‘Snowed in!’: offbeat rhythms and belonging as everyday practise

Bennett, J (2015) ‘Snowed in!’: offbeat rhythms and belonging as everyday practise. Sociology, 49. ISSN 1469-8684

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Abstract

Belonging is usually seen as a taken-for-granted, and perhaps ill-defined, aspect of everyday life. Through looking at the weather, family life and the local neighbourhood, this article argues that belonging should be recognised as an active and rhythmic practise, creating and recreating relationships, or an ‘ethic of care’, between people, place and history. Using elements of Lefebvre’s rhythmanalysis, the article employs a diary written during a week of inclement weather to illustrate how belonging is done through the rhythms and activities of everyday life, such as being a neighbour. This demonstrates how belonging as a way of being-in-the-world, an ‘ontological belonging’, is practical, material and tangible. Repositioning the ‘sense’ of belonging as an everyday activity with tangible consequences brings with it associated responsibilities (an ‘ethic of care’) for place and the people who live there.