In relation to the reading by Fran Martin (Introduction in Interpreting Everyday Culture), with the weeks focus questions, I feel impelled to discuss my personal revelations. The reading opened my eyes to subconscious 'everyday' happenings, how these shape the 'non everyday events' and without even knowing it how these shape our culture. Our culture actually is our everyday; that is our repetitive and cyclical actions and thoughts. Also it is the breaks in our routine, the special and unexpected events ironically are what make the day to day ones 'normal', this was a new concept to me.
I found it interesting too, to note and find examples in my life of where opposing forces of societal structure and individual agency have become apparent, resulting in an abstract balance or resistant forms of culture, in both subcategories. An interesting example which puts it in perspective was the suggestion of when I cut across a park or grass area when walking somewhere, instead of following the paved path as the environment (the pavement) suggests. To take the analogy further one could consider the effects of this, while if it was just one person there may not be any, however if 100 people did the same each day, the grass in that area may start to die and a sign could be put up to stay off the grass.
While culture is such a broad concept, these structural examples convey how the boundaries of culture have been defined.
