Keele Research Repository

The aim of this article is to contribute to methodological debate on how to research everyday life with a reflexive exploration of the ways of looking we developed to analyse video recordings of a 24/7 on-going performance of kitchen life. We bring insights from debate on the affordances of video for the examination of mundane everyday life, utilising theories of practice and phenomenological perspectives on ways of looking. Three strategies for looking and thinking using the video data in our research are discussed: looking at performance, looking into performance; and looking for practices. We elaborate how each way of looking maps onto different epistemological concerns and results in different ways of knowing practices and performance. We conclude by considering the consequences and ask whether it is possible and useful to work across these approaches of looking and comprehending.