Continuing Dialogues with Alfred Schutz

289 Pages·2005·3.34 MB·English

EXPLORATIONS OF THE LIFE-WORLD
CONTRIBUTIONS TO PHENOMENOLOGY
INCOOPERATIONWITH
THECENTER FOR ADVANCED RESEARCH IN PHENOMENOLOGY
Volume 53
Editor:
John J. Drummond, Fordham University
Editorial Board:
Elizabeth A. Behnke
DavidCarr, Emory University
Stephen Crowell, Rice University
Lester Embree, Florida Atlantic University
J.Claude Evans, Washington University
Burt Hopkins, Seattle University
José Huertas-Jourda, Wilfrid Laurier University
Joseph J. Kockelmans, The Pennsylvania State University
William R. McKenna, Miami University
Algis Mickunas, Ohio University
J. N. Mohanty, Temple University
Tom Nenon, The University of Memphis
Thomas M. Seebohm, Johannes Gutenberg-Universität, Mainz
Gail Soffer, New School for Social Research, New York
Richard M. Zaner, Vanderbilt University
Scope
The purpose of this series is to foster the development of phenomenological philosophy through
creative research. Contemporary issues in philosophy, other disciplines and in culture generally,
offer opportunities for the application of phenomenological methods that call for creative responses.
Although the work of several generations of thinkers has provided phenomenology with many results
with which to approach these challenges, a truly successful response to them will require building on
this work with new analyses and methodological innovations.
EXPLORATIONS OF THE
LIFE-WORLD
Continuing Dialogues with Alfred Schutz
Edited by
MARTIN ENDRESS
University of Duisburg-Essen,
Germany
GEORGE PSATHAS
BostonUUnniivveerrssiittyyy,
MA, U.S.A.
and
HISASHI NASU
Waseda University,
Tokyo, Japan
AC.I.P. Catalogue record for this book is available from the Library of Congress.
ISBN 1-4020-3219-6 (HB)
ISBN 1-4020-3220-X (e-book)
Published by Springer,
P.O. Box 17, 3300 AADordrecht, The Netherlands.
Printed on acid-free paper
All Rights Reserved
© 2005 Springer
No part of this work may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted
in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, microfilming, recording
or otherwise, without written permission from the Publisher, with the exception
of any material supplied specifically for the purpose of being entered
and executed on a computer system, for exclusive use by the purchaser of the work.
Printed in the Netherlands.
Table of Contents
Preffface......................................................................................................vii
Martin Endress:Introduction..................................................................1
PART I: Theory of the Life-World and Contemporary Social Theory
Thomas P. Wilson:The Problem of Subjectivity
in Schutz and Parsons.......................................................................19
Martin Endress:Reflexivity, Reality, and Relationality.
The Inadequacy of Bourdieu’s Critique of the
Phenomenological Tradition in Sociology.........................................51
PART II: On Methodology and Theory of Social Science
Lester Embree:The Appeal of Alfred Schutz in Disciplines
beyond Philosophy, e.g. Jurisprudence..............................................77
Steven Vaitkus:The “Naturality” of Alfred Schutz’s
Natural Attitude of the Life-World.....................................................97
Hisashi Nasu:Between the Everyday Life-World and the World of
Social Scientific Theory. Towards an “Adequate” Social Theory...123
George Psathas:The Ideal Type in Weber and Schutz........................143
PART III: The Political and Socio-Cultural Dimension
of the Life-World
Michael Barber:IfOnly To Be Heard: Value-Freedom and Ethics in
Alfred Schutz’s Economic and Political Writings............................173
Hongwoo Kim:In Search of a Political Sphere in Alfred Schutz........203
Ilja Srubar:The Pragmatic Theory of the Life-World
as a Basis for Intercultural Comparison..........................................235
Chung-Chi Yu:Schutz on Transcendence and the Variety of
Life-World Experience.....................................................................267
Notes on Contributors...........................................................................281
Index......................................................................................................283
v
Preface
This anthology originated from three conferences, which were held at
Waseda University, Tokyo, Japan, on March 26-28, 1999, at the Univer-
sity of Konstanz, Germany, on May 26-29, 1999 and a session at the
SPHS annual meeting at the University of Oregon, USA, on October 5-7,
1999. With one exception the contributions to this volume are revised
versions of papers read at these meetings. Each of these conferences took
place in order to celebrate the centennial of the birthday of Alfred Schutz,
who was born April 13, 1899, and died May 20, 1959.
First of all we would like to thank Evelyn Schutz-Lang, the daughter
of Alfred and Ilse Schutz, for her continuing support and encouragement.
Moreover, Evelyn Schutz-Lang as well as Claudia Schutz, the gran-
daughter of Alfred and Ilse Schutz, and the daughter of his son George,
gave us the honor of visiting the Konstanz conference in 1999. Evelyn
also came to the Oregon conference and sent her personal greetings to
those attending the Tokyo conference.
We would like to thank Waseda University, the Waseda Sociological
Association, the Waseda University International Conference Center, and
the Center for Research in Human Sciences in Japan for their generous
financial support, as well as the German Research Council (Deutsche
Forschungsgemeinschaft), the University of Konstanz, the Alfred Schutz
Memorial Archives in Konstanz, and the Sparkasse Konstanz for their
considerable financial assistance in making the conferences possible.
We would like to thank, further, all the participants of the 1999 con-
ferences, especially those whose contributions did not find their way into
this volume and who also provided thoughtful and stimulating papers.
Finally, the production of this volume would not have been possible
without the assistance of Eva-Maria Walker (Tuebingen) and Gunnar
Schwab (Tuebingen).
Martin Endress Hisashi Nasu George Psathas
vii
Introduction:
Alfred Schutz and Contemporary
Social Theory and Social Research*
Martin Endress
University of Duisburg-Essen
His work stands before us, his successors,
not as a monument but as a task and a mandate.
Helmut R. Wagner on Alfred Schutz
I.
Alfred Schutz, in addition to Max Weber, Georg Simmel, and Karl
Mannheim, belongs to the group of German speaking sociologists, whose
work brought widespread international attention to social theory and
social research. Furthermore, he is one of the most important scholars
whose work is influenced by the founder of Phenomenological Philos-
ophy Edmund Husserl. Thus, his name exemplifies that generation of
social scientists, for whom the analysis of social scientific problems with-
out philosophical foundation was impossible. As far as the theoretical
landscape of sociology is concerned, Schutz founded the type of pheno-
menologically based sociology, which led to many significant changes in
the social sciences since the 1960s in the United States as well as in
Europe and in Asia.
Starting with the attempt to give Max Weber’s conception of inter-
pretive sociology a (philosophical) foundation Schutz developed a socio-
pragmatic transformation of Husserl’s theory of the life-world, which
focuses on the processes of the self-constitution of social reality. There-
fore, his analyses basically are concerned with the interactive and com-
municative processes among human beings. This paradigm initiates an
action-oriented shift in social theory and social research by which the
processes of the constitution of meaning in the social world became the
focus of sociological inquiry. The main concept Schutz introduced to the
social sciences is the concept of the life-world (“Lebenswelt”). Schutz’s
* I am indebted to George Psathas and Hisashi Nasu for their comments on an earlier
draft of this introduction.
2 MARTIN ENDRESS
analyses of the structures of the life-world have to be viewed as one of
the most important contributions to general sociological theory.
Schutz’s research program has not only been continued in different
forms by Erving Goffman, Harold Garfinkel, Aaron Cicourel, Anselm
Strauss, Peter Berger and Thomas Luckmann but also by a broader
stream of contributions usually labeled as“phenomenological sociology”.
(cf. Psathas, 1973) Moreover, main contributions to contemporary social
theory discourse would not have been possible and cannot be understood
without reference to the work of Alfred Schutz. The theoretical relevance
of his theory of the life-world is due to its provocative character. Further-
more, because of its continuing development and empirical utilization in
a broad spectrum of theoretical and empirical sociological approaches
(for example, Ethnomethodology, Conversation Analysis, “Social Con-
structivism”, Cognitive Sociology, Ethnography)1 Schutz’s theory of the
life-world understood as a sociology of everyday life (Adler/Adler/Fon-
tana, 1987) has had a great impact on many specialized fields of socio-
logical research.
Alfred Schutz never showed any interest in founding a school of
scholars around him. From the beginning his thought concentrated on
theoretical problems in various disciplines and intellectual fields of
interest. This open-mindedness is reflected in contemporary social and
human sciences: there is a great variety of theoretical and empirical
research using conceptions and analytical differentiations introduced by
Schutz. Thus, it turns out that there is no specific research program which
Schutz developed in his work, but rather a certain style of thinking which
is demonstrated in different fields of social theory and social research.
II.
The growing interest in continuing the project of a Schutzian social
science also is documented by the development of several academic
1 See, for example, the special volumes of Human Studies on “Ethnomethodology”
(Vol. 18, 1995, No. 2-3, ed. by George Psathas), and on “Ethnomethodology and
Conversation Analysis.” (Vol. 22, 1999, No. 2-4, ed. by George Psathas and Hisashi
Nasu) In Japan the new journal Culture & Society published special issues on the
“Dialogue between the Social Sciences and Phenomenological Philosophy” (Vol. 1,
1999, ed. by Hisashi Nasu and Kazuhiko Okuda), and on “Constructionism.” (Vol. 4,
2003, ed. by Hisashi Nasu, Masataka Katagiri, and Chihaya Kusayanagi)
INTRODUCTION 3
organizations. The process of institutionalization of phenomenologically
based social research is demonstrated by the widespread adoption and
elaboration of his work2 as well as by the ongoing attempts to present
complete editions of all of his texts.3 Additional developments are the
annual “Alfred Schutz Memorial Lecture”4 conceived by Lester Embree
and George Psathas to take place at the annual meetings of the Society for
Phenomenology and the Human Sciences (SPHS)5 and the great variety
of Phenomenological Organizations in the Human and Social Sciences
which are to be found in many different countries.6 Furthermore, the
work of Schutz is presented in most handbooks of the social sciences7
and in recent years there have appeared a number of publications which
provide extensive discussions of various aspects of Schutz’s work.8
2 See, for instance, the Japanese translations of his Collected Papers and of his
Reflections of the Problem of Relevance by Hisashi Nasu.
3 See the publication of hisCollected Papers IVV(Schutz, 1996, ed. by Helmut Wagner,
George Psathas and Fred Kersten), the documents published in the volume Schutzian
Social Sciences(ed. by Lester Embree, 1999, cf. esp. Embree, 1999) and, especially,
the project of the German edition of his work in theAlfred Schütz Werkausgabe. (see
Endress, 1999b, and first four volumes Schutz, 2003a, Schutz, 2003b, Schutz 2004a,
and Schutz 2004b)
4 Sponsored by the American Philosophical Association (APA) and the Center for
Advanced Research in Phenomenologyy(CARP).
5 Speakers since 1995 had been in chronological order: Maurice Natanson, Ilja Srubar,
Richard Zaner, Thomas Luckmann, Fred Kersten, George Psathas, Lester Embree,
and Kurt H. Wolff; cf. Srubar (1998), Zaner (2002), Luckmann (2002), Kersten
(2002), and Psathas (2004).
6 Initiated by Lester Embree an international as well as interdisciplinary organization of
Phenomenological Organizations was founded in Prague, Czech Republic, in
November 2002. See the homepage (www.o-p-o.net) of the Organization of
Phenomenological Organizations (OPO).
7 See: Endress (1999a), Fay (2003), Ferguson (2001), Kersten (1997), Orleans (1991),
Preglau (1999), Rogers (2000), Vaitkus (2000) as well as Hanke (2002).
8 Cf. Bäumer/Benedict (Eds. 1993), Sprondel (Ed. 1994), Protti (1995), Welz (1996),
Grundmann (1997), Cefaï (1998), Embree (Ed. 1998, 1999), Weiss (2000), Eberle
(2000), and Srubar/Vaitkus (Eds. 2003). An extensive and open-ended bibliography
of secondary literature devoted to or related to Schutz’s oeuvre can be found on the
website of the Center for Advanced Research in Phenomenology, Florida Atlantic
University, Boca Raton, USA (http://www.phenomenologycenter.org) as well as on
the website of theSchutz Archives in Waseda University which includes a “Database
on Bibliography on Schutz on Japan” (http://www.littera.waseda.ac.jp/ schutz).