Article

Enchanting the Street: Investigating the Secular Foundations of Everyday Life

Abstract

The process of secularization has produced many issues that will be discussed in a great number of disciplines for a long time to come. In order for social science’s range of interest and influence to be narrowed, especially for its inclination toward works focusing on Everyday Life, it has been necessary to wait for significant doubt toward modernity to appear in society. Together with the ripening of this doubt, the different goals and pre-suppositions at the beginning of the 20th century, as well as works dealing with Everyday Life, mutual conclusions have been reached implying that Everyday Life is a secular construction. The goal of this article is three fold; the first is to follow the trail of belief, the second is to investigate Everyday Life’s secular foundations through an alternative conceptual framework, and the third is to discuss Everyday Life’s theory of transformation. The converging points of such a discussion lie in the separation of religion and state, discussions on secularism, secularization and rationalization theories, and the literature on Everyday Life. An alternative reading of the relations between these concepts and theories will be performed, and in doing so, the actions and implementations used for transformation by Everyday Life (the concept of sta-tactic implementation) will be presented. As will be the focus of this article, Everyday Life’s theory of transformation includes the current pattern of Everyday Life, the conditions for the existence and survival of this pattern, and finally, the concept of intention and being an actor in daily life through Everyday Life’s transformation perspective. For this reason, discussion will be opened up regarding Islamism’s being an active agent in Everyday Life.

Keywords

Secularism Secular Religious Rationality Enchantment Everyday Life Sta-tactic Implementation Islamism