Phenomenology Essay ⋆ Sociology Essay Examples ⋆ EssayEmpire

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In its philosophical guise phenomenology maintains that the pure meaning of phenomena are only to be subjectively apprehended and intuitively grasped in their essence. It became relevant to the social sciences within the tension between logical positivism and interpretivism, or, in nineteenth-century terms, between natural and cultural sciences. At the turn of the twentieth century the neo-Kantian insistence on a distinctive epistemology and methodology for the ”cultural” sciences found a well-considered resonance in German sociological thought (Weber). The growth, explanatory force and extension of natural science’s objective perspective and positivistic methodology to the domains of the cultural sciences were challenged by the philosopher Edmund Husserl who laid the foundation of the twentieth-century phenomenological movement.

He emphasized how humans relate subjectively and intersubjectively (with others) to the world meaningfully experienced – the ”life-world” (Lebenswelt). This world is apprehended in the ”natural attitude,” in an unquestioning and pre-predicative way. The philosopher’s task is to transcend this world of taken for granted meanings, of phenomena (appearances) in order to grasp its essence (eidos). Towards this end one has to engage in a form of reflection called ”bracketing” (epoche), a procedure that exposes the self-evidence of the ”natural attitude” as mere claims.

The grasp of ”essences” proved less attractive to sociological thinkers. It was the concepts ”life-world” and ”bracketing” that were taken up by Alfred Schutz in his pioneering work, Phenomenology of the Social World (1967).

To him the perspective of the social actor (instead of the philosopher’s ”subject”) is central and inter-subjectively linked to others in a shared life-world. He concentrates on the meaningful construction of the social world. He thus re-conceptualizes Husserl’s universal life-world more narrowly as the ”social world.” The actor experiences the (social) life-world from the ”natural attitude,” taking it for granted in an unquestioning way. The cognitive style of the life-world thus entails the ”suspension of doubt.” The social world is spatially and temporally structured from the point of view of the actor. Within this framework he/she creates or draws on typifications of situations, persons and recipes for action. Schutz calls the actor’s typifications in everyday life ”first order” constructs.

Schutz employs ”bracketing” in order to explain ”second order,” i.e. (social) scientific constructs. Scientific constructs bracket the truth claims of the natural attitude. In transcending the life-world of the mundane, phenomenologically oriented scientists utilize a cognitive style that suspends belief rather than doubt. They ”detach” themselves as disinterested observers. The typications they produce are not concrete but more abstract and generic. They are ”ideal-types” in Weber’s terms.

Peter Berger and Thomas Luckmann’s The Social Construction of Reality: A Treatise in the Sociology of Knowledge (1972) focuses on the social construction of reality rather than of social reality. They ”bracket” the ontological claims of society. In an ambitious integrative project they account for the intersubjective construction of reality, its institutionalization as structure and internalization in a dialectical fashion that portrays humans as both constructors and constructs.

Rather than employing phenomenology as a perspective or method other exponents view it as a paradigm in the form of phenomenological sociology. In 1971 the American Sociological Association recognized it as a specialization in this form. Phenomenology also inspired ethnomethodology’s critical examination of the methods ordinary members of society employ to achieve a sense of normality in everyday situations. In recent decades its subjective emphasis guided a slew of qualitative research manuals. Its influence rapidly extended to Japan, Europe, and Latin America. Currently phenomenological description and analysis consolidate existing foci on religion, education, art, architecture and politics and widen its scope to medicine, nursing, health care, the environment, ethnicity, gender, embodiment, history, and technology.

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