alfred schutz, his critics, and applied phenomenology

ALFRED SCHUTZ, HIS CRITICS,AND APPLIED PHENOMENOLOGY

JOHN R. HALL

Recently Alfred Schutz’s attempt at a phenomenological solution to

methodological and conceptual problems in the social sciences has been

subjected to careful scrutiny. Some critics of Schutz have questioned thephilosophical adequacy of his approach to phenomenology and the problemof intersubjectivity; others have questioned his relevance for comparativesociology. Objectivist critics such as Barry Hindess lament the implicationthey derive from Schutz, that social science is nothing more than &dquo;a specialkind of story-telling&dquo;.

In the present essay, I draw on critiques of Schutz’s phenomenologyof the social world as a way of clarifying Schutz’s limited intentions andassessing the real limitations of his work. I want to suggest that Schutz’ssocial phenomenology can provide a basis for a sociological enterprise whichhe himself did not attempt - the comparative analysis of extant lifeworlds.Applied phenomenology, as I term this extension of Schutz’s thought,parallels the logic of interpretive sociology: it moves back and forth

between a phenomenological a priori and interpretations of lifeworldlyevents, just as Max Weber moved between conceptual universals, ideal

types, and interpretations of historical events. Applied phenomenology isan attempt to move beyond narrowly conceived methodological concernsto more decisive sociological issues. It seeks to provide for lifeworldlyinvestigations what Weber provided for history - a comparative analyticapproach grounded in situations and actions of individuals, based on an

epistemology which takes cognizance of the social locations of actors andthe interpreter.

RECENT CRITIQUES OF SCHUTZ’S PROGRAM ’

Some social theorists (e.g., Peritore, 1975) interested in the possibility of aphenomenological basis for the social sciences have called for inquirytranspiring totally within the phenomenological reduction described byHusserl. Others (e.g., Heap and Roth, 1973:361) argue that &dquo;the possibilityof a phenomenological sociology in the sense envisioned by Husserl is

highly questionable&dquo;. Like Peritore, they would want such accepted

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phenomenological methods of inquiry as the transcendental reduction andimaginative variation to provide a truly phenomenological foundation forsociology by clarifying &dquo;the essence and essential relationships of suchobjects of empirical sociology as society and the family...&dquo; (1973: 359). ButHeap and Roth go on to suggest that abstractions such as ’society’ disappearin the transcendental reduction. No basis within the reduction is providedfor the discovery of the essence of an objectified abstraction. Rather, suchabstractions exist intrinsically as typifications made and used by personsoperating in the lifeworld. In the view of Heap and Roth, the reductionleaves only a Transcendental Ego, for whom the world of social others andmeaningful relations has slipped away in a purely phenomenological con-sciousness which purposely excludes cognitive conventions.

Alfred Schutz recognized the problem of ’transcendental intersubjectivity’as requiring solution if transcendental phenomenology is to avoid mere

solipsism. He believed ’Thouness’ and Weness’ - through the lifeworldlyfact of birth - to be foundations of the possibility of the transcendentalreduction (1966: 82) and potentially available for investigations withinthe reduction (1966: 58). But in his analysis of Max Weber’s problem ofsubjective meaning, Schutz (1967) avoided a totally transcendental

approach. For Schutz, subjective meaning, whatever its nature, would be anAct of consciousness involving temporal duration (i.e., one which occurs inthe vivid present unfolding stream of consciousness). He therefore chose toclarify the nature of subjective meaning by employing the transcendentalreduction described by Husserl (1931: 11 lff.). But Schutz also held that

subjective meaning typically has as its object an element of the lifeworldconstituted in the ’natural attitude’ of the &dquo;World-given-to-me-as-being-there&dquo; (1967: 43; cf. Husserl, 1931: 106). Further, he treated the problemof intersubjectivity - a necessary basis of an observer’s meaning - as bestsolved for sociological purposes on the mundane plane of the natural

attitude (Schutz, 1966: 82; 1967: 98, 165). Schutz therefore examined theessence of meaning in internal time consciousness and applied the results ofthat transcendental analysis to a subsequent study of meaning constructionin the mundane world of the natural attitude 1. He did not attempt totranscendentally establish the essence of objects of sociologically analyticconsciousness (such as ’the’ family).

Hindess (1972: 7) is thus hardly illuminating when he faults Schutz forfailing to take on Husserl’s project of a sociology within the phenom-enological reduction. Schutz self-avowedly regarded this project as a red

herring. Contrary to Hindess, Schutz’s analysis does have a phenomenological



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basis: in its transcendental grounding in an analysis of internal time con-sciousness, it makes possible the investigation of Acts of consciousnesswhereby meaning is established. Yet since Schutz regarded the phenomenaof meaning-establishment as typically transpiring among social actors

operating within cognitive conventions of the natural attitude, he soughtto explicate mundane constructions of intersubjectivity and meaning in thesocial world.

With less polemic and more insight than Hindess, Peritore (1975: 134)insists that Schutz’s work suffers from its incomplete bracketing of thenatural attitude. In this view, for phenomenology to offer a philosophicalgrounding of the sociological enterprise, it would have to provide the

essence (in Husserl’s phenomenological sense) of meaning and intersubjectiv-ity, as well as ’embodiment’ and ’mood’. And this is something that Schutzcould not accomplish through his partial bracketing.

At the crux of the matter is the issue of whether people constitutemeaning and intersubjectivity in a way which makes them available as

essences within the transcendental reduction. This problem may be resolved,if at all, only through a purely phenomenological investigation. For now, itcan only be said that intersubjectivity and intersubjective meaning cannotbe ruled out as possible transcendental Objects of consciousness. Until theimplications of a phenomenological investigation have been described,sociological research must proceed on the basis of a mundane phenom-enological approach, while remaining open to various constitutions of

meaning and intersubjectivity among social actors who in one way or

another themselves transcend mundane assumptions of the natural attitude.The &dquo;general thesis of the alter ego&dquo; stands as the assumption within the

natural attitude which Schutz claimed both sociologists and people in

general depend upon in order to intersubjectively establish meaning.According to the thesis, &dquo;The Thou [or other person] is conscious, and hisstream of consciousness is temporal, exhibiting the same general form asmine&dquo; (Schutz, 1967: 98). For the most part, as Schutz (1967: 38) hasnoted, the intersubjective situation has pragmatic limits: people assume theexistence of others, and on that basis, seek to establish other persons’meanings insofar as they regard it as relevant to their everyday concerns.It behooves the social scientist to remain open to transcendental inter-

subjectivity - a situation in which the constituted objectivities of whatin the natural attitude are assumed to be ’Others’ would appear as immanent

Objects of consciousness. Such a situation could occur, but it remains onlyone out of myriad lifeworld possibilities. A transcendental understanding



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of intersubjectivity may have much to reveal about ultimate limits of socialpossibilities. But the assumption of the Other’s existence and the inter-

subjective referral of meaning typically transpire within the natural attitudeas phenomena which may have as their essential feature an absence of

phenomenological bracketing. Insofar as sociology is to attend to subjectivemeaning for the participants in order to understand action, it must try tounmask intersubjective phenomena on the basis of the (typically mundane)operating assumptions of actors themselves.

Both Peritore (1975: 134-135) and Hindess (1972: 6-8) claim Schutz’sincomplete phenomenological reduction and his general thesis of the alter

ego to violate canons of phenomenological method and obscure the real

epistemological problems of social science. But in the end their predilectionstoward particular methods prevent them from recognizing the diversity ofphenomenological methods and the diversity of entry points to phenom-enological analysis. For instance, Peritore maintains (1975: 134, 136, 139)that the essence of objects may be perceived only under the discipline of thetotal phenomenological reduction. But both Spiegelberg (1969: 133-134,690-691) and Schutz (1971: 113) agree that eidetic science is possiblewithout recourse to the total reduction. Further, Schutz (1971: 113) notedthe possibility of phenomenological analysis &dquo;applied within the empiricalsphere...&dquo;; while Spiegelberg (1969: 690) supports this claim by suggestingthat Husserl himself (in the realist Logische Untersuchungen) performedsome of his most successful phenomenological analyses prior to his specifi-cation of the transcendental reduction as a device of phenomenologicalresearch. Nor is this simply a feature of Husserl’s early work. In the crucialturning point marked by his 1905 lectures on internal time consciousness,it would appear that Husserl (1964: e.g., 43, 73) embraced a kind of’phenomenological realism’: he examined transcendent possibilities suchas sonic echos within a phenomenological investigation of time and con-sciousness. In his final years, Husserl once again entertained notions ofrealism by suggesting the possibility of a ’mundane phenomenology’ whichgains access to the lifeworld through an initial reduction involving thesuspension of Science (Spiegelberg, 1969: 160: cf. Husserl, 1970: ss. 34-36).It is this kind of mundane phenomenology which Schutz’s work would seemto represent.

By carrying out both a transcendental examination of Ego-consciousnessand a mundane phenomenology of the natural attitude, Schutz tried tooffer a unique epistemological and substantive groundwork for sociologicalinquiry. Epistemologically, he sought to clarify the position of sociological



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observers and the status of their (mundane) subjective and objective inter-pretations. Substantively, Schutz’s work posed the lifeworld as the site ofsubjectively meaningful action; it provided the first step toward a phenom-enologically based sociology by explicating the structures of the lifeworldvia a phenomenology of the natural attitude (Schutz and Luckmann, 1973).The result is a formal description of Ego-consciousness, time, Others,intersubjectivity, meaning, themes and relevances. But for all the promisewhich Schutz’s approach might seem to hold, the pursuit of his program -both as phenomenological inquiry and as a basis for sociological analysis -has been less than totally successful.

The mundane phenomenological analysis suffers from boundary problems,for it is not clear where lifeworldly structures end and cultural ’essentials’begin. As Peritore (1975: 137) has pointed out, Schutz depended so thor-oughly on his &dquo;general thesis of the alter ego&dquo; as a basis of his mundaneanalysis that he in some instances solved empirical problems by the fiat

of reference to the thesis. Thus Schutz (1967: 101) alluded to a &dquo;Code of

interpretation&dquo; by which the Ego is directed from outward behavior to

&dquo;underlying lived experience&dquo; of the Other. In his search for the structuresof the lifeworld, Schutz did not make thematic the possibility of variance inthe code of interpretation either within a We-relation, among actors in

disparate cultural or existential situations, or among sociological observers.This does not necessarily invalidate Schutz’s ’general thesis’ as an approachto mundane intersubjectivity. But it does suggest that Schutz unnecessarilybroadened the thesis to include propositions which are in no way essentialto it2. These propositions should be subjected to lifeworldly investigation.

If Schutz’s a priori seems to have been overextended, his substantivecontribution was at best tentative. Only in the most incipient way, forexample in his essays on citizenship and the stranger (1964), did Schutztry to apply his formal mundane phenomenology to extant worlds ofsocial life. Even these attempts simply represent ideal typical models ofsocial actors (e.g., the technical expert, the man on the street). There is acertain irony in Schutz: while he convincingly argued that subjective meaninginvolves conscious activity ori an occasion, he did not apply his phenom-enologically grounded perspective to the explication of any particular,non-anonymous lifeworld occasion, wherein he claimed subjective meaningwould be situated. Max Weber, the object of Schutz’s critique of Verstehen,had relaxed certain methodological requirements in order to offer a com-parative historical sociology in part based on interpretation of subjectivelymeaningful phenomena (Hall, 1977: App. I; Gorman, 1975a: 15). Schutz,



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on the other hand, sought to maintain a high degree of philosophical andmethodological consistency, while failing to demonstrate the relevance ofhis perspective to understanding diverse social formations where subjectivemeanings are constituted. As Hindess (1972: 19) and Gorman (1975b: 403)are quick to point out, Schutz never used his approach to come to termswith sociological issues of domination, inequality, revolution and the like3.Schutz did not really attempt an extensive phenomenological sociology;instead he devoted most of his energies to clarifying the epistemologicalstatus of a verstehende Soziologie and describing the limits of the lifeworldto which it pertains.

Apparently Schutz wanted to remain the philosopher and scientist -aloof from the world of everyday life : though he regarded understandingof subjectively meaningful action as a necessary feature of sociologicalmethodology, such an approach, he found, is not only necessarily approxi-mate, but also necessarily objective. The immediately given social world,though the origin of the possibility for understanding subjective meaning,can never be captured by typification without treating the moment as anobject of thought. To the degree that the social scientist himself entersinto social action, taking on a heretofore observed situation as his own, hemay come to experience his own and consociates’ motives and under-

standings in a purely subjective fashion. Yet in this act, Schutz (1971: 40)argued, the sociologist gives up his scientific perspective with its specialconcerns beyond the concerns of other individuals within the situation.

Here Schutz’s attempt to ground a scientific sociology in phenomeno-logy strains credulity. As Valone (1976: 201) has suggested, Schutz per-petuated the crisis of science by maintaining the disjuncture between humaninterests in knowledge and scientific interests in knowledge about socialrelations among humans. Perhaps Schutz was overly sensitive to charges thathis approach is ’unscientific’. In any event, though he (1971 1 43) maintainedthat scientific model-building must remain true to a &dquo;postulate of subjectiveinterpretation&dquo;, Schutz nevertheless denied that active participation in thesocial world can be considered a basis of scientific knowledge. Instead, themodels constructed by sociologists are ideal types &dquo;without duration or

spontaneity&dquo; (1967: 241).It is here, rather than in his earlier analysis of intersubjectivity, that Schutz

abandoned the program of a phenomenological sociology. Since subjectivemeaning is a product of an occasion, it is manifested in actors who experi-ence the world in streams of consciousness. Subjective meaning and socialrelations are situated within unfolding moments. It is on such occasions that



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meaning is constituted, action initiated, and so forth. However much

sociological typification inevitably involves abstraction and the placingof subjects’ actions and meanings within the observer’s context of meaning,this secondary and objective context of meaning must include subjects’time structures, attitudes toward the lifeworld, interactions with others,and so forth as components of its typifications, or else it denies the verypostulate of subjective interpretation which Schutz has called for. While

any typification necessarily exists as an independent cultural product whichhas neither duration nor spontaneity itself, the typification may refer to theproduction of meanings and actions within streams of duration. Indeed, tohave any authenticity, the typification - whether empirical or ideal -would necessarily be based on examination of such momentary productionof meaning. But it is this subjective basis of social knowledge from whichSchutz sought to sever himself. By maintaining the posture of a detachedscientist, he limited his initially radical program. He avoided coming togrips with either embedded subjectivity or the relevance of historical narra-tive, even though his problematic initially stemmed from exactly theseconcerns in the work of Max Weber.

AN APPLIED PHENOMENOLOGY OF THE SOCIAL WORLD

A phenomenologically based sociology is not achieved simply throughSchutz’s &dquo;constitutive phenomenological psychology&dquo;. Though this approachcan describe structures of the lifeworld and elucidate the basis of observer’s

meaningful typifications, it does not look to the myriad ways in whichmeaning and action are constituted by actors themselves. Here it is a matterof recognizing that a priori limits do not identify alternative formationsof actual phenomena within these limits. An applied phenomenology ofthe social world, while remaining within the conceptual frame of lifeworldstructures, would be concerned with the actual constitution of meaningand action on the parts of actors themselves. In the empirical world, it

would parallel the philosophical phenomenology of essence and possibilityby providing a comparative a posteriori analysis of actualities and theirmundane ’essences’.

Such an enterprise does not escape the inevitability of the observer’stypification, nor does it avoid the fragmentary and limited access which theobserver can have to an actor’s subjective stream of attention. An Ego’sunderstanding of an Other is at best only an approximation (Schutz, 1967:109). Both sociologists and everybody else, because situated in the lifeworld,

,



272

can never know with certainty that they understand the meaning of anOther’s actions. From the perspective of Schutz’s mundane phenomenology,the epistemological limits of social knowledge are contained not in anyformal and abstract logics of inference, proof and validity, but rather, inthe limits of knowledge in the situated and occasional perception of Othersand their artifacts.

Such understanding - however approximate it may be - provides thebest basis for sociological knowledge of human action, for it looks to thelifeworldly episodes where action unfolds. In this enterprise of appliedphenomenology, the observer need not exclude the assumption that Othersexist, but this general thesis of the alter ego should not be extended toinclude further assumptions about the ’Code of interpretation’ or ’contents’of that existence. The observer thus initiates a difficult but potentiallyrewarding attempt to comprehend the horizons of the actor’s world, theactor’s temporal orientation to the world, and the cognitive frames in termsof which he acts in the world. The social observer need not restrict this kindof interpretive gaze to one individual. The same approach may be employedwith any number of individuals, both those who act socially in relation toone another, and those who are anonymous to one another. Outcomes ofsocial interaction may be understood by noting the various concerns andobjectives of individuals, their perceptions of others and the other’s motives,the externalities which they take into account, and other externalities whichthey ignore. Of course the fundamental distinction between events and theiranalytic typification should never be blurred. But insofar as the observerstudies subjects’ streams of attention and subjects’ interactions with natural,cultural and social phenomena, his typifications - themselves abstractionswithout duration or spontaneity - can begin to describe social phenomenaof the lifeworld as the convergence of multiple subjective realities.

In any such enterprise, the observer inevitably moves into objectiveinterpretation: when he moves beyond the description of one Other’ssubjectively meaningful action, he arrives at an objective context of meaningwithin which he tries to plausibly fit various actors with their distinctive

meaning contexts and motives. Even an ideal type of subjectively meaningfulaction per se, since it moves beyond interpretation of subjective meaningfor an individual to a model of subjective meaning devoid of ambiguitiesin an actual situation, stands as a case of objective interpretation (Schutz,1967: 135).

As a kind of objective interpretation, applied phenomenology would bedistinctive in its groundings in a phenomenological epistemology and an



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a priori matrix (itself the subject of parallel investigations). As an approachgrounded in philosophical phenomenology, applied phenomenology wouldbe distinctive in focusing a comparative inquiry in the lifeworld itself. It is

there, rather than in any a priori analysis, that the observer can deal, asValone (1976) would want it, with the temporality of ’thought in action’,of living subjects in a world at times transcended by objective realities andreified structures of consciousness.

Several writers have described the phenomenological method in somedetail, both as a general method of investigation (Spiegelberg, 1969: 653ff.),and as an approach to sociology (Bruyn, 1966; Heap and Roth, 1973).Still, it is worthwhile to note the specific character of an applied phenom-enology of the lifeworld and its relation to Weber’s verstehende Soziologie;taken together, they comprise a unified approach to sociology and history -one which takes into account both actors’ and observers’ points of view.

As Schutz (1967: 104) argued, on the mundane level, intersubjectivity ispossible when two or more Ego-consciousnesses share the same vivid present.The case of ‘quasi-simultaneity’ (observational understanding throughartifacts) sets the originary point for Weber’s historical-comparative research.But in the vivid present situation, observational understanding based onquasi-simultaneity may be supplanted by direct intersubjectivity. Undersuch conditions, a ’participant-observer’, i.e., one who attends to a vivid

present, does not start with an outcome of action and seek to reconstructthe genesis and meaning of that action; instead, he is present as &dquo;the other

person’s action unfolds step by step before his eyes&dquo;. A participant-observerthus stands a chance of ’keeping pace’ with the objects of attention (Schutz,1967: 115).

Of course, the observer is limited, for if he could know the other person’severy thought, he would be that same person (Schutz, 1967: 106). More-over, as Weber (1968: 4) has pointed out, some action is covert; some

consists of ambiguous acquiescence. Like any other research activities,direct intersubjectivity falls within a priori conditions of the interpretationof meaning (understood as events of internal time consciousness contex-tualized by attention to the unfolding world, in-order-to motives or becausemotives). The validity of one research activity or another, then, has less todo with the nature of the activity per se than with the cognitive status ofthe knowledge produced as a moment of consciousness. Knowing theoccasional position of the knowledge, the sociologist may use it within its

self-contained limitations.

Under conditions of direct intersubjectivity it is possible for a participant-



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observer to move with an Other through various Acts of consciousness,including direct perception, reproduction of remembered experience, andso forth. A sociology adequate at the mundane phenomenal level of subjec-tive meaning is achieved by use of examples drawn from such a sociologyof arcane knowledge: the participant-observers (i.e., the Ego-consciousnessesin a given vivid present) ’show each other the world’. No one gets the wholestory; there is always more that can be brought into relevance in relation toa given theme.

Still, it should be recognized that a strategy of interviewing to searchout further details or interpretations breaks the pragmatic limits of meaningdisplay and interrupts the previously established streams of cognitions andevents. The interviewer constitutes a reality apart from subjects’ pragmaticlifeworldly attention to interests as his information base. While such a

strategy can be quite informative, it necessarily involves reflective reproduc-tion on the parts of subjects. Like history, it can proceed on the basis ofquasi-simultaneity, though the quasi-simultaneity is of one or more contem-poraries who ’relive’ or ’play back’ their previous experiences. But inter-viewing can also direct attention to ideal reflections which have never beforeexisted as moments of experience.

In contrast to interviewing, free attention to the moment at hand providesaccess to shifts among various cognitions and acts as they transpire in anuninterrupted situation. The participant-observer attends to events as theyare constituted by others in an ongoing stream of life activities. While theparticipant-observer, like anyone else, doesn’t have access to all of the

multiple realities which are the horizons of an episode, he participates inthe vivid present intersubjective world as it happens, and thus becomesexposed to meanings and their invocation as they transpire in the courseof persons’ daily lives. The participant-observer may later summarize life-worldly constitutions of events and their modes of appearing, and establishsocial boundaries of such phenomena with negative evidence.

Such a grounding of typification in the phenomenal events cognizedby social actors in unfolding time then can become the basis for assessingthe validity of more comparative sociological concepts. The issue becomesone of whether ideal typical constructs of subjectively meaningful actionhave referents discernible through an applied mundane phenomenology.

In theory at least, Max Weber’s interpretive typifications of subjectivemeanings and their consequences may be reconciled with experiences ofactors described within the lifeworldly framework proposed by Schutz.If it has any sociological utility, an applied mundane phenomenology



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should be capable of discerning among quite different subjective ’Codes ofinterpretation’ for the existence of Others and constitutions of meaningand action. By the same token, so long as Weber’s typifications of subjectivemeanings derived from an observer’s viewpoint reflect subjective meaningsfor actors, they should be compatible with such a mundane phenomenol-ogical analysis of alternatively cognized lifeworlds. If these conditions aremet, it should be possible to delineate, for example, an applied phenom-enology of domination, of charisma, of bureaucracy, or of socio-historicalphenomena such as medieval capitalism, Buddhist monasticism, industrialagriculture, fascism, and so on. Such a phenomenological sociology woulddescribe lifeworldly constitutions of these types of phenomena as kinds ofinternal time consciousness, accents on reality, and ways of invoking themesand relevances in We-relations, with consociates, towards contemporaries,and so forth (cf. Schutz and Luckmann, 1973).

This kind of analysis would deny neither the determinate sphere ofhistory nor the interaction with material and cognitive cultural artifactsand social others. Instead, it would demand that an account of a phenom-enon’s historical features unmask the cultural products (material and ideal)which condition human beings’ perceptions of meaning and interactionswith material phenomena. In the classic Marxian problem of the ’objective’meaning of an individual’s relation to the means of production, lifeworldlyanalysis would trace not only the producing individual’s subjective meaningsand interactions with social others and material phenomena, but also themanagerial project and its in-order-to motive, the objective (i.e., completed)product of that project, the managerial meanings which circumscribe

workers’ participation in the means of production, and so forth. Far fromdenying the incorporation of history or material and social conditions asfeatures of individuals’ meanings and actions, an applied mundane phenom-enology stringently requires that such ’causes’ be shown to be actual

phenomenal elements in the vivid present unfoldings of action. Instead ofassembling an abstract framework of concepts and their interrelations, anapplied phenomenological sociology requires analysis of phenomena andtheir interrelations in the lifeworld acts of conscious beings.

A correspondence between phenomena of the lifeworld and sociologicalcategories of subjective meanings can be established by this kind of analysis4.The phenomenological sociologist moves between (1) mundane phenom-enological concepts concerning the structure of the lifeworld, (2)configurational models (ideal types) of the constitution, boundaries andunfolding of various kinds of phenomena, (3) lifeworldly models (observers’



276

typifications) of actual social phenomena (cases), themselves based on (4)participant-observers’ chronicles of situated lifeworldly events drawn onvivid present perceptions.

These possibilities, based on intersubjective meaning, provide counter-point in a comparative sociology of lifeworlds to Max Weber’s use in inter-pretive sociology of (1) formal, universal concepts of meaning and action,(2) ideal types or ’socio-historical models’ (e.g., of patrimonial domination)which elucidate configurational aspects of repetitive social forms and theirdynamics, (3) ’secular theories’ which describe and explain broad historicalphenomena, and (4) situational analysis of particular events, based onarchival and artifactual data (Roth, 1976). Applied phenomenologicalsociology, as proposed here, parallels the logic of Weber’s interpretivesociology described by Roth (1971: 126-128): case and situational analysiscan be used to clarify models and concepts, while batteries of concepts andmodels may be drawn upon to elucidate features of cases and situations.The difference between applied phenomenology and interpretive sociologyis a simple one: the former deals with intersubjectively experienced life-

worldly events, while the latter deals in quasi-simultaneity with interpretationof historical events. Differences of methodology are thus based on differencesin sources of data which delimit different entry points to the events to beunderstood. Nevertheless, the broadly shared epistemological presuppositionsof the two empirical approaches should permit cross-validation of results,since they share a focus of the sociological enterprise on the actions ofhuman beings in worlds they constitute as meaningful.

CONCLUDING REMARKS

Alfred Schutz attempted a philosophical basis for the verstehende Sozio-logie of Max Weber by grounding it in a constitutive phenomenology ofthe lifeworld, thereby discerning the a pn’ori structures of the lifeworld.Though critics like Peritore and Hindess have faulted Schutz for his incom-plete phenomenological reduction, even in Husserl’s view, phenomenologicalanalysis may proceed by other methods than the transcendental reduction.Instead of subjecting the mundane assumption of the existence of the Otherto radical doubt, Schutz took that assumption to be the essential one thathuman beings in a social world ’take for granted’. His analysis thus revealsthe a priori structures of the lifeworld as it is lived by human beings in thenatural attitude. On the basis of his analysis, Schutz traced the phenomenalsources of meaning construction in the cultural and social disciplines. But a



277

more radical application of Schutz’s epistemology may be derived: its a

priori limits may be used as the analytic framework for the comparativestudy of lifeworlds themselves. Such an approach need be neither solipsisticnor insensitive to history and situation. Nor does it inherently favor idealistor materialist explanations. An applied phenomenology breaks from anydogmatic sociological theories as well as from abstract debates over phenom-enology ; it begins the difficult but potentially rewarding program thatHusserl called for, by going ’to the things themselves’. Applied phenom-enology takes social action and meaning to be occasional, and it looks toactors’ concerns, interests, projects and their consequences in lifeworld

situations. Such an approach parallels Max Weber’s historical-comparativestudies, but looks to the vivid present as the basis of its understanding.

University of MissouriColumbia, Missouri

NOTES

1 Schutz’s conclusions insofar as they relate to subjective and objective meaning maybe briefly summarized. Using a strictly phenomenological method, Schutz found theconcept of subjective meaning to have no simple or unambiguous usage, but to glossover distinctly different Acts of consciousness. In Schutz’s analysis, subjective meaningcould consist (1) metaphorically, of "the special way in which the subject attends tohis lived experience" in the vivid present (Schutz, 1967: 215); and non-metaphorically,of an act of reflection, either (2) toward a projected goal — in which case action is

given meaning in terms of an ’in-order-to motive’ of the project; or (3) as an accountof the genetic events which led up to an action — in which case meaning context is

given through a ’because motive’ (1967: 86-95).Moving from transcendental analysis to a procedure based on his mundane "general

thesis of the alter ego", Schutz described the situation for an observer of subjectivemeaning. The observer experiences the Other in his own meaning context, based onlimited access to objectifications stemming from the Other’s stream of life activity(1967: 106). If the observer simply takes the artifact or action of the Other quaproduct and fits that product within his own meaning context, interpretation is ofthe completed object, independent of any subjective meaning intended in its produc-tion (hence objective meaning). Since there may be more than one observer, alternativeobjective interpretations may arise from examination of the same product (1967:133-136). The differences among provinces of objective understanding thus have to donot with their phenomenological status, but with the focus of inquiry, the raisond’être of inquiry, standards of evidence, and so forth.

On the other hand, the observer dealing with a product of action may look beyondthe product as object to try to determine its subjective meaning, that is, "the meaningcontext within which the product stands or stood in the mind of the producer" (1967:133). As distinct from objective interpretation, subjective interpretation involves anattempt to understand the various acts of an individual as he himself intends orintended them within his own contexts of meaning. The observer may attempt three



278

broad types of subjective understanding, each keyed to one of the kinds of subjectivemeaning events of consciousness described above, i.e., the ’metaphoric’ meanings whichcomprise paying-attention-to-the-world in the Here and Now, reflected meaning in thecontext of an in-order-to motive and reflected meaning given as the because motiveor genesis of an action.2 Valone (1976) describes a converse problem — that of conceiving universal struc-tures of the lifeworld too narrowly. However, in my opinion, Valone mistakes empir-ical for mundane phenomenological problems. He is correct to note that Schutz

glossed the lived dialectic of subject and object, but wrong to suggest that existentialpossibilities (such as anxiety over death) are part of the structures of the lifeworld.As Valone (1976: 203) himself acknowledges, Schutz recognized the subject-objecttension of existence (especially in The Structures of the Lifeworld). But Schutz (wisely)did not try to spell out the invariant nature of such a tension, leaving it instead to

empirical investigation.3 Additionally, Gorman (1975b: 402) finds the empirical sociological studies out ofthe Schutzian perspective — notably those of ethnomethodologists — to be "less thanprofound".4 I attempt this kind of analysis in my (1977) study of communal living groups.

REFERENCES

Bruyn, Severyn: 1966 The Human Perspective in Sociology. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.:Prentice-Hall.

Gorman, Robert A.: 1975a ’Alfred Schutz — An Exposition and Critique’, BritishJournal of Sociology 26: 1-19.

Gorman, Robert A.: 1975b ’The Phenomenological "Humanization" of Social Science— A Critique’, British Journal of Sociology 26: 389-405.

Hall, John R.: 1977 The Ways Out: Utopian Communal Groups in an Age of BabylonLondon: Routledge and Kegan Paul, in press.

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alfred schutz, his critics, and applied phenomenology

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