Precis and analysis of key concepts

Precis and Analysis Exercise

In their work, Escape Attempts, authors Cohen and Taylor, have impacted the sociology of everyday life significantly, which is apparent especially in looking at several of their theoretical concepts. Escape Attempts is a book that the authors assert is about "everyday life, the precariousness of that life, and the tenuousness of the identities that we construct within it" (Cohen and Taylor 2002, pp.30). While many sociologists have looked into the "escape attempts" of criminals, refugees, and captives, Cohen and Taylor alternately use their sociological tools to look for the escapes that everyday individuals utilize in their everyday lives within their homes, places of employment, and even daydreams.

To begin, Cohen and Taylor initiate the concept of the "personal prison." Cohen and Taylor assert that the personal confines of a physical prison are not merely the walls that surround convicts, but that we as individuals create our own prisons within our lives. They note that it is in breaking free of these prisons that we as individuals have the opportunity to begin asserting ourselves as real individuals noting, "the risk is no less than that of personal liberation, escape from a prison created by the mind" (Cohen and Taylor 2002, pp. 148).

In looking at this "prison of the mind," Cohen and Taylor are able to exemplify sociological theories of the habitus -- "which seeks to explain how everyday life is constrained by or resists more powerful social structures and institutions" (Sawyer 2001, pp. 41). In viewing this theory in such a manner, one can begin to understand that it is these outside institutions and forces that one begins to place their own existence into the conceptual box of a prison to which Cohen and Taylor refer.

Additionally, Cohen and Taylor employ the concept of "imagining" in order to shed light upon the longing for individualism each person has in a world of perceived commonality. Cohen and Taylor note that while individuals go through the motions of their day-to-day routines, the mind longs for an escape from the monotony and seeks an escape through "particular forms of consciousness such as daydreaming, imagining, fantasy, longing, and wishing" (Cohen and Taylor 2002, pp. 88-89). They view daydreams as a form of resistance to daily routine, and with the employment of the imagination and daydreams, individuals seek to imagine a future for themselves that will be better and more satisfying than reality.

While for Cohen and Taylor, the concept of paramount reality refers to a way of capturing the density, urgency, and intensity of the demands of everyday life on our consciousness, and to our sense that "life is going along" in a normal and stable manner, the inclusion of daydreaming offer an escape from such stability in an environment where the mind is left to wander freely completely unobserved (Cohen and Taylor, 2002, pp. 38). In viewing Cohen and Taylor's concepts of the mind as a prison and the utilization of one's imagination to escape such an existence, one can see how these theoretical concepts begin to bridge the gap from an individualistic sociological study to the "everydayness" of the world and the people within it.

Part II

In viewing Shearing and Stenning's article, "From the Panopticon to Disney World: The Development of Discipline," and Urry's article, "The Tourist Gaze," one can assess whether or not the escape from paramount reality as it relates to contemporary tourism is ever achievable. Alfred Schutz refers to our "paramount reality" as the commonplace, ordinary, familiar and general taken-for-granted world in which we live (Shutz 2010, pp.21-22). The question then remains as to whether or not one can escape this world in the context of contemporary tourism.

Shearing and Stenning's article, "From the Panopticon to Disney World: The Development of Discipline" note that upon arriving in Disney World, a tourist has an altered state of reality that is completely shaped by the creators of the theme park. They note that from the moment on "arrives in the parking lot," they are told by the park staff exactly what to do and expect in the context of how these friendly employees are taught to act around park patrons. Handling the crowds in such an orderly fashion is a task that is enormous but handled with odd structure within the context of the park. Visitors are "exposed to an almost constant stream of directions by employees, robots, disembodied voices" and the like (Shearing and Stenning, pp. 346). The reality that a visitor is faced with within the confines of Disney World is clearly an escape from the reality of their everyday lives, but is no real reality in itself. Instead this reality is even more processed and monotonous than how the visitor's may perceive their lives outside of the park to be.