Author Information
Paul Carnegie, Universiti Brunei Darussalam, BruneiAbstract
This paper advances a sociology of the everyday as a productive approach for rethinking social inquiry in Brunei Darussalam. Drawing on original fieldwork from fourteen distinct yet thematically interlinked case studies, it integrates multiple qualitative methods – including semi-structured interviews, participant observation, group discussions, surveys, life histories, and photo-elicitation - to capture the texture of lived experience across diverse social sites and sample groups. This approach ensures methodological coherence and analytic depth in the interpretation of how structural forces and individual subjectivities intersect in day-to-day life. Findings demonstrate how religion, gender, place, ethnicity, migration, nation-building, and economic activity refract into and influence present-day iterations of local activity and identity in contemporary Brunei. These insights are situated within, and contribute to, broader theoretical debates on everyday practice, social reproduction, and agency under localized conditions of modernity. By critically engaging with prevailing schematic categorization and externally derived representations of Bruneian society, the paper underscores the value of situated, reflexive, and grounded knowledge production. In doing so, it highlights the importance of expanding intellectual space for local voices as a means of giving more nuance to an emerging Bruneian sociology.
Comments
Powered by WP LinkPress