Everyday Life and Cultural Theory provides a unique critical and historical introduction to theories of everyday life. Ben Highmore traces the development of conceptions of everyday life, from the cultural sociology of Georg Simmel, through the Mass-Observation project of the 1930s to contemporary theorists such as Michel de Certeau. Individual chapters examine: Modernity and everyday life Georg Simmel and fragments of everyday life Surrealism and the marvellous in the everyday Walter Benjamin's trash aesthetics Mass-Observation and the science of everyday life Henri Lefebvre's dialectics of everyday life Michel de Certeau's poetics of everyday life Everyday life and the future of cultural studies.