In this incisive book, Michel de Certeau considers the uses to which social representation and modes of social behavior are put by individuals and groups, describing the tactics available to the common man for reclaiming his own autonomy from the all-pervasive forces of commerce, politics, and culture. In exploring the public meaning of ingeniously defended private meanings, de Certeau draws brilliantly on an immense theoretical literature to speak of an apposite use of imaginative literature.

Preface
General Introduction

PART I: A VERY ORDINARY CULTURE
I. A Common Place: Ordinary Language
II. Popular Cultures: Ordinary Language
III. Making Do: Uses and Tactics

PART II: THEORIES OF THE ART OF PRACTICE
IV. Foucault and Bourdieu
V. The Arts of Theory
VI. Story Time

PART III: SPATIAL PRACTICES
VII. Walking in the City
VIII. Railway Navigation and Incarceration
IX. Spatial Stories

PART IV: Uses of Language
X. The Scriptural Economy
XI. Quotations of Voices
XII. Reading as Poaching

PART V: WAYS OF BELIEVING
XIII. Believing and Making People Believe
XIV. The Unnamable

Indeterminate
Notes

The late Michel de Certeau was Directeur d'Etudes at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales in Paris and Visiting Professor of French and Comparative Literature at University of California, San Diego.

"The Practice of Everyday Life, published in 1974 and now the first of his books available in English translation, offers ample evidence why we should pay heed to de Certeau and why more of us have not done so. For one, the work all but defies definition. History, sociology, economics, literature and literary criticism, philosophy, and anthropology all come within de Certeau's ken. . . The Practice of Everyday Life marks a turning point in studies of culture away from the producer (writer, scientist, city planner) and the product (book, discourse, city street) to the consumer (reader, pedestrian). . . . In sum, de Certeau acts very much like his own ordinary hero, manipulating, elaborating, and inventing on the scientific authority that he both denies and requires."—Priscilla P. Clark, Journal of Modern History

"Everyday Life is littered with insights and perceptions, any one of which could make the career of an American academic."—Thomas Fleming, Chronicles of Culture