Stability and Change in Everyday Knowledge: From Taken for Granted to Social Representation

What do we talk about when we talk about everyday life? This chapter considers everyday life as a “metasystem” in Moscovici’s terms, a normative system that checks and organizes knowledge and thought. Looking at social representations theory, the chapter considers the structuring power of this metasystem, referring to two kinds of research where the absence (for deprived children) or suspension (in the first COVID-19 lockdown in Italy) of everyday life causes delays in children’s development and dismay in adults. The suspension of ordinary life highlights the social representation of “normality.” The structure of the “everyday life” metasystem is largely taken for granted, and this calls into question the relationship between the taken-for-granted and the knowledge that constructs social representations or, in other words, between stability and change in common knowledge.