ABSTRACT

This chapter aims to develop the grounds for the rationale for paying close attention to the temporal unfolding, or emergence, of order. It explains the grounds for the argument that maintaining an order, repairing an order, or establishing a new order requires not only instructions or injunctions, but also a much broader set of activities that can be well summarized as “education.” The world of experience, the one we live in, is mostly ordinary, normal—in the most common sense, routine, normal meaning of the word “normal”. That the world of our experience can appear so ordinary, normal, has been a problem for the social sciences that emerged in the late 19th century. Sorting out how a particular normal arises is difficult. Only the most determined efforts of specialists can reveal the properties of any normal, and particularly the mechanisms that allow for it to appear normal, stay normal, and keep appearing normal for some time.