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A sociological and philosophical framework proposing that what counts as "ordinary" (normal, everyday, unremarkable) and what counts as "extraordinary" (exceptional, amazing, or strange) is not inherent in events or objects but is socially and culturally constructed. The same phenomenon—say, a person hearing voices—can be ordinary in one culture (spiritual communication) and extraordinary (pathological) in another. The theory examines how power, institutions, and ideologies shape the boundaries between mundane and miraculous, between sense and nonsense. It reveals that the ordinary is not simply what happens most often but what dominant frameworks define as such.
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