This section discusses three authors who employ an actor-oriented approach in empirical research on everyday practices. Appadurai (2013) focuses on the optimistic outlook and future orientation toward a good life on the part of the poor, as indicated by the ‘capacity to aspire’ in everyday encounters in the context of unfavorable circumstances and uncertainties among urban slum-dwellers in Mumbai. Bayat (1997, 2010), as well as Autesserre (2014), exemplified the conceptualisation and operationalisation of practices in actors’ everyday activities in the workplace and social life. I am particularly interested in highlighting the usage and conception of the notion of ‘everyday’ that is explored and discussed in the three different contexts, because the idea of ‘everyday practices’ promises to shed light on the ordinary activities engaged by ordinary migrants in my research.
Appadurai refers to especially the urban poor in Mumbai. The ordinary people in Bayat’s writings are those who are mainly self-employed and working in the informal sector. They are often seen as positioned in the lowest stratum in their society. In contrast, the actors in Autesserre’s research are members of a professional intellectual group who serve as foreign peacebuilders in conflict zones. In other words, they enjoy better and secure salary packages, as well as higher positioning in their host society. The expatriates are also more mobile, as they are not subjected to the controls of a migration regime, as compared to low-skilled foreign migrant labourers, who are forced to accept the accommodation arrangements and salary packages decided by their employers. In most cases, it is not likely that labour migrants will be able to leave their work as freely as the expatriates. On the contrary, the migrants’ contracts can be terminated by employers if they are absent from work for only three consecutive days. The aforementioned contrasting cases regarding people, their skills and (in)formal sectors demonstrate lively accounts of their
‘everyday’ work and social life.
3.3.1 Ordinary Social Actors and their Capacity
Appadurai (2013) advocates the importance of the ‘capacity to aspire’, which indicates the navigational capacity of actors, especially among the poor, living ‘as refugees, as migrants, as minorities, as slum dwellers, and as subsistence farmers’
(Appadurai, 2013, p. 192) whether living in the cities or the countryside, significantly tapping into the ‘future-oriented logic of development’ to seek resources in order to change their adverse situation of poverty for the better (Appadurai, 2013, p. 179). In other words, the ability to make changes despite forceful external structures simplifies the situation, in that here it is clear that the agency in question lies within the actors, who are ordinary human beings in their daily lives. As such, Appadurai confidently calls for the necessity of placing ordinary human beings back at the center of the ‘project of future-building', instead of overly relying on the work of intellectual groups, i.e. scientists, elites etc. (Appadurai, 2013, p. 267). This insight is derived from the compelling capacity of people ‘to plan and design their own futures’ ( Appadurai, 2013, p. 267). Appadurai argues that the ‘production of daily life’ is the result of ‘continuous effort, imagination, deliberation, and persistence’ ( Appadurai, 2013, p. 253) in contrast to the previous and yet prominent perspective on society as ‘stable, traditional, unreflective, and unquestioned’
(Appadurai, 2013, p. 254). Appadurai is convinced that this navigational capacity gives rise to the ‘imagining possibilities’ of actors to gradually draw attention and support from the public to generate collective hope. In addition, the navigational capacity is also indicated in these actors’ negotiation power with authorities, whether the state or market forces, to improve their lives and gain respect for striving to live a dignified life.
Bayat investigates and analyses ‘practices of everyday encroachments’ of a mass, though passive, movement of rural migrants to urban areas by gradually occupying unused public spaces, such as street sidewalks, with an aim to assert their right to the city (Bayat, 2010). These ‘informal people’ are the disenfranchised, ‘those labouring people who take on low-income, low-skilled, low-status, and low-security jobs, and who are pushed to live in the marginal locales of slums and squatter settlements’; and the terms ‘urban dispossessed, disenfranchised, and urban poor’ are used interchangeably in Bayat’s writing (Bayat, 2010, p. 284). For Bayat, the concept of ‘everyday’ means ‘activities’
(Bayat, 1997, p. 55) or ‘ordinary practices of everyday life’ (Bayat, 1997, p. 53) that are characterised as being of a ‘mundane, ordinary and daily nature’; ‘these practices represent natural and logical ways in which the disenfranchised survive hardships and improve their lives’ (Bayat, 1997, p. 55). Instances of ‘ordinary daily practices of life’
include ‘working, playing sports, jogging, singing, running for public offices.’(Bayat,
2010, p. 98) Bayat offers a broader approach to framing survival, which ranges from the perspective of merely surviving despite insufficiency, to doing well enough and with a hope to improve their present life. This perspective broadens the way that poor ordinary people or groups are viewed. First, they do not constitute a homogenous group, as poor people do not all share exactly the same circumstances and characteristics; second, the poor who have to survive on a day-to-day basis seeking food are in a considerably different situation as compared to the poor who do not struggle for food but intend to live a better life. Therefore, the priority and aspiration for the betterment of one’s situation, whether it is about getting daily meals or keeping more savings, are included in Bayat’s terminology of ‘survival’.
3.3.2 Habit and Narratives in Everyday Practices
Autesserre (2014) frames the everyday lives of foreign peace builders who work in conflict zones by using three concepts: practices, habit, and narratives. She builds on the definition of practices as ‘routine activities (rather than consciously chosen/ intentional actions) notable for their unconscious, automatic, un-thought character’ (Swidelr, 2001, in Autesserre, 2014, p. 29) that are manifested at individual or organisational levels. She borrows the definition of practices in international relations to outline the four characteristics which compose a practice. The categories overlap somewhat with different ideas and concepts raised and discussed by practice theorists, especially Schatzki, in the earlier section on elements of practice. First, doing as performance; second, the recurrence nature of activities leads to certain patterned practice; third, background knowledge or background dispositions influence the performance of practice; fourth, there is an important linkage between ideas and material. Autesserre explores the concept of practice through the example of the practice of helping a host country to build peace. Briefly, the foreign peacebuilders are sent to the host society. Their tacit understanding further facilitates the incorporation of expatriates into the new environment; for instance, they are in the conflict zones to help out because they have the capacity to do so. Sources of practice, are likely to be observed in the form of a practice which is the product of their
‘background dispositions,’ (p.31) which ‘every social being carries and uses regularly, if
unconsciously,’ in everyday life (Pouliot 2008, p 258 and 269 in ( Autesserre, 2014, p.
31). She argues that practices are ‘sustained by a repertoire of ideational and material communal resources, such as “routines, words, tools, ways of doing things, stories, symbols, and discourse” – including narratives’ (Adler 2005, p. 15 and 17 in ( Autesserre, 2014, p. 31). In this context, ideational means ‘enacting moral claims’; for example, ‘the host population needs help’, in the practice of helping. The material aspects include for instance the logos, and banners used by the peacebuilders. Another fundamental concept of practice is that of ‘anchoring practice’, as advocated by Ann Swidler, which refers to a
‘bundle of interwoven practices’ which enables various other practices, but all practices are linked to ‘a common reference point’.
Habit is an important component, of which the author emphasises that the characteristic deployed is ‘the profoundly unthoughtful and automatic nature of those particular practices’ (Autesserre, 2014, p. 32). It draws on a finding relating to which habitual ways of doings and thinking are established unconsciously when expatriates are facilitated to follow the ‘security routines’ in the host society. However, from the elaborations above, the notion of habit which is entirely ‘unthought and automatic’ must be scrutinised, because it can be considered as a learned skill in the initial stages, and it only becomes a totally ‘automatic’ response after a certain period in the field. The notion of ‘unthought and automatic’ habitual ways of acting also falls short of capturing the processes of changing or becoming. For instance, new habits emerge when there is a ‘crisis’
occurring in the current ways of living, as argued by Schatzki (2002) and Reckwitz (2002).
Nevertheless, with her concept of narratives, meaning ‘stories that people create to make sense of their lives and environments’, Autesserre (2014, p. 33) links their sayings and doings, as well as the surrounding non-human materials, as she suggests that practices are
‘sustained by a repertoire of ideational and material communal resources […] such as
“routines, words, tools, ways of doing things, stories, symbols, and discourse” – including narratives’ ( Autesserre, 2014, p. 33). For instance, narratives include ‘views’ or ‘an idea’,
‘which has its active interaction with material concerns in practices’ (Autesserre, 2014, pp. 34–35). Narratives aid the analysis of why people behave in certain ways; for example, what ideas that facilitate their practices. In other words, narratives give rise to new practices, or help to sustain practice-as-performance. However, it is useful to distinguish
between the big idea which may be motivated by a narrative at a higher level, such as ‘the population has a lack of expertise in dealing with conflict, and therefore our professional and trained services are needed’, in comparison to Bayat’s reference to ordinary discursive narratives, which represent the ‘moral justification’ of ordinary people that underlie the activities carried out by ordinary men and women on daily basis (Bayat, 1997, p. 70), for instances with sayings and statements such as ‘what else can we do?’, or ‘there is no other way’ (Bayat, 1997, p. 61).
The everyday practices of ordinary people are driven by an ability to aspire, as the
‘capacity to aspire’ can be seen in Bayat’s disenfranchised, who are trying to survive in an urban settlement in which they resist the assertion of control by local government through everyday encroachment, whilst Appadurai showcases how even the marginalised urban poor are endowed with the capacity to aspire to act collectively in order to protest against urban government management, and this capacity is facilitated by institutional support, such as legal training, counselling and the like. As such, these two prominent examples demonstrate that everyone has the ‘capacity to aspire’, either as an active fighter or as a passive victim. In other words, actors’ activities show in their active daily engagements by doing ordinary things, to not merely to survive, but also live a better life.
Thus, I relate the ‘capacity to aspire’ to ordinary everyday practices to indicate that aspiring in normal life does not necessarily adopt, for instance, either of the two extreme forms of passive or active resistance. Rather, the ‘capacity to aspire’ is evident in people’s everyday doings and sayings, as it refers to the living of normal life by ordinary people.
In fact, the lens of everyday practices enables social scientists to more deeply investigate the performances of ordinary migrants.
3.3.3 Summary
To sum up, I have looked at the ideas of practice, ordinary life, and everyday practices. There are two main strands in terms of the ways practice is understood: on one hand, practice studies stem from a theoretical approach; on the other hand, practice is understood through the lens of ethnographic approaches; for instance, actors’ practices have applied to a wide range of people ranging from marginalised groups to highly skilled
international experts. There are distinctive characteristics attributed to practices, which evoke discussions as to whether practice should be understood as a nexus of doings and sayings in relation to routinised daily action, or rather as intentional, conscious efforts;
permanence versus temporality; regularity versus spontaneity; the role of emotion and feeling, as well as the active engagement with materiality, i.e. place, are all debated with regard to the notion of practice.
The analytical framework regarding social practices has proven fruitful, as discussed in earlier section, with prominent authors including Schatzki, Bayat, Appadurai, and Autesserre. For example, Bayat’s insights into the everyday encroachment by ordinary disfranchised people who are actively engaged in informal sectors through the daily practices include their occupying unused urban spaces, and appropriating the street for all kinds of entrepreneurship. Bayat used a particular lens in which the actors are situated in a context of informal settlement, and he characterised the subversion of the marginal group, with their ‘capacity to aspire’, and their intentional hopes to survive (notably, the notion of survival ranges from to getting enough daily food to improving their life), to the extent of gradually and quietly encroaching on the city in the end. Bayat’s analytical framework is helpful in understanding ordinariness and the everyday practices of actors. However, the particular lenses that Bayat adopted on framing practices, as mentioned earlier, are not entirely suitable to adopt in my study. A similar argument has been put forward by other authors who have adapted particular aspects of others’ concepts, or tailored the available analytical lenses to suit the practices they are investigating. My research examines the migration regime by focusing on migrants’ everyday lives, and deals with the situation both inside and outside factory and construction sites in Penang. As such, it is necessary to adopt a more inclusive or broader conceptual framework to in order to address the empirical realities sufficiently.