It is well known that the movement of social constructionism rests on foundations laid by Alfred Schutz, but the relationship between his thought and epistemological constructivism has scarcely been addressed. Scholars devoted to the investigation of Schutz’s oeuvre paid little systematic attention to the specific constructivist character of his epistemological position, and proponents of the modern form of epistemological constructivism, second order cyberneticians and radical constructivists have failed to recognize Schutz’s relevance for their project. This paper attempts to show that (...) Schutz’s epistemologically oriented phenomenological-pragmatic theory is compatible with the core tenets of epistemological constructivism and proposes to erect a bridge between Schutzian minded interpretive sociology and constructivism, where arguments could travel both ways. After a brief introduction to Schutz’s theory and Ernst von Glasersfeld’s radical constructivism, I try to point out some topics, where intellectual transfer would be beneficial for both camps. (shrink)

This article provides a phenomenological description of aquatic rescue within the framework of interdisciplinary and reflective social phenom­enology in the Schutzian tradition. Aquatic rescue is a professional discipline involving the care of others, such as bathers, in various environments: beaches, swimming pools, rivers, lakes, lagoons and other water bodies. Care implies not only intervention before the emergency and the need for corresponding assis­tance, but the anticipation and prevention of possible and/or imminent danger as well. One of the central objectives of (...) this work is to clarify how the social relationship of care works from a Schutzian perspective, that is, the relationship involving the embodied intersubjectivity of a shared environment, as well as what is communicated and expressed between lifesavers and between lifesavers and bathers. This characterization requires paying attention to the internal perspective of the participants involved: bathers or victims and lifeguards, the extent of their knowledge and what they have experienced in time and space, along with their skills, subjective meanings involved, and the “because motives” and “in order to motives” of their actions in the context of their projects. (shrink)

In the Schutzian tradition, Berger and Luckmann expand upon the concept of the stranger and discuss the social reality of ritual purification as a coping strategy for reality-maintaining procedures and mental hygiene whereby individuals reconcile their encounter with a foreigner or stranger and their official reality. Using examples from the trans, gender non-conforming community (TGNC), the central question of this paper is: What about those considered a stranger in their home community? Given the hardships that TGNC people have encountered and (...) continue to face, “unsuccessful socialization” does not offer the best account of their challenges, obstacles, and sufferings when marginalized by others. Advancing Schutzian research, we offer two terms that can be applied to the idea of the stranger: ritual desecration and reverse ritual purification. Using a dialectical framework, a social and interpersonal conflict occurs between ritual purification and ritual desecration. Consequently, two personal iterations emerge: those who experience ritual desecration by remaining in their home environment and those who migrate to another community for the possibility of acceptance and belonging, hence, reverse ritual purification. The iterations between ritual purification, ritual desecration, and reverse ritual purification lead to incremental changes and hardships, potentially creating a new social reality. (shrink)

This article proposes an interpretation of the theatrical experience mobilising Alfred Schütz’s theoretical framework and conceptual tools. The text presents the accounts of some theatre operators (actors, directors, students in training, both amateurs and professionals) from whose words it is possible to seize, without forcing or over-interpretate them, the expendability, the relevance and the topicality of the Schützian thought and lexicon. Such an approach allows not only to question and investigate the phenomenological status of the artistic world but also to (...) sketch a “dramatization” of the phenomenology of the social world proposed by the Viennese intellectual. In this perspective the text focuses on the processes of typification, sedimentation and reorganization of the stock of knowledge, on the structuring of the socio-spatio-temporal sphere and on the negotiation between expressed and interpreted meaning, in order to analyse how they work in the theatrical experience. (shrink)

In this article, I argue that current information and communication technology with the outcome of deep digitalization has been so profoundly integrated into everyday life that Schutz’s primary, universalistic description of the life-world which underplays the role of technology necessarily leaves a huge range of everyday experiences insufficiently discussed. Taking Schutz’s phenomenological observation as a starting point, I intend to examine the spatial, temporal, and social structures of the digitalized life-world and its meaning for the praxis of social sciences. Standing (...) by the world openness as human nature and technology as the very source of the dynamics of human-world-relation, I argue Schutz’s universalistic intended life-world analysis needs to be historicized ceaselessly to stay attuned to the most everyday reality. (shrink)

This essay begins with some of the author’s recollections of George Psathas during their collaboration in organizing and administering the annual Schutz Lecture. These lead to reflections on the role of phenomenology in social scientific method, as represented, in different ways, by Schutz, Goffman, and Garfinkel. Examining a tension between cognitivist and pragmatic approaches to the normative orders in which social life takes place, George Psathas identifies a distinctive role for phenomenology, one that the author endorses as an essential moment (...) of “idiosyncrasy” in scientific inquiry. (shrink)

The essay presents a relational concept of the stranger parting from and at the same time going beyond Alfred Schutz’s famous and controversial conception of “The Stranger.” Not only the subjective viewpoint of the stranger entering an in‑group – as in the Schutzian outline – is relevant for the construction of strangeness, but also the interactional context and the receiving in‑group with its respective patterns of culture. For strangeness is a relational concept, it is only constructed in relationships of individuals (...) and groups; it is an ascription or “label” that is activated in interaction processes. Within in‑ and out‑group constellations, the stranger is objectified by social typification, which may be based on a de‑subjectivation and reification of the respective Other. Relational strangeness refers to the diverse possibilities of the social construction of the stranger, always taking into consideration the individuals involved in in‑ and out‑group relations. (shrink)

In this paper, I intend to clarify Alfred Schutz’s complex relationship to methodological individualism (MI), showing that he defends a “hermeneutic,” “weak” and “partial” variant of this approach. I will do so by focusing mainly on his reception of Max Weber, given the latter’s centrality in the MI paradigm.. In order to achieve my objective, I will proceed in three steps. First (1), to avoid misunderstandings, I will provide an updated definition of MI, distinguishing it from ontological and normative individualism (...) and giving an overview of its different variants. Second (2), I will systematically reconstruct Schutz’s convergences with Weber’s “hermeneutic” MI. Finally (3), I will develop the thesis of the “partiality” and “weakness” of Schutz’s MI with the help of recent literature on his work. (shrink)

Since Husserl’s phenomenological analyses of the living body (Leib) in Ideas II, the subjective experience of the body, what later French thinkers will name the flesh, has been particularly marked by its capacity for action—its potency. This privileging of the acting flesh, the potent organ, is echoed throughout the subsequent phenomenological tradition. For this tradition, from de Biran and Husserl, to Merleau‑Ponty and Henry, the flesh is distinguished from the mere body (Körper) by its unique capacity to act. For the (...) later French tradition to be flesh is to be will, and to be will is to be action. Impotence (impuissance) appears as external resistance. In the present investigation, I challenge this trajectory of the flesh through a phenomenological investigation of the unique phenomenon of acute sexual impotence. In this way, it will be shown that l’impuissance (impotence) can be located not only in the objectivity of opposition within the world, on the organic or objective body (le corps, Körper), but within the immanence of the flesh (la chair, Leib) itself. Indeed, the experience of incarnate l’impuissance provides a unique phenomenological access to the incomplete synthesis of the carnal flesh—a synthesis that remains, by phenomenological necessity, run through with ruptures and gaps that function as its constitutive excess. (shrink)

Being a stranger has become a global definition due to the migrations caused by the wars and unemployment in the Middle East and the perceptions of Islamophobia and Islamic terrorism prevailing in the West. In Alfred Schutz’s essay The Stranger, he deals with this issue in terms of orientation and adaptation problems and gives information about this concept by making use of different examples. Mahir Guven also rehandles the concept of the stranger in his novel Older Brother (Grand Frère) by (...) building on the story of an immigrant family. Older Brother is a contemporary and political novel. It tells of two brothers in their thirties who grew up in a multicultural family (Turkish mother, Kurdish father, and two brothers; one is a half‑Syrian taxi driver, and the other is a half‑French surgical nurse) in the suburbs of Paris. The novel interrogates concepts such as nationality, belonging, family ties, culture, identity, immigration, and foreignness through the eyes of the characters. Starting from the problem of being a stranger, which has become a big problem with the effect of increasing immigration movements, we will try to examine the novel Older Brother from Alfred Schutz’s point of view approach to this matter. (shrink)