papadopoulos establish that we must rethink the very foundations of experience so that it is possible to not only represent it but also to mobilize it in the name of a new politics. Along the way they revisit vital debates in social theory and craft an exceptional and convincing argument. This is a stunning reprisal for a generous version of experience; a welcome book indeed.' - Henderikus J. Stam, editor of Theory & Psychology'This book presents an important rethinking and positioning of experience after post-structuralism, which is of central importance for social theory. It is a crucial reading for all social scientists.' - Valerie Walkerdine, author of Changing the Subject: Psychology, Social Regulation, and Subjectivity, The Mastery of Reason, Daddy's Girl: Young Girls and Popular Culture