An ethnography of a neighbourhood café: informality, table arrangements and background noise

Laurier, E., Whyte, A. and Buckner, K. (2001) An ethnography of a neighbourhood café: informality, table arrangements and background noise. Journal of Mundane Behaviour, 2(2), pp. 195-232.

Abstract

Café society is something that many of us as customers and/or social theorists take for granted. Cafés are places where we are not simply served hot beverages but are also in some way partaking of a specific form of public life. It is this latter aspect that has attracted the attention of social theorists, especially Jürgen Habermas, and leads them to locate the café as a key place in the development of modernity. Our approach to cafés is to ‘turn the tables’ on theories of the public sphere and return to just what the life of a particular café consists of, and in so doing re-specify a selection of topics related to public spaces. The particular topics we deal with in a ‘worldly manner’ are the socio-material organisation of space, informality and rule following. In as much as we are able we have drawn on an ethnomethodological way of doing and analysing our ethnographic studies.

• Item Type: Articles
• Keywords: Cafe society
• Status: Published
• Refereed: Yes
• Glasgow Author(s) Enlighten ID: Buckner, Ms Kathleen
• Authors: Laurier, E., Whyte, A., and Buckner, K.
• Subjects: H Social Sciences > HM Sociology
• College/School: College of Science and Engineering > School of Geographical and Earth Sciences
• Journal Name: Journal of Mundane Behaviour
• ISSN: 1529-3041
• Copyright Holders: Copyright © 2001 Journal of Mundane Behavior and the authors
• First Published: First published in Journal of Mundane Behaviour 2(2):195-232
• Publisher Policy: Reproduced with the permission of the publisher