Multiple Normalities: Making Sense of Ways of Living

253 Pages·2015·0.83 MB·English

by  Barbara A. Misztal (auth.)

Multiple Normalities
Also by Barbara A. Misztal
INFORMALITY, SOCIAL THEORY AND CONTEMPORARY PRACTICE
SOCIAL THEORIES OF REMEMBERING
PUBLIC INTELLECTUALS AND THE PUBLIC GOOD: Creativity and Courage
THE CHALLENGES OF VULNERABILITY
Multiple Normalities
Making Sense of Ways of Living
Barbara A. Misztal
Professor of Sociology, University of Leicester, UK
© Barbara A. Misztal 2015
Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 2015 978-0-230-33695-7
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To my friends, Lila and Teresa, lovers
of literature
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Contents
Introduction: Normality as a Sociological Concept 1
Part I Towards the Sociology of Normality
1 How Normality Became the Norm 23
2 Explaining Normality in the Making 49
Part II Representations of Normality in Literature
3 Literature as an Aid in Understanding the Social 83
4 The Transgression of Solid Normality: The Novels
of the 1950s and 1960s 105
5 The Transfiguration of Normality: The Novels
of the 1990s and 2000s 133
Part III: Making Sense of Normality
6 Similarities between the Two Periods’ Images of Normality 163
7 Differences between the Two Periods’ Images of Normality 190
Conclusion: The Mystery of Normality 214
Appendix 1: The Main Literary Prizes 222
Appendix 2: Novels Published in the 1950s and 1960s 224
Appendix 3: Novels Published in the 1990s and 2000s 226
Bibliography 228
Index 239
vii
Introduction: Normality as
a Sociological Concept
The aim of the book
One of the most interesting promises of sociology, according to
C. Wright Mills (1959), lies in its ability to connect private troubles and
public issues. An improved sociological grasp of the concept of normal-
ity could, I believe, illustrate the value of, and challenges faced by, such
an undertaking. Informed by Goffman’s position, which conceptualizes
frames as mental structures that allow us to understand reality, and by
a broad constructionist approach, which suggests that such frames are
delimited by the cultural repertoires to which people have access and
the structural context in which they live, I view the notion of normal-
ity as the frame through which people see and interpret their particular
historical circumstances. By drawing on these theoretical strands and
seeing normality as a collective representation perpetuated in interac-
tional rituals, such investigations can illustrate the interplay between
private visions and public problems. By studying normality, seen in the
context of broader socio-political processes, in this book I propose to
investigate changes in the ways in which people make sense of their
worlds. Researching how the normalizing power of social interactions
upholds the operations of all the other institutions in society can also
contribute to the development of our understanding of how social order
is constructed and sustained.
To exemplify how the study of normality can help sociology to
meet its promise, or, in other words, to demonstrate that the life of an
individual and the history of a society cannot be understood without
understanding both, I can recall my experiences shared with many
o thers who lived under the same socio-political system or were subject
to the same legal requirements. One of these experiences is connected
1
2 Multiple Normalities
with a desire that people living in undemocratic nations, in war-torn
countries or in societies tired of the culture of violence often express: to
‘live in a normal country’. In such cases, the desire for normality is not
only the aspiration to regain a certain kind of order after a disturbance of
that order, or even its loss (due to war, catastrophe or political upheaval),
it is also about having a chance to have dreams and expectations fulfilled
in the future that could not be met in the past. If we follow Goffman’s
(1974) observation that normality also refers to an aspiration for the
future, seen as always immersed in the present from which desires and
ambitions originate, we can say that the notion of normality adds a
descriptive component that allows us to understand what it is about our
societies that is desirable, thereby establishing a crucial prescriptive ideal.
The importance of dreams and desired futures in the structuring of
reality is well understood by politicians, who often promise to make
their respective nation ‘a normal country’. For example, Romano Prodi,
on the eve of becoming Italy’s prime minister, said to journalists ‘I want
to make Italy a normal country’ (The Australian 17.05.1996: 9), while
Mazowiecki, the first postcommunist prime minister of Poland, prom-
ised to lead that nation to normality (Ash 1996: 14). However, it is not
only countries that, in an attempt to uphold social order, try to dem-
onstrate their ‘ability for normality’. The same effort to demonstrate
normality is required and is undertaken, for example, by people on the
margins or in transition, who are expected to fit into the operation of
society’s institutions. Being a migrant myself, I can relate to the find-
ings of empirical studies showing, on the one hand, migrants’ difficult
experiences of the formal processes of application, assessments and
citizenship tests through which their ability to be become citizens in
their new homeland is evaluated, and on the other, their strong desire
for normality. The rhetoric of immigration and welfare policies, with its
message of the importance of meeting the standards of ‘normality’ with
the help of the individual’s own self-monitoring, performs a normal-
izing function (Cederberg 2014). Apart from the officially prescribed
version of normality, migrants also have their own dreams of n ormality.
Their aspirations to ‘a normal life’ are illustrated by many empirical
findings showing that for immigrants ‘[h]appiness is feeling normal.
A human person likes to get normal papers, be with normal people’, that
being a migrant is like being on ‘the road to establishing a normal life’
(Wetterrgen 2013: 33, 155). In the process of finding and negotiating
their way in a new country, migrants see normality as ‘everyday reality,
which is the materially and pragmatically experienced state of being’
(Rabikowska 2010: 286). They also refer to normality as a factor behind