ABSTRACT
The reproduction of a social order and its structures of privilege is a complex multidimensional process that occurs at several levels of analysis: cultural, social and personal. It involves a constant interaction between these elements. A society’s ideology, (legitimation, aspirations and self-understandings) is loudly proclaimed and ritualized in emotion-laden ceremonies. But as ideologies mystify and sanctify power arrangements, they lie hidden in everyday routines, discourses and interactional patterns that seem ‘normal’.1 This normalcy includes the practices and beliefs that inform childhood socialization to produce a typicality of character, shared stocks of knowledge and interpersonal patterns that recursively secure reproduction. In this way the arbitrary becomes typical and the typical unquestioned and the unquestioned endures. This is especially important to modern societies whose polities require a high degree of social and economic stability. But the socialized and legitimated nature of ordinary life practices, discourses and typical character that well serve hegemonic stabilization, may, however, provide the individual personal malaise.
