Phenomenological Sociology

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Phenomenological Sociology
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Content

• Schutzs Phenomenological Sociology
• Peter Berger and Luckmann Sociology of Knowledge
  in Phenomenological Perspective
• Bourdieu on Phenomenology and Ethnomethodology
• Garfinkel Ethnomethodology

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Schutz meaningful structure of the world of
daily life

• Schutzs intellectual life was a concern for
  the meaningful structure of the world of daily
  life, the everyday working world into which each
  of us is born, within whose limits our existence
  unfolds, and which in its massive complexity, to
  outline and explore its essential features, and
  to trace out its manifold relationships were the
  composite parts of his central task, the
  realization of a philosophy of mundane reality,
  or in more formal language, of a phenomenology of
  the natural attitude. The understanding of the
  paramount reality of common-sense life is the
  clue to the understanding of the work of Schute.

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Intersubjectivity

• The study of intersubjectivity seeks to answer
  questions such as these How do we know other
  minds? Other selves? How is reciprocity of
  perspectives possible? How is mutual
  understanding and communication possible
• Intersubjectivity exists in the vivid present
  in which we speak and listen to each other. We
  share the same time and space with others. This
  simultaneity is the essence of intersubjectivity,
  for it means that I grasp the subjectivity of the
  alter ego at the same time as I live in my own
  stream of consciousness. And this grasp in
  simultaneity of the other as well as his
  reciprocal grasp of me makes possible our being
  in the world together.
• Though both focused on subjectivity,
  phenomenological philosophers within the realm of
  consciousness and Schutz in the social world.

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The common-sense world

• The common-sense world, world of daily life,
  every-day world ,everyday working world,
  mundane reality are variant expressions for the
  intersubjective world experienced by man within
  what Husserl terms the natural attitude. The
  common-sense world is the arena of social action
  within it men come into relationship with each
  other and try to come to terms with each other as
  well as with themselves. All of this, however, is
  typically taken for granted, and this means that
  these structures of daily life are not themselves
  recognized or appreciated formally by common
  sense. Rather, common-sense sees the world, acts
  in the world, and interprets the world through
  these implicit typifications .

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Biographical situation

• Common-sense world is given to us all in
  historical and cultural forms of universal
  validity, but the way in which these forms are
  translated in an individual life depends on the
  totality of the experience a person builds up in
  the course of his concrete existence. The actors
  actual situation has its history it is the
  sedimentation of all his previous subjective
  experiences. They are not experienced by the
  actor as being anonymous but as unique and
  subjectively given to him and to him alone.
• The example of stranger

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Stock of Knowledge at Hand

• At any moment in his life the individual has a
  stock of knowledge at hand. This stock is made up
  of typifications of the common-sense world.
• This stockpiling of typifications is endemic to
  common-sense life. From childhood on, the
  individual continues to amass a vast number of
  recipes which then serve as techniques for
  understanding or at least controlling aspects of
  his experience.
• Finally, the typifications which comprise the
  stock of knowledge are generated out of a social
  structure. Here as everywhere, knowledge is
  socially rooted, socially distributed, and
  socially informed. Yet its individual expression
  depends on the unique placement of the individual
  in the social world.

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Action as the starting point for a methodology
of the social sciences

• Schutz stressed upon action as the starting point
  for a methodology of the social sciences. It is
  an insistence on the qualitative difference
  between the kinds of reality investigated by
  natural scientists and social scientists. It is a
  plea for appreciating the fact that men are not
  only elements of the scientists field of
  observation but preinterpreters of their own
  field of action, that their overt conduct is only
  a fragment of their total behavior, that the
  first challenge given to those who seek to
  understand social reality is to comprehend the
  subjectivity of the actor by grasping the meaning
  an act has for him, the axis of the social world.

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Knowledge and construct

• All our knowledge of the world, in common-sense
  as well as in scientific thinking, involves
  constructs, i.e., a set of abstractions,
  generalizations, formalizations, idealizations
  specific to the respective level of thought
  organization. Strictly speaking, there are no
  such things as facts, pure and simple. All facts
  are from the outset facts selected from a
  universal context by the activities of our mind.
  They are, therefore, always interpreted facts,
  either facts looked at as detached from their
  context by an artificial abstraction or facts
  considered in their particular setting. In either
  case, they carry along their interpretational
  inner and outer horizon. This does not mean that,
  in daily life or in science, we are unable to
  grasp the reality of the world. It just means
  that we grasp merely certain aspects of it,
  namely those which are relevant to us either for
  carrying on our business of living or from the
  point of view of a body of accepted rules of
  procedure of thinking called the method of
  science.

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The constructs of the natural science

• It is up to the natural scientists to determine
  which sector of the universe of nature, which
  facts and events therein, and which aspects of
  such facts and events are topically and
  interpretationally relevant to their specific
  purpose. These facts and events are neither
  preselected nor preinterpreted they do not
  reveal intrinsic relevance structures. Relevance
  is not inherent in nature as such, it is the
  result of the selective and interpretative
  activity of man within nature or observing
  nature. The facts, data, and events with which
  the natural scientist has to deal are just facts,
  data, and events within his observational field
  but this field does not mean anything to the
  molecules, atoms, and electrons therein.

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Particular structure of the constructs of social
sciences

• But the facts, events, and data before the social
  scientist are of an entirely different structure.
  His observational field, the social world, is not
  essentially structureless. It has a particular
  meaning and relevance structure for the human
  beings living, thinking, and acting therein. They
  have preselected and preinterpreted this world by
  a series of common-sense constructs of the
  reality of daily life, and it is these thought
  objects which determine their behavior, define
  the goal of heir action, the means available for
  attaining them- in brief, which help them to find
  their bearings within their natural and
  socio-cultural environment and to come to terms
  with it. The thought objects constructed by the
  social scientists refer to and are founded upon
  the thought objects constructed by the
  common-sense thought of man living his everyday
  life among his fellow-men. Thus, the constructs
  used by the social scientist are, so to speak,
  constructs of the second degree, namely
  constructs of the constructs made by the actors
  on the social scene, whose behavior the scientist
  observes and tries to explain in accordance with
  the procedural rules of his science.

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Peter Berger Luckmann Sociology of knowledge

• Society is a human product
• Society is an objective reality
• Man is a social product
• People are the products of the very society that
  they create

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Object of sociology of knowledge

• The sociology of knowledge must concern
  itself with everything that passes for
  knowledge in society. As soon as one states
  this , one realizes that the focus on
  intellectual history is ill-chosen, or rather,
  is ill-chosen if it becomes the central focus of
  the sociology of knowledge. Theoretical thought,
  ideas, Weltanschauungen are not that important
  in society. Although every society contains these
  phenomena, they are only part of the sum of what
  passes for knowledge. Only a very limited group
  of people in any society engages in theorizing,
  in the business of ideas, and the construction
  of Weltanschauungen .But everyone in society
  participates in its knowledge in one way or
  another. Put differently, only a few are
  concerned with the theoretical interpretation of
  the world, but everybody lives in a world of some
  sort. Not only is the focus on theoretical
  thought unduly restrictive for the sociology of
  knowledge, it is also unsatisfactory because even
  this part of socially available Knowledge
  cannot be fully understood if it is not placed in
  the framework of a more general analysis of
  knowledge.

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Object of sociology of knowledge

• To exaggerate the importance of theoretical
  thought in society and history is a natural
  failing of theorizers. It is then all the more
  necessary to correct this intellectualistic
  misapprehension. The theoretical formulations of
  reality, whether they be scientific or
  philosophical or even mythological, do not
  exhaust what is real for the members of a
  society. Since this is so, the sociology of
  knowledge must first of all concern itself with
  what people know as reality in their
  everyday, non-or pretheoretical lives. In other
  words, commonsense knowledge rather than
  ideas must be the central focus for the
  sociology of knowledge. It is precisely this
  knowledge that constitutes the fabric of
  meanings without which no society could exist.

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Object of sociology of knowledge

• The sociology of knowledge, therefore, must
  concern itself with the social construction of
  reality. The analysis of the theoretical
  articulation of this reality will certainly
  continue to be a part of this concern, but not
  the most important part. It will be clear that,
  despite the exclusion of the epistemological/metho
  dological problem, what we are suggesting here is
  a far reaching redefinition of the scope of the
  sociology of knowledge, much wider than what has
  hitherto been understood as this discipline.

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Bourdieu total anthropology

• Society has an objective structure, but it is no
  less true that it is also crucially composed, in
  Schopenhauers famed expression, of
  representation and will. It matters that
  individuals have a practical knowledge of the
  world and invest this practical knowledge in
  their ordinary activity. Unlike objective
  science, a total anthropology cannot keep to a
  construction of objective relations because the
  experience of meanings is part and parcel of the
  total meaning of experience.

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Topics for a genuine science of human practice

• A genuine science of human practice cannot be
  content with merely superimposing a phenomenology
  on a social topology. It must also elucidate the
  perceptual and evaluative schemata that agents
  invest in their everyday life. Where do these
  schemata (definitions of the situation,
  typifications, interpretive procedures) come
  from, and how do they relate to the external
  structures of society?
• 
  Bourdieu

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Correspondence social structures and mental
structures

• There exists a correspondence between social
  structures and mental structures, between the
  objective divisions of the social
  world-particularly into dominant and dominated in
  the various fields- and the principles of vision
  and division that agents apply to it
• Durkheim and Mauss the cognitive systems
  operative in primitive societies are derivations
  of their social system the underlying mental
  schemata are patterned after the social structure
  of the group.
• 
  Bourdieu

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Genetic link between social divisions and mental
schemata

• Social divisions and mental schemata are
  structurally homologous because they are
  genetically linked the latter are nothing other
  than the embodiment of the former. Cumulative
  exposure to certain social conditions instills in
  individuals an ensemble of durable and
  transposable dispositions that internalize the
  necessities of the extant social environment,
  inscribing inside the organism the patterned
  inertia and constraints of external reality.
• 
  Bourdieu

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Political function by the correspondence between
social and mental structures

• The correspondence between social and mental
  structures fulfills crucial political functions.
  Symbolic systems are not simply instruments of
  knowledge, they are also instruments of
  domination
• 
  Bourdieu

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Social order is reinforced by representation of
social world

• The conservation of the social order is
  decisively reinforced by the orchestration of
  categories of perception of the social world
  which, being adjusted to the divisions of the
  established order (and therefore, to the
  interests of those who dominate it ) and common
  to all minds structured in accordance with those
  structures, impose themselves with all appearance
  of objective necessity.
• 
  Bourdieu

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Sociology of knowledge is a political sociology

• If we grant that symbolic systems are social
  products that contribute to making the world,
  that they do not simply mirror social relations
  but help constitute them, then one can, within
  limits, transform the world by transforming its
  representation
• Classes and other antagonistic social collectives
  are continually engaged in a struggle to impose
  the definition of the world that is most
  congruent with their particular interests. The
  sociology of knowledge or of cultural forms is eo
  ipso a political sociology, that is a sociology
  of symbolic power.
  Bourdieu

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Bourdieu on Ethnomethodology

• In contrast with structuralist objectivism,
  constructivist asserts that social reality is a
  contingent ongoing accomplishment of competent
  social actors who continually construct their
  social world via the organized artful practices
  of everyday life. Through the lens of this social
  phenomenology, society appears as the emergent
  product of the decisions, actions, and cognitions
  of conscious, alert individuals to whom the world
  is given as immediately familiar and meaningful.
  Its value lies in recognizing the part that
  mundane knowledge, subjective meaning, and
  practical competency play in the continual
  production of society it gives pride of place to
  agency and to the socially approved system of
  typifications and relevances through which
  persons endow their life-world with sense

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Habermas on Phenomenology

• Two lines of the analysis of rationality
• -Realistic line it starts from the
  ontological presupposition of the world as the
  sum total of what is the case and clarifies the
  conditions of rational behavior on this basis.
• -Phenomenological line it gives a
  transcendental twist to the question and reflects
  on the fact that those who behave rationally must
  themselves presuppose an objective world.

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Phenomenological line of reason

• The phenomenologist does not rely upon the
  guiding thread of goal-directed or
  problem-solving action. He does not, that is,
  simply begin with the ontological presupposition
  of an objective world he makes this a problem by
  inquiring into the conditions under which the
  unity of an objective world is constituted for
  the members of a community. The world gains
  objectivity only through counting as one and the
  same world for a community of speaking and acting
  subjects. The abstract concept of the world is a
  necessary condition if communicatively acting
  subjects are to reach understanding among
  themselves about what takes place in the world or
  is to be effected in it. Through this
  communicative practice they assure themselves at
  the same time of their common life-relations, of
  an intersubjectively shared lifeworld. This
  lifeworld is bounded by the totality of
  interpretations presupposed by the members as
  background knowledge. To elucidate the concept of
  rationality the phenomenologist must then examine
  the conditions for communicatively achieved
  consensus he must analyze mundane reasoning
  Habermas

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Defining Ethnomethodology

• The study of the body of common-sense knowledge
  and the range of procedures and considerations by
  means of which the ordinary members of society
  make sense of , find their way about in, and act
  on the circumstances in which they find
  themselves (Heritage)
• In contrast with Durkheim, Ethnomethodology
  treats the objective reality of social facts as
  the accomplishment of members- as a product of
  members methodological activities.
• For Ethnomethodology the objective reality of
  social facts, in that , and just how, it is every
  societys locally, endogenously produced,
  naturally organized, reflexively accountable,
  ongoing, practical achievement, being everywhere,
  always, only, exactly and entirely, members
  work, with no time out, and with no possibility
  of evasion, hiding out, passing, postponement, or
  buy-outs, is thereby sociologys fundamental
  phenomenon (Garfinkel)
• Ethnomethodology is concerned with the
  organization of everyday life., immortal,
  ordinary society, or it is the extraordinary
  organization of the ordinary (Pollner)

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Key points of Ethnomethodology

• Contingency
• Situated
• Indexity
• Accountability and reflexivity

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Points of Ethnomethodology

• Ethnomethodologists do not focus on actors or
  individuals, but rather on members. However,
  members are viewed not as individuals, but rather
  strictly and solely, as membership activities-
  the artful practices whereby they produce what
  are for them large-scale organization structure
  and small-scale interactional or personal
  structure.
• One of Garfinkels key points about ethnomethods
  is that they are reflexively accountable.
  Accounts are the ways in which actors explain
  (describe, criticize, and idealize) specific
  situations . Accounting is the process by which
  people offer accounts in order to make sense of
  the world. Ethnomethodologists devote a lot of
  attention to analyzing peoples accounts, as well
  as to the ways in which accounts are offered and
  accepted (or rejected) by others.

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Breaching experiments

• In breaching experiments, social reality is
  violated in order to shed light on the methods by
  which people construct social reality. The
  assumption behind this research is not only that
  the methodical production of social life occurs
  all the time but also that the participants are
  unaware that they are engaging in such actions.
  The objective of the breaching experiments is to
  disrupt normal procedures so that the process by
  which the everyday world is constructed or
  reconstructed can be observed and studied.

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Indexical expression

• 1) Whenever a member is required to demonstrate
  that an account analyzes an actual situation, he
  invariably makes use to the practices of et
  cetera, unless, and let it pass to
  demonstrate the rationality of his achievement.
  2)The definite and sensible character of the
  matter that is being reported is settled by an
  assignment that reporter and auditor make to each
  other that each will have furnished whatever
  unstated understandings are required. Much
  therefore of what is actually reported is not
  mentioned. 3) Over the time for their delivery
  accounts are apt to require that auditors be
  willing to wait for what will have been said will
  have become clear 4) Like conversations,
  reputations, and careers, the particulars of
  accounts are built up step by step over the
  actual uses of and references to them. 5) An
  accounts materials are apt to depend heavily for
  sense upon their serial placement, upon their
  relevance to the auditors projects, or upon the
  developing course of the organizational occasions
  of their use.

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References

• Yu Hai Western Social Theory
• - No. 28. Schutz Common-Sense and Scientific
  Interpretation of Human Action
• - No. 29. Peter Berger and Luckmann Object
  of Knowledge Sociology
• - No.31. Garfinkel What is Ethnomethodology?
• Bourdieu and Wacquant An Invitation to Reflexive
  Sociology, Part One.
• Habermas The Theory of Communicative Action,
  Volume 1, Chapter 1.