Laurier2001b
Laurier2001b | |
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BibType | ARTICLE |
Key | Laurier2001b |
Author(s) | Eric Laurier, Angus Whyte, Kathy Buckner |
Title | An ethnography of a neighborhood café: Informality, table arrangements and background noise |
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Tag(s) | EMCA, Ethnography, Cafes, Public Space, Informality, Space, Rule |
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Year | 2001 |
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Journal | Journal of Mundane Behavior |
Volume | 2 |
Number | 2 |
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Abstract
Café society is something that many of us as customers and/or social theorists take for granted. Cafés are places where we are not simply served hot beverages but are also in some way partaking of a specific form of public life. It is this latter aspect that has attracted the attention of social theorists, especially Jürgen Habermas, and leads them to locate the café as a key place in the development of modernity. Our approach to cafés is to ‘turn the tables’ on theories of the public sphere and return to just what the life of a particular café consists of, and in so doing re-specify a selection of topics related to public spaces. The particular topics we deal with in a ‘worldly manner’ are the socio-material organisation of space, informality and rule following. In as much as we are able we have drawn on an ethnomethodological way of doing and analysing our ethnographic studies.
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