Paradoxes of everyday life: comprehension within the context of visual sociology

Abstract

The article describes the methodological problems and perspectives of understanding the paradoxes of everyday life within the context of visual sociology. It is proved that the paradoxical situations that we face in everyday life (even if they are not modeled by the researcher) can be considered as a variant of "breaking up of everyday life" like experiments that organized by ethnomethodologist G.Garfinkel to detect patterns of organization of everyday life. The focus of a visual example: commercial advertisement on beat-board, which can be considered as breaking up of everyday life through paradox. An algorithm is proposed for the analysis of the paradoxes of everyday life which presented in a visual form. The application of the algorithm on the example of advertising is described in detail. The possibility of applying this algorithm with respect to other types of visual materials is indicated. The author shows heuristic capabilities that give us the inclusion of phenomenological and ethnomethodological components in the process of analysis of visual materials through revealing different subjective meanings, as well as various types of discourses in the ratio of the "paradox - common-sense".