Transitions in the life course imply a multitude of changes – what we have previously experienced as everyday life is interrupted, apparent certainties are questioned, new practices are learned, social positions change and everyday life transforms. Here, we provide insight into the ways in which the relationship between ordinary and extraordinary are constitutive in practices and processes that mark transitions as something special, unusual or new.

We draw upon the notion of extra-\ordinariness as a heuristic for different modi of marking transitions as special. With this, we understand extra−/ordinary as an open and mutually relational conceptual bundle that sensitizes us to focus transition research on the most diverse aspects and phenomena of transition and transformation, and how they relate to one another. From a Doing Transitions perspective that sensitizes us to the social practices of ‘doing’ transitions, we aim to reconstruct how extraordinariness and ordinariness are involved, and related, in transitional practices and processes. Against this backdrop, we ask: How does everyday life change in transitions through the relationality between the ordinary and the extra-ordinary? Which practices mark the extra−/ordinariness of life course transitions and are there different modes of extra−/ordinariness?

The first part of this contribution reflects upon the existing literature on theoretical understandings for extra−/ordinariness in transitions. We outline how a relational and practice-theoretical understanding of transitions is linked to extra−/ordinariness, formulate theoretical considerations of how this concept represents an heuristic improvement and discuss changes between ordinariness and extra−/ordinariness as a mode of transformation. Our aim here is not to present a fixed, ready-made concept, but rather to first identify incentives and perspectives, formulate them into central questions, and use empirical examples to suggest the possibilities of such a perspective.

The second part illustrates practices of extra−/ordinariness in doing transitions with two research projects on transitions at different points in the life course: the transition between childhood and adolescence or adulthood, using the example of the JugendweiheFootnote 1 as a rite of initiation; and the transition between adulthood and old age, using the transition to retirement as an example. The third part discusses how the relational constitution of extra−/ordinariness can be understood as a particular practice of differentiation that both produces and performs change in life course. Finally, we argue for the use of this concept in a relational and reflexive transition research.

Extra-/Ordinariness as a Relational Heuristic

Concepts of ordinariness are found across disciplines and come in different shapes and forms. The same is true for the category of the non-ordinary or extra-ordinary. In sociology, ordinariness has often been equated with mundane aspects of everyday life. For example, Norbert Elias (1978, p. 22) wrote to the concept of everyday life that it is “heavily laden with the weight of theoretical reflections”. But [...] Quite seldom is uttered what is actually conceived as “non-ordinary”. It seems important to consider these categories in relation to one another to understand their involvement in transitions.

Let us first turn to the concept of the ordinariness in everyday life: Here, Dücker shows in the etymology of the term that the composition of “every” and “day” “[...] bring the social meaning of the collective, common and the temporal of regularity and repetition” (Dücker, 2007, p. 122). Everyday life in this sense is profane, trivial, average and ordinary. Everyday/ordinary refers to what everyone has to do [...] and cope with emotionally on any given day, which is usually performed and expected in a particular present and therefore does not usually attract public or media attention. (Dücker, 2007, p. 123).

The notion of attention, the making visible and public of something that attracts attention, is a fruitful concept in this regard. Donna Haraway (1988) situates this making visible in her essay on situated knowledge with the mirroring practices of seeing. Applied to everyday life, we can infer: Everyday life is seldom made visible and seldom seen – it often unfolds below the radar of our attention – and refers to what is done on a daily basis, i.e. the practices of shaping everyday life. These include not only the “what”, but also the “how”, the “when” and the “where”. Ever since industrialization introduced a spatial, temporal, and qualitative distinction between “work” and “leisure”, work has become increasingly legislatively standardized. Despite this statistical standardization, which can be seen not only in time-use data but also, for example, in the electricity or water consumption of households, “everyday life” also diverges according to socio-demographic characteristics and corresponding living situations. With this Relations between different categories, it should be reflected, that

‘everyday life’ comprises a multitude of socially established, possible and individually used forms of realization […]; overall, gender, age and social class have an effect on everyday life. Given their own everyday lives, some often consider the everyday lives of others to be rather non-everyday. (Dücker, 2007, pp. 123–124)

With this perspective and the reflexive perspective of doing transitions everyday life and ordinariness (also their opposites) must be thought together with normalities and normativities, and the bound of doing transitions and doing differences (Stauber, 2020).

Transitions have both their intrinsic value as complexes of practices and processes, but they also recur to something that frames and is referred to as “temporary” – the states that bound them. These states are constructions that refer to a “normal” social order, and for van Gennep (1909) or Turner (1969), to a social structure as a more or less temporally and institutionally stabilized arrangement of positions. The starting points for transitions, understood as states, are socially (re)recognizable positions and bundles of characteristics, to which a relative stability is attributed (e.g., old person, child). In terms of practice theory, they obtain this stability through the fact that certain practices of their production are repeated, routinized and, in turn, normalized in everyday life, whereby a relative normality is ultimately ascribed to them. If transitional subjects change between these “normal states”, i.e., if they change from children (“normal state A”) to adolescents (“normal state B”), then a phase of re-adjustment, rehearsal and routinization of a new normality is necessary in between. These transitional phases are read as non-ordinary solely because they are always also temporally limited by the states they delimit.

This becomes clear, for example, in the differences between (extra-ordinary) festivities with their rituals and everyday life with its rituals. Ordinariness and extra-ordinariness are relational, which, according to Dücker (2007), presupposes a “functional commonality” (ibid., p. 124), “In this way, rituals secure experiential situations that make visible to the everyday world its meaningful, value-based foundation, as well as its perspective of origin and continuity.”

Such a ritual framing and corresponding exaltation was and is also granted to (some) transitions in the life course. The rhythm of ritual action is made recognizable through certain repetitions, for example at special times (cyclical) or occasions (occasional) (Dücker, 2007). Through the repetitions, a starting point for identities or biographies is laid or a temporal-social relationship is marked as generational. In a life course reference, rituals receive their structures through the life stage norms, in which they are embedded, among other things. They hold the claim of conveying dispositions for subsequent actions in everyday life: youth dedication as a contested educational institution (Gehring, 2000; Griese, 2000) reflects exactly this aspect; the interest of adults in influencing how adolescents grow up and that of adolescents in co-determining this process under their own rules of the game. That will be discussed later in the paper, together with empirical data.

Ritual practice is thus one manifestation of the extra-ordinary that creates and shapes transitions. Another, more postmodern manifestation is studied in event research – from the Love Parade to wave-gothic gatherings, pilgrimages, and so on. Events comprise a special form of aestheticized, public community experience and, according to the thesis of event research, replace rituals as traditional forms in a wide variety of places. In connection with rituals of transition, reference is often made to mechanisms of modernization as “eventization” (Gebhardt et al., 2000; Hitzler, 2011). The “communalizing force” no longer lies in a common life situation or life goals:

Events are the social places and periods of time at and in which the members of postmodern forms of society (such as scenes), which in comparison to traditional (such as families) or classically modern forms of society (such as associations, clubs, parties) are disproportionately looser and less binding (cf. Hitzler, 1998), find at least particular and momentary awareness of themselves. Here they find the opportunity to experience belonging and to develop an ego-stabilizing identity by emphasizing their own particularity and by setting themselves apart from others – largely through aesthetic stylistic means. (Gebhardt et al., 2000, p. 21).

The subsequent question could be, how eventization and doing transitions go together? Do we also find extra-ordinariness outside of such clearly defined phenomena as rituals or events? With that we should also think about, how far “outside” subjects and formations can be of what counts as order, as a position in or part of social structure and also ordinariness (Turner, 1969, 1998). Dücker emphasizes that traffic regulations also apply to Carnival (Dücker, 2007, p. 41–42). For categorizing more subtle differences and determining the different aggregate states of the particular, he suggests, for example, “immanent to everyday life, transcending everyday life, and away from everyday life” (cf. Dücker, 2007, p. 125; Thurn, 1980). As this categorization suggests, there are forms of extra−/ordinariness that are strongly embedded in everyday life and sometimes also stabilize it (immanent to everyday life), while others reach beyond everyday life (transcending everyday life), and still others alienate everyday life (bridging everyday life). Below, we will discuss the extent to which these play a role in transition processes.

Transition research can generate the analytical question of how practices of producing and shaping transitions make change as such visible and public. Often, ritual practices of doing transitions refer to everyday together with an old ‘before’ and a new ‘after’ in a special normative way (Dücker, 2007). With link to a life course, we could ask how extra−/ordinariness (re-)create and (re-)present un/doing differences and normativities. Clary Krekula et al. (2017) refers to – especially age-specific – normalities of shaping everyday life as “norma/temporality” – and also transitions between different states and statuses. Elizabeth Freeman’s (2010) concept of “chrononormativity” describes the practices of shaping everyday life that are socially framed as normal and their divergences according to the respective phase of life as “age-coded”. While chrononormativity guides when a person is supposed to do or have achieved specific steps in life – e.g., finish school, have children, retire – norma/temporality deals with the mirror-image associated normalities at the level of everyday life. If one wants to be considered an “adult,” for example, one has to work according to chrononormative requirements. This is accompanied by a specific norma/temporal organization of everyday life – and also transitions. If we follow this conception, we should think about extraordinariness in everyday life and transitions together with normativitiy, but we can use chrononormativity also to ask empirical when extraordinariness becomes important while doing transitions and which discourses are bounded, e.g., with traveling and retirement or family celebrations during Jugendweihe.

Extra-/Ordinariness in Transitions: Two Empirical Examples

This paper raises the central question of how, when and where extra-\ordinariness occurs, is constituted when attributions, identifications and representations change, and how this differs between different transitions in the life course. In doing so, we take up the underlying theme of this volume, which is centrally concerned with life ages as social constructions and categories of both social (Nassehi, 2017) and cultural differentiations (Hirschauer, 2017) in the life course. Accordingly, people in different life phases experience different transitions: children do not retire, and pensioners only go to kindergarten because of their grandchildren. Schooling starts at age 6 or 7, not at age 18; parenthood happens in adulthood, not at age 90 or 9. In this paper we focus on two such transitions, namely from adolescence to adulthood and from adulthood to old age. Both will be done by analyzing very concrete (transitional) events, namely the youth dedication ceremony and retirement.

The research project “Doing Jugendweihe. Ritual Practices of Transition” (Prescher, forthcoming) ethnographically approaches the questions: how youth initiation is practically carried out and which differentiations constitute the transition, who and what is involved in youth initiation and in which time-spaces it takes place. The study refers to grounded theory approaches (Mey & Mruck, 2011; Strübing, 2010) and considerations of practice-theoretical methodologies. A total of nine adolescents were accompanied for up to 1 year in the preparation, implementation and follow-up. Central research methods are the ethnographic interview (Spradley, 1979), participant observation, document and artifact collections (on image and video analyses Hoffmann, 2016). For analysis, this project uses situational analysis (Clarke, 2012) and methods of ethnographic collage (Friebertshäuser et al., 2013).

The project “Doing Retiring – The Social Practices of Transiting from Work to Retirement and the Distribution of Transitional Risks” focuses on those constellations of practices that constitute and shape the transition to retirement and asks who and what is involved in these practices, where they take place and which differences they constitute. To this end, we methodologically combine a qualitative longitudinal study, in which 30 individuals are followed between the employment and post-employment phases over 3 years with episodic interviews (Flick, 2011), photo and activity diaries, and observations, with statistical analysis of quantitative secondary data. This paper draws on the first two qualitative waves of the survey (2017; 2019).

Neither example focuses on the process of changing in everyday life-practices while doing transitions, such as using time or doing breakfast differently while transitioning to retirement (Wanka, 2019). Instead, they focus on variations of (ritual) practices, which are creating extraordinary times, spaces and things of transformation in transitions. In comparison, we see that not only (mostly) established ritual practices like Jugendweihe are involved in doing transitions and that transition practices can include different forms and qualities of extra−/ordinariness. Extra marked spaces and times are part of shaping transitions and discursive and performative ways to transform the transition subjects from an old to a new state or status (Van Gennep, 1909, 1986, 2005).

Extra-\Ordinariness in the Transition to Retirement

For the exemplary analysis of extra-\ordinariness in the transition to retirement, we single out a specific practice complex that every participant mentioned as a theme in their own transition: transitional travel. Travelling is certainly not the only extra-\ordinary practice in the transition to retirement, but it is a very explicit one. In general, traveling represents a form of social organization of extra-ordinariness (cf. Schäfer, 2015). In the context of transitions, however, traveling acquires an even more specific quality of extra-\ordinariness: it is often longer in duration, more expensive, further away, and in general different from ‘normal’ vacation.

Whereas we can see this quality in manifold transitions, like honeymoon travel after a wedding or the notion of ‘traveling the world’ after graduation, late life travel is peculiar. Older people are one of the fastest growing groups of travelers (Eurostat, 2016), due to both demographic aging as well as the specific propensity of the Baby Boomer generation to travel (Day et al., 2018). In addition to this generation’s improved financial and health resources, on average, and their biographical experience of leisure travel, studies suggest that Baby Boomers also exhibit a specific consumer orientation that focuses on meaning-making and self-exploration, rather than expediency (see Gilleard & Higgs, 2007; Green, 2006). Travel during the transition between working and non-working phases is a specific and growing phenomenon in this context.

Based on the project results, it can be argued that travel as a practice in the transition to retirement has a dual and seemingly paradoxical relationship to extra-\ordinariness in the process of transition: First, traveling practices that directly follow the end of employment establish the extra-ordinariness of the liminal phase that follows. Many research participants undertook a trip (more or less directly) after their employment ended, and this trip was often planned well in advance, long in duration and to a far-away place. Asked about how he experienced his first day in retirement, Tom answers:

We went on vacation immediately then [...] practically without a gap. So I quit one day and the next day we went down to Spain. For four weeks. [...] So for me that was also very important and that was also a very good decision now, also in retrospect, to take a vacation here right away. Yes, so, and to have the distance then, yes. That was good. That was nice. (Tom, 2nd interview)

These trips, which directly follow the employment phase, differ from “normal” leisure or vacations in several respects: they are particularly long, the destinations are particularly far away and/or secluded, and they often involve extreme physical and mental experiences, such as demanding hikes, bike tours, or long periods of solitude. Depending on financial resources, examples of these trips included three-month trips through Australia and New Zealand, vacations in southern Europe or trips within Germany. The “distance” that Tom mentions in the quote above was accomplished by various means. Tess, for example, went to a Canary Island for 2 months directly after her last day of work,

Not in this all-inclusive place where I usually go, but to really look for this solitude, to realize that everything is okay like this, that I am at peace with myself. I found that incredibly important and I enjoyed it so much that I asked myself, why do I actually have to turn 60 to allow myself something like that? (Tess, 1st interview)

Jan spent 6 months in a silent monastery after his (involuntary) departure from his last job, experiencing a very different form of extra-ordinary daily life:

Get up five thirty, meditate six to seven, seven to eight gong, eight to nine mindful breakfast, nine thirty to nine forty-five chanting and circle dance [...] 9 p.m. shift and then get up again the next day five thirty. (Jan, 1st interview)

While all participants discussed travel, some viewed this topic negatively. Roland assessed the extensive retirement travel in his circle of acquaintances as an “escape from dissatisfaction” and Petra, who herself traveled a lot after her employment, described this behavior as an “escape to the future”. Harald, for example, described two couples who were friends and who had each spent several months traveling through Australia and Eastern Europe in a camper van, respectively, and whose travels he followed via their blogs, but immediately distanced himself from such a life:

I think it’s great, I couldn’t (laughs) but anyway. Oh, I, so, no. So five months away from home, uh, no. There we have, I don’t know, too much, what’s it called, down-to-earthness or home attachment or something like that. (Harald, 2nd interview)

However, it was not so much the one trip at the transition to retirement that was devalued, but the fact that traveling can become part of everyday life for many retirees. This refers to the second dimension of the relationship between traveling at the retirement transition and extra-\ordinariness: Traveling can also become part of a ‘new normal’ of the retirement phase, a restlessness of everyday life in this new life stage that still structures time and thus partly takes the role of the former Zeitgeber employment. Those study participants who traveled extensively, even years after retirement, spoke of travel giving them a certain structure in their daily lives, and the annual passing of time. When asked how they had experienced the past year, many interviewees said that their travels served as memory stops to structure what they had experienced so far in a linear and chronological way. For many, travel thus went from being a mode of transition to a mode of integration; an ‘integration aid’, as it were, into the state and everyday life of a retiree.

In summary, the example of travel in the transition to retirement shows how changes in space and time can mark and constitute both extraordinariness and ordinariness, as well as the relationships between them. Traveling creates a space and time outside of ordinariness, outside of everyday life, to mark the difference between old and new status, conditions and lives. The same holds true in earlier life stages, as the following example of Jugendweihe shows.

Doing Jugendweihe – Extra-/Ordinariness in Marking the End of Childhood

The next example uses practices of doing Jugendweihe as a (secular) ritual transition from childhood to adulthood to show different aspects of extra/−ordinariness and the importance for the practices and processes of doing transitions. Jugendweihe or “youth dedication” practice as a ritual shaping of a transition stands as an initiation under the imperative of uniqueness. This uniqueness is a very ambivalent construct in Jugendweihe. On the one hand, it means the uniqueness of the subject, the principle of individuality. On the other hand, there is the convention that youth dedication takes place “once in a lifetime” – so it should be something “special” and in order for the youth dedication day to be special, it has to be different rather than usual. The special arrangement of eating during a family celebration and the process of styling for the special ceremony in front of an audience show how different practices are bundled to create “extraordinariness” and how they are related to a performative changing or transformation of the subjects of transitions. Second, it shows which practices include normative orders, which are must haves, and which are more optional, uncommon or normative usual. Third, it displays how the ritual practices refer to everyday life and build a mark to change.

Jugendweihe practices know a whole range of visualizations of specialness on the day of the Jugendweihe: In the normative ideal case, families rent a location, purchase catering and have musical entertainment, which turns youth dedications to family celebrations to a “large event” with many guests. Due to the celebration with guests, the table order is arranged differently, and food is served differently. Decorations and furnishings immediately change a room into a completely new, different space (tent in the garden or the renting of party locations). And also, to figure out, to get and to embody the Jugendweihe outfitFootnote 2 marks the transition from child to adolescent a visible, socially recognizable form through practices of particularity. The outfit is discursively marked as the visible sign of the transition. The ritual subjects wear their outfits at the ceremony, together with other attendees and their families, and later at the private celebration. The outfit should be festive and underline how someone has gotten older. In doing so, dressing demands a confrontation with age, gender and aesthetic differentiations. In the ritual, the transitional subjects are supposed to (re)produce themselves as “no longer children, but also not yet adults,” which is reflected on advertising posters in combinations of ball gown and sneakers, champagne glasses and teddy bears.

Another example shows how ordinary practices, and new or special practices go together in creating the extraordinariness of Jugendweihe as a transition: eating together with a special person in a fast-food restaurant – a practice that may be “everyday” for others. What is special is not just the setting, but the time that might not otherwise be devoted to a person. For Leon, who lives in a residential care home, what was “special” about his Jugendweihe was eating or ordering fast food from a restaurant twice a day, the presence of his mother and caregiver beyond a setting such as the help plan, and the time spent together with his mother that did not occur in this way in his everyday life because he lives in the group home and also comes home to many siblings during trips home. Thus, looking back, he talks more about everyday practices than the “out of the ordinary” celebration:

[...] at one to four was then this ceremony where we then stood there and got our certificates and these flowers and where we were then just accepted into the circle of adults then we have there still briefly grilled, then everyone has got a sausage [...] then I’m with my mom to the cinema so before to the pizzeria, we have eaten pizza, so ne family pizza [.] then we went to the cinema, [..] then we celebrated here in the evening a little bit, then we ate supper, I think it was kebab or something [...] then we watched TV. (Leon, 1th Interview)

The last example show how extraordinariness can be normative in the way which special practices are allowed and which (normally) not. Jugendweihe traditionally involves the ritual consumption of alcohol, which, as the first intoxication, symbolically completes the acceptance into the circle of youth and adulthood but not smoking. Smoking is also included in Jugendweihe but not in family or public celebrations. It takes place in separate situations such like parties with peers in the evening after the Jugendweihe ceremony. Leon’s Jugendweihe is again different because of a shared cigarette instead of alcohol that realizes extra-ordinariness for him and build a link to a different ordinary and status:

  • Leon: I also smoked the very first cigarette together with my mom for my youth dedication.

  • Interviewer: Really? [...] and how did that feel?

  • Leon: Good because you know you don’t have to hide anymore. (Leon, 1th Interview)

What this excerpt also makes clear is the assignment of the transition-from-to logic combined with age differences. Jugendweihe transitions children into adolescents on the one hand but declares this adolescence from the adult perspective as preparation for adulthood. This functional definition, however, stands directly next to an understanding of youth that emphasizes their intrinsic value, the youth-cultural practice (Prescher & Walther, 2018).

Discussion

Retirement and Jugendweihe are examples of how extra−/ordinariness is involved in transitions that happen at different points in the life course. Transitioning as a practice process implies oscillating between the ordinary and the extraordinary, everyday life and extraordinary worlds (Szabo, 2018). These extra−/ordinariness-related practices build up ‘special’ times and spaces as well as body-related gaps and connect states, such as childhood, adolescence, adulthood and old age, that are marked differently and occupied by special differences.

In summary, the results on extra−/ordinariness at transitions presented above identify central commonalities and differences as well as derive conclusions for reflexive practice-theoretical transition research. In doing so, we revisit the following questions that we posed in this paper:

How is extra-\ordinariness woven into those practices and their situations that constitute and shape transitions (and thus changes and differences)? How, when and where does extra−/ordinariness take place when attributions, identifications and representations change?

What added value does the concept of extra−/ordinariness bring to reflexive practice-theoretical transition research? Which theoretical, methodological and empirical questions arise from this?

  • Ad 1) How, when and where does extra-\ordinariness take place when attributions, identifications and representations change in transitions?

Taking the transition to retirement, extra-\ordinariness manifests itself, for example, in the practice of travel. The project shows that an extra-ordinary trip at the end of working life fulfils several transitional functions: First, it marks a transition by apparently deviating from other, “normal” leisure or vacation trips: they are particularly long, the destinations particularly far away and/or secluded, and they often involve extreme physical and mental experiences. Taking oneself out spatially, temporally and socially characterizes the extra-ordinary nature of the journeys undertaken by the research participants. However, this also indicates that transitional journeys, secondly, are themselves transformative: They break through everyday routines, change structures of practice, and confront foreignness (and one’s own self). In this way, they can help ease the transition between practices of everyday work and everyday retirement, but they can also help break one’s self-concept and identify with a new state. The extra-ordinariness of transitional travel thus conditions follow-up practices of merging into a new ordinariness. In the process, travel as a practice is in some cases woven into this new ordinariness and serves to structure life in retirement.

In the example of Jugendweihe, too, the two “transitional functions” mentioned above can be found in the many types of staging extra−/ordinariness: On the one hand, these stagings mark the transition; on the other hand, they themselves have a transformative effect.

In altered attributions and addressings, identifications and representations (Wanka et al., 2020), the importance of differentiating in the context of transitions (Stauber, 2020) (e.g., “different from,” “from-to,” “before-after”) becomes apparent. These altered attributions and addressings, identifications and representations, also in this example, lay the bridge to the adjacent condition of the adolescent who may now drink and smoke, travel alone and party. These formerly “special” practices also eventually become – at least ideally and during the adolescent phase – the new normality and help to structure everyday life (e.g., cigarette breaks, partying on weekends). However, the chosen example also makes clear that extra-\ordinariness is not only life stage-specific or “age-coded” (Krekula et al., 2017), but also dependent on the social life situation or “class-coded”: For example, going to a restaurant with family can be completely commonplace for some, and highly extra-ordinary for others. These intersectionalities must also be taken into account when researching extra-\ordinariness.

  • Ad 2) What added value does the concept of extra-\ordinariness bring to reflexive practice-theoretical transition research? Which theoretical, methodological and empirical questions arise from this?

What does transition research gain from considering the conceptual pair of extra-\ordinariness alongside the conceptual pair of state and transition? On the one hand, this analysis provides a new perspective on the “peculiarities”, similarities and differences in the processes of various transitions, and, on the other hand, we gain the possibility of looking at these changes with different forms and relationships, without having to use classical classifications such as ritual or event. Thus, the field of transitions deals with different aggregate states of how ordinariness and extraordinariness relate to one another and thus with constructions of reality that make a difference. And since transitions as social changes of state form attributions, addressing’s, invocations and the like, that something moves into a limited intermediate position of change, the question arises how every day and non-everyday life relate to one another in these processes, mutually constituting each other as a new, changed everyday life. For transition research, then, the ambivalent poles of ordinariness and non- or extraordinariness in connection with an ambiguity of state and transition are further relevant. The relational concepts of ordinariness and extraordinariness are interdependent and exist only against the background of each other or at least something else. And with transitions it seems important to look for conceptual possibilities to see the fundamental difference that is denoted and constructed with transition itself, namely change and difference in the context of practices of transformation, of transferring. In this sense, the notion of extra−/ordinariness offers binoculars with which we can focus on a process of differentiation that is peculiar to transitions and (according to one thesis, anyway) specific to transitions. In this respect, then, extra−/ordinariness is (at least) threefold:

  • a mode of producing, shaping and (discursively) marking transitions that operates via the production of a performative, public and visible contrast (difference)

  • a difference that is itself constituted and shaped in the change of and the change between states, i.e., is constituted in transitions

  • an ambivalent/ambiguous pair of terms that ultimately only exist in relation to each other and with which normativities and ascriptions of normality can be reflected.

From this understanding, extra−/ordinariness is not a mere “staging form” of transitions, but a mode of their production and shaping. Thus, extra−/ordinariness simultaneously contributes to shaping transitions and is itself part of the production of transitions. Transitions and extra-\ordinariness are in this sense co-constitutive, i.e., one co-constitutes the other and cannot be without the other.

How, when and where does extra-\ordinariness take place when attributions, identifications and representations change? And, if we assume non-linear processes: How do ordinariness and extra-ordinariness alternate in transitional processes, and how does one co-constitute the other, since transitions also operate with continuities and connections to ordinariness?

This contribution highlights different dimensions, facets and phenomena that can be made fruitful for the analysis and reconstruction of practices and processes of producing and shaping transitions in the life course under the term extra−/ordinariness. Extra−/ordinariness can be used as an access to understand the transforming of attributions or demands in transitions as a process that is published and ultimately brought to visibility and recognition through arrangements of things, actors, institutions and spaces. Even though the empirical examples discussed in the article focus primarily on the extra−/ordinary, the concept of extra−/ordinariness always simultaneously sensitizes us to the everyday. The phenomena that can be analyzed with it range from small, almost invisible changes in the everyday to clearly visible stagings of the extra-ordinary to the ‘return’ to a new ordinariness.