The Other Side

The study of History has been presented as a model based on the narration of facts focused on dates. The Nouvelle Histoire emerged opposing this old model by accepting the challenge of focusing on ordinary individuals and putting a name and a face to those characters who had been cast into oblivion. ‹‹The daily routine is every man’s life. There is no such man, regardless of his ‘insubstantiality’, who can merely live the daily routine, although it would mainly absorb him. The daily routine is the life of the man who is complete […] ››* Bordieu claimed that habitus, those every day activities which give shape to people’s lifestyles, should be classified according to the social class people belong to. Thus, the working class bases its daily routine on what is needed whereas the upper class does it on what is desired according to its preferences and cultural demands. As a response to such contrast, Thornstein B. Veblen proposed the existence of a new social class, “the leisure class”, promoting it as the social class that lets the others perform the less pleasant tasks to be able to carry out the most appealing ones. The Other Side represents the routine of diverse individuals in order to manifest the importance of daily routine by decontextualizing a fictional character and showing its adaptation to our world. * Heller, A. 1977. Sociología de la vida cotidiana. Barcelona, Ediciones Península.