Everyday Life, Geography and

As a basic definition, the term everyday life refers to those ordinary, taken-for-granted, habitual thoughts, activities, and settings that are close and familiar to all of us but that are rarely measured by governments or scholars or endowed any particular significance. Henri Lefebvre used the metaphor that everyday life is like fertilizer: It functions as a source of life-giving power, but it largely goes unnoticed as it is tramped underfoot. According to Lefebvre (1991), “a landscape without flowers or magnificent woods may be depressing for the passer-by but flowers and trees should not make us forget the earth beneath, which has a secret life and a richness of its own” (p. 87). Lefebvre also famously coined the phrase “the familiar is not necessarily known” to ...