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The question of how we live among strangers in daily life is an established concern in contemporary social analysis. A key topic has been the achievements of the individual in rendering daily life among unknown others possible. Yet, questions of residual failure await full development. The study aims to describe the results of an Australian study that examined the significance and meaning of interactional breakdown with strangers in everyday life for the contemporary individual. Focus group methodology is used to describe common threads of understanding that ordinary people have developed around such events in terms of prevalence, reasons and remedies. Noteworthy findings are (i) the use of period and generational kinds of historical thinking in lay reflections on the state of everyday incivility (ii) the materialization of excessive individualism, runaway capitalist values and diminished community as key ideas within lay talk about the generators of everyday incivility, and (iii) the articulation of communitarianism as a preferred panacea to everyday incivility for lay actors.

Item Type:	Refereed Article
Keywords:	everyday life, focus groups, metropolis, perceptions, experiences, strangers, incivility
Research Division:	Human Society
Research Group:	Sociology
Research Field:	Sociology not elsewhere classified
Objective Division:	Culture and Society
Objective Group:	Religion
Objective Field:	Religion not elsewhere classified
UTAS Author:	Phillips, T (Dr Timothy Phillips)
ID Code:	63180
Year Published:	2006
Deposited By:	Sociology and Social Work
Deposited On:	2010-04-17
Last Modified:	2015-06-25
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