Queerying activism through the lens of the sociology of everyday life

Abstract

The approaching 30 th anniversary of the introduction of the 1988 Local Government Act offers an opportunity to reflect on the nature of lesbian, gay and bisexual (LGB) activism in Britain.The protests against its implementation involved some of the most iconic moments of queer activism. Important though they are, these singular, totemic moments, give rise to, and are sustained by small, almost unobtrusive, acts which form part of LGB people's everyday lives.In this paper, we aim to contribute to a re-thinking of queer activism where iconic activism is placed in a synergetic relationship with the quieter practices in the quotidian lives of LGB people. We interrogate a series of examples, drawn from three studies, to expand ideas about how activism is constituted in everyday life. We discuss the findings in relation to three themes: the need to forge social bonds often formed a prompt to action; disrupting the binary dualism between making history and making a life; and the transformative potential of everyday actions/activism. The lens of the sociology of everyday life i) encourages a wider constituency of others to engage in politics; ii) problematizes the place of iconic activism.Keywords: everyday life; quotidian activism; queer politics; equality; rights. Monk and Barker, 2015). Yet despite these legal protections, social change for sexual minorities is uneven, partial, complex and contested: witness, for example, the rise in homophobic hate crime in the wake of the EU referendum vote (Townsend, 2016) or the rolling back of LGBT rights in the USA following the election of President Trump (Siddiqui, 2017). In this paper, we aim to contribute to a re-thinking of queer activism 1 where iconic activism is placed in a synergetic relationship with the quieter practices in the quotidian lives of LGB 3 people. As Abrahams (1992; 327) has noted, this approach could enhance inquiry into the connections between 'daily life and structural and institutional systems of power relations'. Introducing the sociology of everyday lifeUsing the lens of everyday life to interrogate activism is a contested endeavour. Sarah Pink argues that everyday life and activism are often studied in isolation from each other (2012; 4).While activism takes place in public -it is explicit, explosive and political -the everyday is associated with the private, the hidden and often the banal. Piotr Sztompka (2008) It is this location at the juncture between individual daily lives and the structural context in which they are lived which makes the sociology of everyday life such a useful lens to explore small-scale activisms. Quotidian activism quietly, but powerfully, works alongside the explicit, political moments in our history. As Neal and Murji (2015; 811) argue, 'the realm of the everyday brings the structure-agency knot directly into view, but more than this it brings close the immediacy and intensity of being in and part of social worlds'. This location enables 4 exploration of how people make sense of society's norms and values an...

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