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Life and the laundromat: reflections on dirty linen and everyday private life
Author(s) -
Lawler Jocalyn
Publication year - 1997
Publication title -
nursing inquiry
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.66
H-Index - 49
eISSN - 1440-1800
pISSN - 1320-7881
DOI - 10.1111/j.1440-1800.1997.tb00097.x
Subject(s) - everyday life , aesthetics , judgement , sociology , quality of life (healthcare) , ethnography , social life , environmental ethics , psychology , epistemology , art , social science , psychotherapist , philosophy , anthropology
Life and the laundromat: reflections on dirty linen and everyday private life This is a paper in which I reflect on, and draw issues from, an unplanned ethnographic experience in a London laundromat. The concept of ‘everyday life’ has a kind of simple, even benign, quality. However, diere are many events in everyday life that are complex and complicating. Everyday life can be mundane – boring even. But it can also confront and trouble us, even when it concerns such apparendy ordinary matters like doing the laundry. This paper is about how the ordinary matters of everyday life can become problematic and how our involvement in them can confront us with dilemmas that are unwanted yet require our attention and judgement as participants in social life.