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Sociologists launch online journal to study the mundane: ‘”The idea is to sort of step back from everything that we take for granted and say, `What’s really going on here, anyway?”‘ said William Roy of the

University of California, Los Angeles. “A fish is the last creature to ever notice water.” (…)

The idea sprang from a 1998 article published in the journal Sociological Theory. Wayne Brekhus of the University of Missouri complained that there were

many journals devoted to extreme behavior but nothing concentrating on the mundane. (…) Brekhus’ half-joking call for a journal to study the mundane caught the attention of Schaffer and Orleans. They sent out e-mail notices six months ago

requesting papers and launched the Web site, www.mundanebehavior.org .

They received a handful of e-mails wondering if it was a hoax. They also got three times as many submissions as they could use for the debut issue.’ The table of contents from the first issue includes:

  • Myron Orleans, Why the Mundane? or, “The Unassailable Advantage”: Reflections on Wiseman’s Belfast,

    Maine

  • Terry Caesar, In and Out of Elevators in Japan
  • Andy Crabtree, Remarks on the social organisation of space and place
  • Devorah Kalekin-Fishman, Constructing Mundane Culture: “Plain Talk”
  • Michael John Pinfold, “I’m sick of shaving every morning”: or, The Cultural Manifestations of “Male” Facial

    Presentation