Measures and Measurement in Everyday Life: On a Motif in Heidegger and Sacks

Basically, the paper is centered both on the construction, resp. usage of concepts in everyday life and on the necessity of legitimizing of sociological concepts in everyday practices. More concretely, it is focused on the question of everyday measurement. It is highlighted through a comparison between the specifics of everyday measuring in M. Heidegger’s Being and Time (§§ 23, 24) and the so-called “standardized categories” in frames of H. Sacks’ everyday “measurement systems” (Lectures on Conversation). Special emphasis is put on the complementarity between both perspectives and on the logic of use of everyday measuring constructs in everyday practices.