Abstract
This paper examines Alfred Schutz’s insights on types and typification. Beginning with a brief overview of the history and meaning of typification in interpretive sociology, the paper further addresses both the ubiquity and the necessity of typification in social life and scientific method. Schutz’s contribution itself is lacking in empirical application and grounding, but examples are provided of ongoing empirical research which advances the understanding of types and typification. As is suggested by illustrations from scholarship in the social studies of social science, studies of social identity associated with membership categorization analysis, and constructionist social problems theory, typification can be found to be central to social research whether it is taken up as a largely unacknowledged resource or whether it is addressed by different names. The overview and illustrations suggest the continuing, widespread, and indeed foundational relevance of Schutz’s insights into types and typification.
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Notes
It is also true and significant that typification imposes conceptual boundaries where there could otherwise be a perception of similarity or continuity, as is especially clear in the application of social classification systems onto a more or less continuous range of values, as in the color spectrum, or onto a multi-dimensional field where multiple classification criteria could be applied, as with distinctions between Protestant sects, or divisions of an urban ecology into neighborhoods.
cf. the ethnomethodological notion of “member,” referring to any someone with typical competences in a given culture, understanding and using typical ethnomethods of practical action and practical reasoning. The member is essentially a typical individual for means of cultural and linguistic understanding, as in the notions of “man on the street,” or “speaker” of a natural language. Schutz at times writes of “members” in a similar if not identical sense (1964, p. 95).
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Kim, Kk., Berard, T. Typification in Society and Social Science: The Continuing Relevance of Schutz’s Social Phenomenology. Hum Stud 32, 263–289 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10746-009-9120-6
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10746-009-9120-6