Collected papers II
... The human world is populated with objects thus created that are passed on from generation to generation. Social sciences authors such as Garfinkel (1967), Goffman (1967), and Schütz (1967) have pointed out that such shared knowledge of common sense works well when it is confounded with reality. As a consequence, it remains unnoticed in such a way that people generally disregard the share of adaptive knowledge of social origin. ...
... In sum, only a very tiny part of our knowledge is based on personal experience, the rest is made up of information that has been passed on to us by our parents, teachers, and relatives. P. L. Berger and Luckmann (1966), Garfinkel (1967), Goffman (1967), and Schütz (1967) have described and reviewed the countless components of this shared knowledge (see Table 1). All individuals who enter society acquire this shared knowledge, without which they could not participate in common life, nor even face the world. ...
... Thus, through these countless educational interactions, individuals are early on de facto rooted in a powerful intersubjective reality (Schütz, 1967) which progressively provides them with the knowledge needed to fit into the world. Yet, across life, change is rapid and continuous. ...
Emotions signal flaws in the person’s anticipation systems, or in other words, in aspects of models of how the world works. As these models are essentially shared in society, emotional challenges experienced by any individual are of relevance to the community of others. Emotions emerge at the heart of the individual experience, the only place where collective knowledge can be tested against the world. Once felt, emotions generate a cascade of psychological facts: compelling concern, cognitive work, social sharing, and propagation of the social sharing. The larger the fault detected, the more intense the emotion, the more intensive the cognitive work it generates, and the broader the social sharing of the episodic information. Through the social sharing of emotions, common knowledge is updated and enriched.
... The first-and second-order [37] concepts were extracted across the full primary study by S. (Table 2). ...
... In step 5, the concepts were organized by S.F.-B. in conceptual piles and then the piles were discussed and reorganized by all the authors. It was determined that the studies met the criteria for reciprocal translation, so the first-and second-order constructions were placed, allowing the development of third-order constructions [37]. These new understandings were added to the reciprocal synthesis, building on the themes and metaphor (step 6). ...
Healthcare professionals find the care of parents following an involuntary pregnancy loss stressful and challenging. They also feel unprepared to support bereaved parents. The challenging nature of this support may have a personal impact on health professionals and the care provided to parents. The aim of this meta-ethnography is to synthesise nurses' and midwives' experiences of caring for parents following an involuntary pregnancy loss. A meta-ethnography of ten studies from five countries was carried out. GRADE CERQual was assessed to show the degree of confidence in the review findings. An overarching metaphor, caring in darkness, accompanied by five major themes provided interpretive explanations about the experiences of nurses and midwives in caring for involuntary pregnancy losses: (1) Forces that turn off the light, (2) strength to go into darkness, (3) avoiding stumbling, (4) groping in darkness, and (5) wounded after dealing with darkness. Nursing staff dealt with organizational difficulties, which encouraged task-focused care and avoidance of encounters and emotional connection with parents. However, nurses and midwives might go beyond in their care when they had competencies, support, and a strong value base, despite the personal cost involved.
... The main first order (participants' quotations) and second order (authors' interpretations) (Schütz, 1962) concepts were extracted across the full primary study by SFB and MJMF and recorded in a Microsoft Word table. ...
... In step 5, SFB and MJMF organized the concepts in conceptual piles and then discussed and reorganized these piles. The juxtaposition of the first-and second-order constructions through reciprocal and refutational translations led to the development of third-order constructions (Schütz, 1962) explanations were then merged, discussed, and used to generate hypotheses to produce the line of argument synthesis (Atkins et al., 2008;France et al., 2019). ...
Aims:
To synthesise research findings regarding the coping experiences of parents following perinatal loss.
Design:
Noblit and Hare's interpretive meta-ethnography was followed.
Data sources:
A comprehensive systematic search of the published literature (2013-2018) was undertaken in five databases, complemented by supplementary searches.
Review methods:
Fourteen studies met the research objective and inclusion criteria.
Results:
Five themes describe the coping strategies used by parents who experience perinatal loss. The themes were synthesised into the metaphor Staying afloat in the storm.
Conclusion:
Parents use coping strategies to manage perinatal loss andthe use of these strategies is conditioned by cultural, social and individual factors. This study has implications for evidence-based practice by showing care needs and the importance of implementing emotional and patient-centred care interventions.
... He traced it—that is, the idea that social interaction bestows events with qualitatively different meaning—back to American pragmatism (Mead, 1934), on the one hand, and on the other to Freud's (1911) and Durkheim's (1912) independent discoveries of the 'reality principle' and 'collective consciousness,' respectively. [1] study entitled 'Das Problem der transzendentalen Intersubjektivität bei Husserl' ('The problem of intersubjectivity with Husserl'; Schutz, 1975). Schutz formulated in this essay: ...
... All communication, whether by so-called expressive movements, deictic gestures, or the use of visual or acoustic signs, already presupposes an external event in that common surrounding world which, according to Husserl, is not constituted except by communication. (Schutz, 1975, at p. 72). Schutz, therefore, wished to ground the communication in a common frame of reference. ...
Following a suggestion from Warren Weaver, we extend the Shannon model of communication piecemeal into a complex systems model in which communication is differentiated both vertically and horizontally. This model enables us to bridge the divide between Niklas Luhmann’s theory of the self-organization of meaning in communications and empirical research using information theory. First, we distinguish between communication relations and correlations among patterns of relations. The correlations span a vector space in which relations are positioned and can be provided with meaning. Second, positions provide reflexive perspectives. Whereas the different meanings are integrated locally, each instantiation opens global perspectives – ‘horizons of meaning’ – along eigenvectors of the communication matrix. These next-order codifications of meaning can be expected to generate redundancies when interacting in instantiations. Increases in redundancy indicate new options and can be measured as local reduction of prevailing uncertainty (in bits). The systemic generation of new options can be considered as a hallmark of the knowledge-based economy.
... A secondorder concept is a researcher's interpretation of data in a primary qualitative study. 16 VPN, KS and FT met to discuss and reach agreement, and compiled a spreadsheet of all of the concepts extracted from the papers. ...
Objective
To review qualitative studies on the experience of taking opioid medication for chronic non-malignant pain (CNMP) or coming off them.
Design
This is a qualitative evidence synthesis using a seven-step approach from the methods of meta-ethnography.
Data sources and eligibility criteria
We searched selected databases—Medline, Embase, AMED, Cumulative Index to Nursing and Allied Health Literature, PsycINFO, Web of Science and Scopus (Science Citation Index and Social Science Citation Index)—for qualitative studies which provide patients’ views of taking opioid medication for CNMP or of coming off them (June 2017, updated September 2018).
Data extraction and synthesis
Papers were quality appraised using the Critical Appraisal Skills Programme tool, and the GRADE-CERQual (Grading of Recommendations Assessment, Development and Evaluation working group - Confidence in Evidence from Reviews of Qualitative research) guidelines were applied. We identified concepts and iteratively abstracted these concepts into a line of argument.
Results
We screened 2994 unique citations and checked 153 full texts, and 31 met our review criteria. We identified five themes: (1) reluctant users with little choice; (2) understanding opioids: the good and the bad; (3) a therapeutic alliance: not always on the same page; (4) stigma: feeling scared and secretive but needing support; and (5) the challenge of tapering or withdrawal. A new overarching theme of ‘constantly balancing’ emerged from the data.
Conclusions
People taking opioids were constantly balancing tensions, not always wanting to take opioids, and weighing the pros and cons of opioids but feeling they had no choice because of the pain. They frequently felt stigmatised, were not always ‘on the same page’ as their healthcare professional and felt changes in opioid use were often challenging.
Trial registration number
49470934; Pre-results.
... Desde una perspectiva fenomenológica el proceso de educación no sólo involucra la adquisición de un conjunto de tipificaciones socialmente aprobadas, sino también el aprendizaje de cómo aplicarlas 'correctamente' a la definición de situaciones cotidianas (Schütz, 2011). En este sentido, el profesor de EFyD es funcional al aprendizaje de tipificaciones basadas en estereotipos que luego se traducen en desigualdades de género asimiladas sin cuestionamiento alguno. ...
San Martín, D.; Mujica-Johnson, F.; Orellana-Arduiz, N. (2019). Revisión crítica de la desigualdad de género en la prensa deportiva (2012-2018): Implicaciones para la educación física escolar.
... Desde una perspectiva fenomenológica el proceso de educación no sólo involucra la adquisición de un conjunto de tipificaciones socialmente aprobadas, sino también el aprendizaje de cómo aplicarlas 'correctamente' a la definición de situaciones cotidianas (Schütz, 2011). En este sentido, el profesor de EFyD es funcional al aprendizaje de tipificaciones basadas en estereotipos que luego se traducen en desigualdades de género asimiladas sin cuestionamiento alguno. ...
Se presenta una revisión narrativa de investigaciones científicas sobre la desigualdad de género reproducida en la prensa deportiva de Iberoamérica. Se constata que la prensa deportiva tendría un rol importante en la reproducción de una perspectiva patriarcal del deporte. Mediante un método cualitativo se analizaron investigaciones empíricas asociadas a prensa deportiva y desigualdad de
género, publicadas durante los años 2012-2018. Los datos fueron analizados con un enfoque descriptivo interpretativo, desde tablas de frecuencias y codificación de contenido. Los resultados muestran la presencia de estereotipos corporales sexistas y sesgo negativo para el deporte femenino. Estos estereotipos forman parte de una cultura androcéntrica que reproduce violencia de género. De este modo, la prensa deportiva contribuye a la configuración subjetiva-emocional de los escolares. En consecuencia, a través de la educación física crítica, los profesores tienen el desafío de deconstruir las
racionalidades de desigualdad de género presentes en el contexto deportivo.
... The role of space as a basic feature of sociality was already indicated by Schutz [1962] in his idea of reciprocity. Reciprocity includes what he called the interchangeability of standpoints. ...
... The role of space as a basic feature of sociality was already indicated by Schutz [1962] in his idea of reciprocity. Reciprocity includes what he called the interchangeability of standpoints. ...
Lefebvre famously had asked how "éspace" and "spacialité" contribute to the constitution of societal order. In this paper we want to propose an answer to this question by sketching a new social theory in the making. On this basis we address the recent societal transformations, as they are indicated by empirical research, in terms of the re-figuration of spaces. Finally, we want to provide some preliminary specifications of what we mean by the re-figuration of space with reference to the processes of polycontexturalization, mediatization and translocalization. By polycontexturalization we mean that increasingly there are arrangements of space and multiple references to hitherto different spatial scales and dimensions which take effect or are put into effect simultaneously. Individual and collective actors are confronted with the challenge of following different spatial logics at the same time. By mediatization we refer to the fact that the constitution of space takes place in mediated forms spurred by advances in digital communication technologies. Proactive and reflexive communicative acts on different scales and levels, at once digital and face-to-face, are thus made possible or become inevitable. As a result of mediatization and multiple processes of circulation involving human beings, things and technologies, polycontexturalization implies what has come to be called translocalization, i.e. a continual coupling of different locations in conjunction with an increase in relevance of the individual location.
... What is crucial for such a confl ict approach is to understand the actors' situation and position in context. Blazejewski ( 2009 : 234) argues, for example, with Schütz (1972) that a situation "defi nes an actor's position with respect to their contextual conditions." More specifi cally: ...
The objective of this chapter is to provide a critical overview over recent theory-based research on multinational corporations (MNC) conflict. In particular, we seek to understand and explicate the contributions of the various theoretical approaches and perspectives applied in international business (IB) research towards the analysis of conflictual situations and processes in MNC contexts. In modeling conflict in MNC international business, authors draw on diverse theoretical traditions, including psychology, sociology and economics as well as organizational conflict theory. We wish to critically fathom their respective potential for the description and explanation of MNC conflict and, in addition, provide some insights into the theoretical lacunae remaining within the IB conflict research: where and how can we better integrate and extend conflict research in the IB field in order to fully capitalize on the theoretical advancements in conflict research at large? And where do we need to adjust concepts and constructs drawn from related fields to better account for the complex context of MNC conflicts? For reasons expounded upon below, the critical review concentrates on conflicts arising in the MNC headquarters–subsidiary relationship. Since the MNC as an organization has become an object of study in its own right, it has been characterized as an inherently conflictual arena (Bartlett and Ghoshal 1989; Doz and Prahalad 1991; Gladwin and Walter 1980; Pahl and Roth 1993; Prahalad and Doz 1987).
... Symbolic cognitive artifacts, just as much as language, are constitutive parts of the human biocultural niche, and are of fundamental importance in human cultural-cognitive evolution. They afford symbolic systems and conceptual schemas that underpin the socio-cognitive practices (and the reproduction of these practices) constituting a segment of the life world (Schutz, 1966) of individual and group. The invention and use of symbolic cognitive artifacts is a crucial (and species-specific) aspect of the " ratchet effect " (Tomasello, 1999) in human cultural evolution 3 . ...
Niche construction theory is a relatively new approach in evolutionary biology that seeks to integrate an ecological dimension into the Darwinian theory of evolution by natural selection. It is regarded by many evolutionary biologists as providing a significant revision of the Neo-Darwinian modern synthesis that unified Darwin’s theory of natural and sexual selection with 20th century population genetics. Niche construction theory has been invoked as a processual mediator of social cognitive evolution and of the emergence and evolution of language. I argue that language itself can be considered as a biocultural niche and evolutionary artifact. I provide both a general analysis of the cognitive and semiotic status of artifacts, and a formal analysis of language as a social and semiotic institution, based upon a distinction between the fundamental semiotic relations of “counting as” and “standing for.” I explore the consequences for theories of language and language learning of viewing language as a biocultural niche. I suggest that not only do niches mediate organism-organism interactions, but also that organisms mediate niche-niche interactions in ways that affect evolutionary processes, with the evolution of human infancy and childhood as a key example. I argue that language as a social and semiotic system is not only grounded in embodied engagements with the material and social-interactional world, but also grounds a sub-class of artifacts of particular significance in the cultural history of human cognition. Symbolic cognitive artifacts materially and semiotically mediate human cognition, and are not merely informational repositories, but co-agentively constitutive of culturally and historically emergent cognitive domains. I provide examples of the constitutive cognitive role of symbolic cognitive artifacts drawn from my research with my colleagues on cultural and linguistic conceptualizations of time, and their cultural variability. I conclude by reflecting on the philosophical and social implications of understanding artifacts co-agentively.
... Such hierarchical chains of meaning-structures become taken for granted and naturalized through institutionalization (Maguire & Hardy, 2009;Schutz & Luckmann, 1973). Nevertheless, even if we were to agree that all practices emerge as solutions to problems, it would be impossible to unambiguously know about these problems and their solutions in the subsequent social reality (Schutz, 1962); we can only track texts of them (Phillips et al., 2004). ...
A paper presented in 29th EGOS Colloquium, Montréal, 2013.
The aim of this paper is to provide some basic concepts in macrophenomenology. I will start with an exposition of the word “macrophenomenon,” its use and meaning in the phenomenological tradition. Specifically, I will focus on Merleau-Ponty’s lectures and manuscripts from 1959 to 1960. Once it is established that the word has had a meaning for the phenomenological tradition, I will ask what a macrophenomenon is. I will find, heavily relying on the late Merleau-Ponty, that they are global, holistic large-scale phenomena, endowed with distinctive features. I will continue claiming that, since macrophenomena are intertwined with microphenomena in vertical and reversible relations, macrophenomenology is not the opposite but just the other side, the reverse, of micropohenomenology. Then I will briefly describe some central issues of the new ontology that Merleau-Ponty provides as a framework for understanding macrophenomena. I will focus on the key notions of the vertical Being and of emergent things. Next, I will follow an example that Merleau-Ponty borrows from Durkheim, and then add another one which I take from Garfinkel. I will end by summarizing the salient features of macrophenomena.
While phenomenologists have paid little attention to mediated sociality, the situation has recently been changing owing to the increasing dependence of social life on digital media. Alfred Schutz’s social phenomenology has gathered preeminent attention among phenomenological traditions as it reveals the structure of face-to-face and other types of social relationships. Although Shanyang Zhao’s concept of “consociated contemporaries” provided a reference point for the Schutzian studies of mediated sociality, he discarded the phenomenological aspects of Schutz’s ideas. To replace Zhao’s trichotomy of consociates, contemporaries, and consociated contemporaries with a more phenomenological taxonomy, this paper examines Schutz’s concepts of thou- and they-orientation. Emphasizing that my thou-orientation to you does not entail your thou-orientation to me and that the other-orientation is not always reciprocal, this paper argues that mediated sociality can be classified into five types: reciprocal thou-thou-orientation, reciprocal thou-they-orientation, reciprocal they-they-orientation, non-reciprocal thou-orientation, and non-reciprocal they-orientation. Reciprocal thou-they-orientation, such as the relationship between a streamer and viewers in online live streaming, is a form of sociality that has recently become conspicuous owing to high-speed and massive Internet communication. Finally, this paper adds some remarks on the implications for the phenomenological theory of online empathy.
This chapter develops an analysis of how others appear to “me” in terms of publicness. I apply the phenomenological concepts of the homeworld and the alienworld to refer to the lifeworld the subject experiences as familiar and normal and to that part of the world the subject is aware of but perceives as something unfamiliar and alien. I argue that, in media-based public discussion, these two “worlds” appear next to each other and even intermingled and confused. At the end of the chapter, I speculate on how the erasure of the line between the familiar and the foreign in public discussions in media may provoke confusion, misunderstandings, and stereotyping others.
In this paper I reflect upon soft-systems inquiry. To do this I revisit Churchman’s discourse on the philosophical ideas underpinning inquiring systems and then discuss the practical application of soft inquiry pioneered by Checkland. This body of work suggested ontological models of organisational behavior were inappropriate and only by adopting an epistemological perspective would provide the basis for understanding complex systems that characterise human society. These ideas motivated a new way of addressing complexity. This work created a difficulty for action research since to be faithful to this discovery meant that any method of inquiry should be one that could cope with such complexity. One outcome was Soft Systems Methodology (SSM). Paradoxically the success of SSM has restrained further discussion of these ideas. The purpose of this paper is to revisit the ideas of Churchman and Checkland as a means of returning to first principles. In this paper I reassess their ideas and those of Husserl and Gadamer and suggest there is more to be gained from this rich seam of systems thinking.
Background
Childhood chronic pain is a widespread public health issue. We need to understand how children with chronic pain and their families experience chronic pain and its management.
Objectives
To conduct a meta-ethnography on the experiences and perceptions of children with chronic pain and their families of chronic pain, treatments and services. We investigated how children and their families conceptualise and live with chronic pain; what they think of and want from health and social care services; and what they conceptualise as ‘good’ pain management.
Design
Meta-ethnography with stakeholder and patient and public involvement in the design, search and sampling strategies, analysis and dissemination.
Review strategy: comprehensive searches of 12 bibliographic databases and supplementary searches in September 2022, to identify qualitative studies with children aged 3 months to 18 years with chronic non-cancer pain and their families. We included studies with rich explanatory data; appraised methodological limitations using the Critical Appraisal Skills Programme tool; and extracted, analysed and synthesised studies’ findings. We used Grading of Recommendations Assessment, Development and Evaluation-confidence in the evidence from reviews of qualitative research to assess confidence in review findings. We integrated findings with 14 Cochrane treatment effectiveness reviews on children’s chronic non-cancer pain.
Results
We synthesised 43 studies sampled from 170 eligible studies reported in 182 publications. Studies had minor ( n = 24) or moderate ( n = 19) methodological limitations. Grading of Recommendations Assessment, Development and Evaluation-confidence in the evidence from reviews of qualitative research assessments of review findings were high ( n = 22), moderate ( n = 13) or very low confidence ( n = 1).
Moderate and severe chronic pain had profound adverse impacts on family members’ well-being, autonomy and self-identity; family dynamics; parenting approaches; friendships and socialising; children’s education and parental paid employment. Most children and families sought a biomedical cure for pain. They experienced difficulties seeking and receiving support from health services to manage pain and its impacts. Consequently, some families repeatedly visited health services.
Cochrane reviews of intervention effects and trials did not measure some outcomes important to children and families, for example effects of pain on the family and resolution of pain. Reviews have mainly neglected a biopsychosocial approach when considering how interventions work.
Limitations
There were limited data on common pain conditions like migraine/headache, abdominal pain; some rarer conditions; children with learning disabilities and under-fives; siblings; fathers and experiences of treatments/services. We excluded studies on cancer, end-of-life pain and experiences of healthcare professionals.
Conclusions
We developed the family-centred theory of children’s chronic pain management, integrating health and social care with community support.
Future work
Future research should explore families’ experiences of services and treatments, including opioids, and social care services; experiences of children with autism and learning disabilities, under 5 years old and with certain common pain conditions. We need development and testing of family-centred interventions and services.
Study registration
This study is registered as PROSPERO (CRD42019161455) and Cochrane Pain, Palliative and Supportive Care (623).
Funding
This award was funded by the National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR) Health and Social Care Delivery Research programme (NIHR award ref: NIHR128671) and is published in full in Health and Social Care Delivery Research ; Vol. 12, No. 17. See the NIHR Funding and Awards website for further award information.
This chapter continues the discussion of the themes dealt with in Chap. 4 but in relation to two classic ‘Eastern’ or samurai films, Yojimbo (1961) and Rashomon (1950), both directed by Akira Kurosawa. Both films are concerned with the relationship between the mimetic crisis of undifferentiation (‘the war of all against all’) and legal reasoning as a variant of the scapegoat mechanism. Yojimbo examines the ways in which the restoration of justice cannot be successfully achieved in the absence of the use of armed force, but in a manner that spectacularly parodies the Girardian and Schmittean themes of the Westerns: here it is the lone swordsman who must scapegoat the community in order to expel the Enemy which turns out to be everybody, necessitating the apocalypse. Rashomon, a much more complex film, draws our attention to the centrality of existential envy and metaphysical desire to violence. Superficially a ‘hybrid’ of the samurai and legal thriller film, Rashomon is a meditation on the tension between external and internal mediations, which Girard identifies as latently inhabiting every relationship between the model and his or her imitator. External mediation, which is a by-product of social hierarchy, works to reduce mimetic rivalry by establishing the ‘correct’ social spaces between model and imitator; internal mediation, in contrast, is the unstable bourgeois counterpart of ‘the ego and its own’. Few societies were as hierarchical as pre-modern Japan; there, external mediation was invested with the status of a categorical imperative. And it is precisely here that Kurosawa stages his two homicidal dramas of mimetic rivalry. The key to solving the mystery of what really happened in the grove of bamboo lies with correctly situating all four protagonists within their respective internal or ‘private’ mimetic crisis. Frequently, and absurdly, mis-read as a post-modern meditation on the relativity of truth, Rashomon is much better understood as a Japanese social drama about mimesis. All of the witnesses must lie because to tell the truth would be to admit the truly unbearable which is their failure to convincingly imitate their respective models that are the entirety of their being: an honest woodcutter who robs the dead, a noblewoman who wants to kill her husband, a samurai who is afraid to die, and a bandit who is afraid to kill. Each witness is not merely a failure in the emulation of their respective model, and they are the exact opposite of it, meaning that they are devoid of a true existence.
In the present paper, I analyze the complex relationship of tension between Critical Theory and phenomenology from a sociological-theoretical perspective. I start from two theses. The first one is that one of the primary reasons for the antagonism between these two paradigms lies in their ideal-typically opposed assessments of the role of ‘meaning-adequacy’ in social research. The second one is that in recent years, there has been a strong rapprochement of Critical Theory with (social) phenomenology. This shift, fundamentally embodied in Hartmut Rosa’s work, can be understood as the culminating point of a progressive turn towards meaning-adequacy within the Frankfurt School. In order to unfold these two theses, I will proceed in three steps. First (1), I will present the main outlines of the relationship of tension between the two traditions from both a historico-intellectual and a systematic perspective. Second (2), I will focus on the contemporary readings of the Schutzian notion of ‘meaning-adequacy’ and discuss their value for better understanding the historical opposition between the two paradigms, as well as their recent rapprochement. Third (3), I will sketch the key features of Rosa’s sociology of world-relations, understood as a phenomenological Critical Theory that shows a strong commitment to a radicalized version of the meaning-adequacy postulate.
Research methodology plays a pivotal role in generating new knowledge in any academic discipline. Applied Linguistics (AL) researchers use a variety of research methodologies to address different research problems and research questions, given its interdisciplinary nature. Notwithstanding the plethora of research methodologies used by AL researchers, there are some methodologies that are used less frequently. The aim of this volume is to introduce and discuss these less frequently used methodologies. Each methodology is discussed in two chapters, a theoretical and a practical chapter. In the theoretical chapters, the theoretical foundations, methodological orientation, ethical issues, and critiques and responses are discussed. In the practical chapters, a showcase study is presented and discussed, including why the methodology was used, how it was implemented, the challenges the researchers faced, and the insights they gained. The volume contributes to the current methodological discussion in AL and provides early-career and seasoned researchers with the necessary discussion about these methodological orientations. Future AL researchers may use these methodologies to investigate research questions in their areas of interest. In addition, the volume can complement current methodological resources in postgraduate research methodology courses.
While Alfred Schutz’s approach to social theory has forged a phenomenological foundation for contemporary social scientists, Schutz is seldom considered a “macro” thinker. Only in recent years, scholars have attempted to rehabilitate Schutz for analyses on the macro level. In this chapter, I follow a twofold objective: By showing how Schutz re-presents a classic for a theory of virtuality, I also aim to demonstrate how his work can be of use for a theory of digitalized societies and hence for an analysis of macro processes. For this, I will systematize his contributions by turning to (1) his methodological stance on the crucial relevance of the subjective point of view for sociological inquiry; (2) his theoretical conception of “multiple realities,” which adds to a better understanding of the consequences of digitalization as it offers a basic vocabulary to describe the experienced realities; and (3) his cartography of the structure of the social world as a backdrop for an analysis of digalitized societies.KeywordsDigitalizationAlfred SchutzLife-worldMultiple realitiesSocial world
Phenomenology is deemed to be a one-sided microsociological approach. To prove this wrong, I will address Schutz’s notion of collective entities. Collective entities are the result of objectifying processes of abstraction, depersonalization, and generalization of meaning structures. Its peculiar nature demands a peculiar constructivist approach. In Western modern societies, the symbolic arrangement of collective experience is structured on three bases: institutions, social classes, and the state. Institutions are the symbolic structuration of human behavior. They consist of typical patterns of behavior derived, sanctioned, and stocked socially that embody typical social actors, roles, and relationships. Social classes do not address individuals as typical actors or as incumbents of typical social roles; they address typical actors and typified ways of acting as marks and indications of the social groups to which they allegedly belong. The state is a highly anonymous institution of the contemporary world. It cannot be grasped in direct experience. For being a normative idea, much of what it “does” has the mode of an imposition.KeywordsCollective entitiesSocietyInstitutionsSocial classesState
According to Husserl’s self-description, his phenomenological project was “completely apolitical.” Husserl’s phenomenology did not provide a political philosophy in the classical sense, a normative description of a functioning social order and its respective institutional structures. Nor did Husserl have much to say about the day-to-day politics of his time. Yet his reflections on community and culture were not completely without political implications. This article deals with an often-neglected strand of Husserl’s philosophy, namely his critique of liberalism. In this article, liberalism is understood in the manner of Leo Strauss, as a tradition of individualist philosophy emerging from Hobbes’s political thought. As the article shows, Husserl followed many of his contemporaries in criticizing Hobbes’s abstract individualism, which could provide only a preventative function for political institutions. More importantly, Husserl’s engagement with Hobbes can be understood as a kind of ethical counterpart to his analysis of Galileo in the Crisis, as a critique of formal apriorism in the political domain. What Galileo did for physical nature with his “garb of ideas,” Hobbes did for human nature, reducing human sociality to interactions between atomistic individuals. In doing so, Hobbes ended up presenting a “mathematics of sociality” in an empirical garb. Going against the liberal view of the human person, Husserl presented his theory of social ethics founded on an original co-existence of subjects and a theory of human renewal.
Background
Abortion is one of the most common gynaecological procedures. It is related to personal, social, and economic reasons under a legal term that is recognised as a common sexual and reproductive right in most of countries. However, making the decision to abort is complex, because it is politicised and is often framed in public discourse related to moral or ethical issues beyond women’s experiences. Therefore, it is subject to medical criteria, religious evaluations, and sociological analysis.
Purpouse
The aim of this synthesis of qualitative studies was to synthesise the decision-making experiences of women who legally aborted.
Research design and method
The Noblit and Hare’s interpretive meta‐ethnography was conducted, and it was written in accordance with the eMERGe meta‐ethnography reporting guidance. Ten studies met the research objective and inclusion criteria, after a comprehensive systematic search strategy in five databases.
Findings
The metaphor “The wrestling between why and what will happen next” and three themes emerged from the data analysis: (1) Forces that incite the arm wrestling; (2) Facing social stigma; and (3) Defeated by a greater rival. The metaphor provided interpretive experiences of the moral conflict experienced by women who decided to have an abortion and emerged from the confrontation of the reasons why they decided to abort and the social repercussions that making the decision entails. The result of the struggle was loneliness and vulnerability.
Conclusion
The lines of action impact policy makers, the media, and health professionals. Actions should focus on the de-stigmatisation and normalisation of abortion, the use of appropriate language, and the training and sensitisation of health professionals.
Rarely does any empirical investigation show how administrators routinely control information in online communities and alleviate misinformation, hate speech, and information overload supported by profit‐driven algorithms. Thematic analysis of in‐depth phone interviews with members and administrators of a “Vaginal Birth After Cesarean” (VBAC) group with over 500 new mothers on Facebook shows that the administrators make 19 choices for recurring, authoritative but evolving 19 information‐related activities when (a) forming the VBAC group over Facebook for local new mothers, (b) actively recruiting women who had a VBAC or have related competencies, (c) removing doctors and solicitors from the group, (d) setting up and revising guidelines for interactions in the group, (e) maintaining the focus of the group, (f) initiating distinct threads of conversations on the group, (g) tagging experts during conversations in the group, and (h) correcting misinformation. Thirty‐eight information practices of the administrators indicate their nine gatekeeping roles, seven of these roles help administrators alleviate misinformation, hate speech, and information overload. Findings also show that the management of members and their interactions is a prerequisite to controlling information in online communities. Prescriptions to social networking companies and guidelines for administrators of online communities are discussed at the end.
This work is an effort to philosophize about the scientific words we must use to describe behaviors. It was written as an essay thus it is left here for further development; the issue before us is an ethological one, it addresses the question: which words are the most convenient to use in rigorous behavioral studies in order to produce scientific knowledge? We discuss the historical and philosophical roots of this behavioral-scientific problem. We admit anthropomorphic inference of organisms’ behaviors, as a mean to create scientific-novel knowledge. We present two examples –based on the ethological study of triatomines (vectors of Chagas disease)–, where our anthropomorphic approach resulted in the discovery of novel meanings.
This chapter delves into the theoretical underpinnings of praxeological and dialogical research on the emergence of opportunities for learning in teacher–student interactivities. First, I introduce the emergence of objects of learning as a social phenomenon; then I argue for the intersubjective–intercorporeal understanding of those objects as emergent learnables in classroom talk in their immediate contextual and interactional environments. Two sequences of classroom activities in a Swedish as a second language classroom are presented and analyzed from a phenomenological–sociological view on intersubjectivity. The analysis highlights the significance of a dialogical and praxeological approach to the study of learning/teaching activities, and underscores that attending to intersubjectivity includes paying attention to corporeal acts in the procedure of orienting to, and showing understanding about, learnables. The chapter concludes that, in order to understand teaching/learning behaviors, a detailed analysis of participants’ actions in their interactivities is necessary. More specifically, in all talk-in-interaction (and particularly in classroom talk, with which this study is specifically concerned), the objective reality of linguistic expressions – their forms, and their functions – is accomplished, situated and embodied, and is thus reflexive and indexical in nature. This may suggest that researchers abstain from the dichotomy of the subjective–objective reality of a learnable in favor of the possibility of considering the intersubjective objectivity of a learnable as what is accomplished in real time in a social activity.
This chapter discusses the problems and possibilities of media-based public dialogue. The educational perspective is on the non-formal and informal citizenship education of adults. The chapter starts by defining the kind of dialogue suitable for pluralist democratic societies as a ‘radical’ dialogue. Then the focus turns towards two central problems that arise from the pluralistic nature of contemporary democratic societies where, nevertheless, we often tend to forget the plurality of our ‘normalities’ in our everyday encounters. These specific problems are stereotyping and misunderstanding. In the end, I propose a self-reflective attitude as a key to successful public dialogue in pluralist democratic societies.
This article develops an ethnomethodological and conversation analytic approach of sensuous practices based on video materials and multi‐modal analyses. Focusing on professional training in cheese tasting in Italy, the article shows the interplay between the bodily sensorial access to a material object and verbal descriptions of its sensorial qualities. Sensorial experience is not only configured as the body touching, smelling, or tasting a sample, nor simply orchestrated as a response following an authorized instruction; it is organized by multiple sociomaterial resources, including tasting grids as textual artifacts for enhancing and disciplining the senses. The article proposes a praxeological and interactional approach of sensoriality that integrates bodies, language, materiality, and normativity.
Combining moral philosophy with sociological theory to build on themes introduced in Hall and Lamont’s Successful Societies (2009), the paper outlines a distinctive perspective. It holds that a necessary condition of successful societies is that decision‐makers base their decisions on a high level of attentiveness (concern and comprehension) towards subjectively valued and morally legitimate forms of life. Late modern societies consist of a plurality of forms of life, each providing grounds for what Alasdair MacIntyre has called internal goods—valued and morally valuable practices. The status of such goods is examined, and distinctions are drawn between their manifest and latent, and transposable and situationally specific, characteristics. We integrate this refined idea of internal goods into a developed conception of habitus that is both morally informed and situationally embedded. The sociological approach of strong structuration theory (SST) is employed to demonstrate how this conception of habitus can guide the critique of decision‐making that damages internal goods. We identify the most pervasive and invidious forms of damaging decision‐making in contemporary societies as those involving excessive forms of instrumental reasoning. We argue that our developed conception of habitus, anchored in the collectively valued practices of specific worlds, can be a powerful focus for resistance. Accounts of scholarship in higher education and of the white working class in America illustrate the specificities of singular, particular, social worlds and illuminate critical challenges raised by the perspective we advocate.
Bourdieu's concept of habitus relies heavily on insights from phenomenology, yet his theoretical effort falls short of existing phenomenological solutions to the problems of cognition, agency, and reflexivity in social action. These shortcomings are evident in the analytical and descriptive failures of the concept of habitus documented by critics. Turning to the work of Alfred Schutz, this paper offers his concept of pragma, meaning context, and theory of relevances as an alternative way to describe the embodied and temporal nature of social action and accounting for social determinations. The paper further parses out key differences between Schutz's social phenomenological understanding of embodied action and Bourdieu's habitus, including differences in understanding schemas of standardization and their relation with objectivities of the social world. The paper ends with a call for a critical reassessment of Schutz's social phenomenology, with potentially wide ranging implications not only for understandings of agency, but also of meaning and the constitution of objectivities of the social world, as well the underlying interpretive method of social science.
The life-world is a central topic of Husserl’s phenomenology. He addresses this issue in some of the works published during his lifetime and attempts to analyze the life-world extensively in many of his works and posthumously published research manuscripts. The life-world is one of the topics that have been discussed most extensively in phenomenology. However, there are many misunderstandings of Husserl’s phenomenology of the life-world. One misunderstanding concerns the variety of concepts of the life-world in Husserl and the possibility of developing various fields of the phenomenology of the life-world. It is the aim of this paper to show that Husserl has a pluralistic concept of the life-world, which makes it possible to develop various fields of the phenomenology of the life-world. I will introduce the monistic view and the pluralistic view of the concept of the life-world in Husserl and will clarify what the life-world is, thereby showing that the monistic view of the concept of the life-world in Husserl is not legitimate. However, even though Husserl has a pluralistic concept of the life-world, nowhere does he systematically clarify the various concepts of the life-world. Hence I will sort out and clarify various concepts of the life-world such as the narrower concept and the wider concept, the general concept and the particular concept, the natural concept and the transcendental concept, and the empirical concept and the eidetic concept. Based on the discussion of the various concepts of the life-world in Husserl, I will assess the monistic view and the pluralistic view of Husserl’s concept of the life-world so that we can better understand his various concepts of the life-world.
Urban space and time necessary for social reproduction are diversifying and lead to an extension ad infinitum of abstract possibilities for the realization of reproductive choices. The time—space compression cannot certainly be considered as a negative phenomenon in itself. The processes it generates in society are ambivalent, and certainly not unambiguous. The general feeling of a lack of time is one of the ways in which individual submission to the domination of time‐consuming speed as an undisputed value of our society is manifested. The inclination toward speed has led the ordinary experience toward new scales of values, shaped by the importance given to the new “virtues” of instantaneity and simultaneity. Where speed and slowness cannot coexist, where time and space are considered only as obstacles to be eliminated, and acceleration has no other purpose than itself, modes of being take shape based on dissatisfaction and resentment.
The old tradition and philosophy of science of Lifeworld and subjectivism are an alternative to the foundations forming the basis of much of the theory developed in business economics and also social science in general. The discussion in this chapter will involve several multidisciplinary fields: ontological and epistemological thoughts, methodological attitudes and implications, as well as consequences and connections between them. The focus is especially on the understanding of the basic discussions and thinking in the tradition, what has been and is being thought of reality, science, the human being, and creation of knowledge.
Why have societies failed to effectively respond to climate change? We address the question of climate change inaction by (1) examining how an unambiguously ominous report about climate change (IPCC 2018) was made palatable by news media and (2) explaining why climate change is typically unthematized in everyday life. Drawing on Adorno and Schutz, we develop a political-economic theory of relevance. The imperative to accumulate capital is not only a social-structural reality but also shapes why particular facts are regarded as relevant in experience (topical relevance) as well as how relevant material is interpreted (interpretative relevance) and acted toward (motivational relevance). Applying this framework, we (1) argue that media popularizations of the IPCC’s dire Global Warming of 1.5ºC (2018) are constituted by relevance systems conditioned by a capitalist social context and (2) strengthen Ollinaho’s (2016) Schutzian explanation for climate change inaction by examining how productive relations and the culture industry perpetuate climate change irrelevance in everyday life. Schutz’s framework helps conceptualize the intricacies of ideology and, when revised with Adorno’s sociology, shines new light on an old question: the relations between social conditions and knowledge.
Objective
Self‐help interventions have been demonstrated to be effective in treating bulimic‐type eating disorders (EDs). In particular, computer‐based interventions have received increasing attention due to their potential to reach a wider population. This systematic review aimed to synthesize findings from qualitative studies on users' experiences of self‐help interventions for EDs and to develop an exploratory framework.
Method
A systematic review and meta‐synthesis on seven peer‐reviewed qualitative studies on structured computer and book‐based self‐help interventions for EDs was conducted using Noblit and Hare's (1988) 7‐phase meta‐ethnography. Four of the selected studies investigated computer‐based self‐help programs, and three of the studies investigated book‐based guided self‐help programs.
Results
Six concepts were synthesized. They included intervention‐related factors (anonymity and privacy; accessibility and flexibility; guidance) and user‐related factors (agency/autonomy; self‐motivation; and expectations/attitudes). The study revealed the “machine‐like” and relational properties of the computer; the expansion of treatment time and space in psychological interventions, the changing role of the medical health professional from a “therapist” to a “guide,” and a change from understanding interventions as a conclusive treatment plan to a starting point or stepping stone toward recovery.
Discussion
Computer‐based self‐help interventions should take advantage of the “machine‐like” properties of a computer (neutrality, availability, etc.) as well as its ability to facilitate human interactions. Users should also be facilitated to have a realistic understanding of the purpose of self‐help interventions and the place of self‐help interventions in their broader treatment plans to moderate expectations and attitudes.
This paper addresses the question of concrete realizations of imaginary worlds as situated worlds. As a case study, the author bases his reflections on Age of Conan: Hyborian Adventure, an MMORPG based on the adventure of Conan the barbarian, the character created by Robert E. Howard in the 1930s. The author of the paper uses Erving Goffman’s theory of game and the notions of “locally realized world” and “membrane” to address this situated production. He then discusses the place of the player and the relations to the representations in the game as a vicarious experience and a distance implied by playful practices. By crossing several works of Erving Goffman, the author shows that immersion in gaming worlds is the product of both being absorbed in the action and maintaining a distance with it in order to be at the same time an actor and a spectator of the action
In this essay, I describe how I utilize my sociological training and imagination while building and organizing movement networks. First, I highlight the importance of fostering flexible, cross‐level intergroup ties when building movement networks. Second, I illustrate the role of emotions in the emergence and sustainability of movement networks. Third, I detail a theoretical framework for how stories of past resilience can be used in movement organizing to mobilize for the future.
This article investigates the relationship between for-me-ness and sociality. I start by pointing out some ambiguities in claims pursued by critics that have recently pressed on the relationship between the two notions. I next articulate a question concerning for-me-ness and sociality that builds on the idea that, occasionally at least, there is something it is like ‘for us’ to have an experience. This idea has been explored in recent literature on shared experiences and collective intentionality, and it gestures towards the question of the extent to which some social interactions make a difference in the phenomenal character of their participants’ experiences. Finally, I present a construal of for-us-ness that complements the received understanding of for-me-ness, by drawing on Alfred Schutz’ concept of the we-relationship, and on the idea of second-personal awareness, i.e. awareness of a ‘you’ (as distinguished from awareness of a ‘she’ or ‘he’). The current proposal provides a suitable account of some basic forms of phenomenally manifest social connectedness, in a way that is cognitively undemanding and without incurring the costs of a sui generis plural pre-reflective self-awareness.
This paper aims to explore the relations between Schutzian theory and hermeneutics. After presenting the connections between hermeneutic thought and Schutz’s work from a historical point of view, it will argue that despite its significant differences from hermeneutic theory, Schutzian theory can be utilized as a kind of proto-hermeneutics. By now, the heterogeneous movement of the interpretive social sciences has reached an established position, but with their growing reliance on the impulses coming from philosophical hermeneutics, the latent problem comes to the foreground: the former demand for an action-theoretical grounding has faded away. Currently, action theory itself is no more dominated by the work of interpretively minded authors, but by the theories of rational choice. This results in a false opposition between the explanatory models, which base their arguments on historical, cultural, and linguistic factors, and those, which focus on the plane of the decisions of individuals. Bypassing the objectivism present in both the rational choice approach and hermeneutics, Schutz’s pragmatic theory of the life-world, originating from both interpretive and pragmatic intellectual influences, may be useful to overcome this opposition, and can serve as a proto-hermeneutical point of departure: that is, as a theory which cannot alone take over the duty of hermeneutics, but which can complement hermeneutics on a fundamental level.
We need to deepen our understanding of different types of “group” epistemology, which is a shared discipline of knowledge creation within a group.
No definitive history concerning social phenomenology has ever been written, and there exists no well-circumscribed we-group with an established tradition. The first step of collecting the various contributions to its development promotes a synthesis of its historical subject matter into an organized corpus of literature. Two externally imposed reasons contributed to the lack of historical coherence and identity. First, the intellectual milieu that would have supported the growth of a unified tradition of social phenomenology, the Austrian-Germanic intellectual culture, had been stifled due to the economic and cultural consequences of each of the two world wars and the dissolution of academia through the rise of Nazism. The philosophers/sociologists that were struggling to create a paradigm for the human sciences were, as a consequence, geographically and culturally dispersed, which disrupted the developmental flow. The foreign sociological and philosophical traditions to which these investigators would have to adapt generally were not conducive to phenomenology as they were unacquainted with, or were hostile to, the Austrian-Germanic intellectual traditions. Secondly, after the 1940s, the impact of phenomenology on sociology was marginalized, due to the over emphasis on empirical-statistical methodology that has become the standard practice of the social sciences. The goal of this exposition is to explore the parameters for the development of a history of social phenomenology.
Research repeatedly shows that women are frequent targets of sexual harassment in public, ranging from catcalls to sexual assault. However, we know very little about the impacts of less obviously gendered rude behavior. Using nationally representative survey data from Australia (N = 1621), we investigated gender differences in the experience of generic public incivilities such as tailgating, pushing in crowded spaces, and yelling or cursing. We employed a series of logistic regression models to assess the relationship between gender and stranger incivility and to adjust for key demographic and event attributes. Results demonstrated that women were significantly more likely to report recent experiences of public incivility than were men and that women were significantly more likely to report negative impacts on their emotional well-being, particularly when the rude stranger was a man. Findings also showed that women were significantly more likely than were men to report limiting their use of public places as a result of experiencing public incivility. Much like sexual harassment, generic forms of uncivil behavior exact a gender-specific tax on women’s access to public places, compromising women’s capacity to fully engage in the public sphere. Implications for research and policy are discussed.
This article elucidates Edmund Husserl’s theory of community by examining its critical relation to the tradition of body politic, that is, the philosophical current employing the analogy between community and human body. It is argued that Husserl employs the corporeal analogy for three purposes: to describe the peculiar materiality, autonomy as well as the normative ideal of the social collective. Despite his relentless critique of naturalistic concepts in the description of the social sphere, Husserl nevertheless resorted to organic and bodily metaphors in his attempts to delineate the ideal form of communal co-existence, the “community of love”. With the help of the notion of love, Husserl was able to articulate his most elaborate account on the authentic relation between the individual and the collective.
Das umwerfend originelle Thema dieser Veranstaltung entsprach der Absicht des Vorstands, die zentrale Thematik, mit der sich die Sektion zu befassen hat, ins Verhältnis zu setzen zur Vereinigung Deutschlands. Es ging um Bestandsaufnahmen. Wer Bestände aufnehmen will, sinnt nicht auf Themapointen. Mit umstürzlerischen Thesen ist nicht zu rechnen, wo es Althergebrachtes noch nicht gibt. Zu erwarten sind Entdeckungen.
IntroductionUnderstandingLevels of (Mis) UnderstandingInter-cultural and Inter-gender MisunderstandingConclusion
This paper examines two kinds of student engagement: "procedural," which concerns classroom rules and regulations; and "substantive," which involves sustained commitment to the content and issues of academic study. It describes the manifestations of these two forms of engagement, explains how they relate differently to student outcomes, and offers some empirical propositions using data collected on literature instruction, collected during 1987-88 from 58 eighth-grade English classes (N=1,041 students). The results provide support for the following three hypotheses: (1) disengagement adversely affects achievement; (2) procedural engagement has an attenuated relationship to achievement because its observable indicators conflate procedural and substantive engagement; and (3) substantive engagement has a strong, positive effect on achievement. Features of substantively engaged instruction include authentic questions or questions that have no prespecified answers; uptake or the incorporation of previous answers into subsequent questions; and high-level teacher evaluation or teacher certification and incorporation of student responses in subsequent discussion. Each of these features is noteworthy because it involves reciprocal interaction and negotiation between students and teachers, which is said to be the hallmark of substantive engagement. (Author/TJH)
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