When it comes to understanding the nature of social cognition, we have—according to the standard view—a choice between the simulation theory, the theory-theory or some hybrid between the two. The aim of this paper is to argue that there are, in fact, other options available, and that one such option has been articulated by various thinkers belonging to the phenomenological tradition. More specifically, the paper will contrast Lipps' account of empathy—an account that has recently undergone something of a revival in (...) the hands of contemporary simulationists—with various accounts of empathy found in the phenomenological tradition. I discuss the way Lipps was criticized by Scheler, Stein and Husserl, and outline some of the core features of their, at times divergent, alternatives. I then proceed by considering how their basic take on empathy and social cognition was taken up and modified by Schutz—a thinker whose contribution to the analysis of interpersonal understanding has been unjustly neglected in recent years. (shrink)

Starting from the experience of the Other, phenomenology takes otherness as something which withdraws from my own experience and exceeds the limits of our common orders. Radical otherness is something extraordinary, arising in my own body, situated between us and striking us before we look for it. Psychiatry confronts us with a peculiar sort of pathological otherness which in ethnopsychiatry is doubled to an otherness of a higher degree. We encounter the anomalies of other orders as if we were dipping (...) into the Other’s shadow. This brings up many questions. How is the pathic related to the pathological, the normal to the abnormal? How can psychiatry take account of the intercultural Other without sacrificing its otherness to universal points of view? How is the unconsciousness of our own culture connected with that of other cultures? To what extent does intercultural otherness affect our intracultural otherness? Is there an alternative to the extremes of fundamentalism and globalism, which tend either to repress otherness or to level it? (shrink)

In The Human Place in the Cosmos Max Scheler argues the question of philosophical anthropology must address three problems: the difference between man and animal; the Cartesian problem of the mind and body; and the essence of spirit. In a recent issue of Human Studies, two articles by Cristian Ciocan and Christian Ferencz-Flatz addressed the first of these problems through investigations of Husserl’s Nachlass. In this paper, I respond primarily to Ciocan by drawing on Scheler’s phenomenology and the implications this (...) has for understanding Husserl’s phenomenology. By looking at Husserl’s published comments, we can see how the attempt to differentiate between man and animal is bound up with his understanding of spirituality. This allows an alternative way of understanding normality and abnormality which shifts emphasises away from how far we can empathise with the Other to emphasise what it means to be normal or abnormal. This will allow us to address an ambiguity of Husserl identified by Ferencz-Flatz. (shrink)

This paper argues that the phenomenon of globalisation can be best understood as the secularisation and widespread extension of a particular type of life?conduct that originated in Western monasticism. This concerns not substantive content but modality and form, like the self?sustaining methodical regularisation of the everyday conduct of life in closed and partitioned space aiming at rationalisation and perfection. This type of inner?worldly asceticism was a successful response to the challenge of chaotic ?liminal periods of transition, following a wholesale dissolution (...) of order. However, the solution represents a generalisation of liminality into a permanent condition, explaining both the innovativeness and creativity of modern societies, but also their characteristic tempo of hectic change that disrupts stable human relationships and the coexistence with animals and plants, losing balance and measure. (shrink)

This article focuses on an area of study that may be called folk economics and that is currently not on the social science agenda. Folk economics has as its task to analyze and explain how people view the economy and how it works; what categories they use in doing so; and what effect this has on the economy and society. Existing studies in economics and sociology that are relevant to this type of study are presented and discussed. A theoretical framework (...) for analyzing folk economic issues is suggested, centered on the distinction between episteme and doxa or between scientific knowledge, on the one hand, and everyday knowledge, on the other. This is then applied to an exploratory case study of the role that folk economics played in Trump’s presidential campaign. It is shown that Trump and his voters thought in a parallel way on key economic issues, especially protectionism. (shrink)

Although Schütz’s relationship with the Austrian school of economics was an intimate one, Lavoie and other Austrian scholars have challenged (a) Schütz’s characterization of praxeology as an objective science of subjective phenomena and (b) the ability of Schütz’s phenomenology, which emphasizes the subjective meanings of actors, to really make sense of spontaneous social orders. It is my contention, however, that Schütz can be adequately defended against both these charges. First, for Schütz, the claim that social science is an objective science (...) of subjective phenomena need not imply apodictic apriorism nor solipsism. Second, in spite of his emphasis on subjective meanings, the study of spontaneous social orders need not be difficult to justify. (shrink)

The term “social cognition” can be construed in different ways. On the one hand, it can refer to the cognitive faculties involved in social activities, defined simply as situations where two or more individuals interact. On this view, social systems would consist of interactions between autonomous individuals; these interactions form higher-level autonomous domains not reducible to individual actions. A contrasting, alternative view is based on a much stronger theoretical definition of a truly social domain, which is always defined by a (...) set of structural norms; moreover, these social structures are not only a set of constraints, but actually constitute the possibility of enacting worlds that would just not exist without them. This view emphasises the heteronomy of individuals who abide by norms that are impersonal, culturally inherited and to a large extent independent of the individuals. Human beings are socialised through and through; consequently, all human cognition is social cognition. The article argues for this second position. Finally, it appears that fully blown autonomy actually requires heteronomy. It is the acceptance of the constraints of social structures that enables individuals to enter new realms of common meaningfulness. The emergence of social life marks a crucial step in the evolution of cognition; so that at some evolutionary point human cognition cannot but be social cognition. (shrink)

This article elaborates a relational phenomenology of violence. Firstly, it explores the constitution of all sense in its intrinsic relation with our embodiment and intercorporality. Secondly, it shows how this relational conception of sense and constitution paves the path for an integrative understanding of the bodily and symbolic constituents of violence. Thirdly, the author addresses the overall consequences of these reflections, thereby identifying the main characteristics of a relational phenomenology of violence. In the final part, the paper provides an exemplification (...) of the outlined conception with regard to a concrete phenomenon of violence, i.e., slapping, and a concluding reflection upon its overall significance for research on violence. (shrink)

Can a phenomenologically-founded sociology contribute to the understanding of social change? By reference to the structure of the lifeworld as it has been analyzed by Husserl and Schutz, I argue that human action is formed by temporal, spatial, and social dimensions. These are objectified by a social semantics through which they gain their intersubjective cultural shape. From this perspective, I investigate changes in the temporal, spatial, and social dimensions of this semantics, as they occur in the present transformation of post-socialist (...) societies. Finally, I consider whether these changes mark a return to Western patterns and whether they confirm the thesis of the end of history. (shrink)

With reference to Mead, Peirce, speech act theory, conversation analysis, and Luhmann's phenomenological grounded version of systems theory, the paper tries to reconstruct actions as products of communication. A triadic sequence is identified as the elementary unit for the intersubjective constitution of an act. This unit combines three achievements: (a) the constitution of meaning by sequential attribution, (b) the intersubjective coordination of attributed meanings, and (c) the reproduction of rules, guiding the process of constitution and coordination of attributed meanings. Then, (...) using the tools of systems theory and applying them to empirical results of ethnomethodology and conversation analysis, it is shown how the rule scheme is integrated in a triadic sequence, functioning on three different levels of communication. Finally, a specific form of repair after next turn is discussed, relating it to the function of preserving the structure of conversational types. The analysis of such conversational types opens a possible realm of cooperation between conversation analysis and Luhmann's version of systems theory. (shrink)

In this article I intend to explore the conception of science as it emerges from the work of Husserl, Schutz, and Garfinkel. By concentrating specifically on the issue of science, I attempt to show that Garfinkel’s views on the relationship between science and the everyday world are much closer to Husserl’s stance than to the Schutzian perspective. To this end, I explore Husserl’s notion of science especially as it emerges in the Crisis of European Sciences, where he describes the failure (...) of European science and again preaches for a return to the “things themselves”. In this respect I interpret ethnomethodology’s most recent program as an answer to that call originating from a sociological domain. I then argue that the Husserlian turn within ethnomethodology marks the split between Garfinkel and Schutz. In fact I try to show that Schutz’s epistemological work is only partially inspired by phenomenology and that his conception of science retains a rationalist stance that ethnomethodology opposes. In the final section I briefly discuss Garfinkel’s most recent program as a way of closing the gap between theory and experience by linking the topics of science to the radical experiential phenomena. (shrink)

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 e...

Th is paper considers the relation between Harold Garfinkel and Alfred Schutz. Reference will be made to their correspondence as well as to some of Garfinkel’s writing. Garfinkel, who was a graduate student at Harvard at the time, first met Schutz at the recommendation of Aron Gurwitsch. Their meeting led to further exchanges including papers that Garfinkel sent to Schutz. When his book, titled Studies in Ethnomethodology, appeared in 1967 he specifically cited Schutz as one to whom he was “heavily (...) … indebted” in his work. In later writings he no longer made such citations and moved away from his earlier position. (shrink)

This article locates Bourdieu’s sociology within the lasting controversy concerning the nature of causal explanation and interpretative understanding in the social sciences, with a special focus on the classical problem surrounding the alleged compatibility between these procedures. First, it is argued that Bourdieu’s praxeological and relational perspective on the social universe leads him not only to join the ‘compatibility field’ of the debate, but to sustain, more radically, the identity between explanation and understanding. Second, the article defends the view that (...) this methodological proposal is tied to a distinction often ignored among the commentators of Bourdieu’s oeuvre, namely that between objectivism, a mode of knowledge of the social which he intends to integrate and overcome in his structural praxeology, and determinism, adopted by the author as a fundamental scientific principle and, at the same time, a potentially emancipatory ethico-political tool bequeathed by his reflexive sociology. While basically sympathetic to Bourdieu’s perspective, the article concludes in a more critical vein, by defending the need to bridge the gap between the ‘pessimism of the intellect’ that marks his portrayal of the reflexive capabilities of the lay agent, on the one hand, and the ‘optimism of the will’ infused in the critical program of reflexive sociology, on the other. (shrink)

This paper analyses and examines Deleuze’s Foucault as a means of investigating intellectual resources for a new sociology – one that, in Foucault’s name, is neither foundationalist nor rep...

Building on Alfred Schütz’s work, this essay conceptually scrutinizes virtual worlds with an aim to clarify what is at stake with the virtualization of the late modern society. The diffusion of technological artifacts, devices of communication and the Internet in particular, have transformed the life-world of essentially everyone. In the past few years our everyday life, including its livelihoods, has seen a proliferation of activities within virtual worlds, such as games and virtual social networks. We can now live and experience (...) actively in different virtual realms, as compared to being mere passive receivers in the era of television and radio. This has direct implications for what is inherently relevant for people and, in consequence, we have to take such transformation into account also in conceptual terms. This article makes a major contribution to the conceptual understanding of phenomenological sociology that due to the virtualization, we can no more equate the paramount reality as the zone of primary relevance. The paramount reality as conceived as the sensorily perceivable, physical world of concrete objects is increasingly far from being equated to that part of the world within our reach which we can immediately observe and also at least partially dominate, that is, the zone of primary relevance. It is furthermore argued that the ongoing virtualization of societies urges us to conceive of virtual worlds as transforming the chief finite province of meaning, that of the world of working, instead of seeing virtual worlds merely as other sub-universes of reality. (shrink)

Over the years, a number of interpreters with an interest in economics have given some attention the work of Alfred Schutz. As intimated in this literature, the orientation of his delimited thought on economics stemmed from contacts with the Austrian school during his Vienna years. Probably because of this connection, there exists among these interpreters an inclination uncritically to align Schutz with the Austrians' thought. What will be argued in this paper is that in adopting such an uncritical position, each (...) of these readings fails adequately to situate Schutz's critique of economic analyses within the framework of his own social theory. It will become apparent that his treatment of economics turned out to be a mixture of defence and critique, and that his interpretation of the subject and the intellectual status he ascribed to it were considerably more ambivalent and ambiguous than has been noticed. In particular, Schutz expressed significant reservations about the highly circumscribed and artificial depictions of the world of human action that some economists espoused, especially within the confines of marginalist theory. When arraigned against the phenomenology of the life-world that he had developed, and against the "postulates" around which he had constructed his social theory, much of extant economics did not meet the requirements of a properly grounded social science. (shrink)

Using qualitative data, this article makes a substantive and formal contribution to the growing academic literature on bodybuilding and the sociology of the body. Placing a question mark against existing knowledge claims, it argues theories ascribing bodybuilding to antecedent predispositions are not sufficient when accounting for the ongoing variable project of creating `the perfect body'. It is asserted that physique bodybuilding (as opposed to weight-training) in the late 1990s could be independent of the `masculinist imagery' of `the muscular body' alongside (...) feelings of gender and personal insecurity, but is increasingly dependent upon an acquired `ethnophysiological' appreciation of `excessive' muscularity. This phenomenological argument, which asserts the agency of bodies in social processes, focuses upon male participants' spatially and temporally contingent heterogeneous body-projects. (shrink)

Using embodied sociology, this article offers a virtual ethnography of ‘fat male embodiment’. Reporting and analysing qualitative data generated online, it includes a typology of big/fat male body-subjects and supportive/admiring others. These fat-friendly typifications are unpacked by referencing advocated codes of self–body relatedness, sexualities and the relevance of food. The virtual construction of acceptable, admirable or resistant masculinities is then explored under the following headings: (1) appeals to ‘real’ or ‘natural’ masculinity; (2) the admiration and eroticization of fat men’s bodies; (...) (3) transgression, fun and the carnivalesque; and (4) the pragmatics and politics of fat male embodiment. While alternative (positive) understandings of fatness are presented online, discrepancies between virtual and actual identities render stigma an ever-present possibility for those with ‘real’ fat male bodies. (shrink)

In speaking of the social dimensions of human experience, we inevitably become involved in the debate regarding how they are to be studied. Should we embrace the first-person perspective, which is that of the phenomenologists, and begin with the experiences composing our directly experienced lifeworld? Alternately, should we follow the lead of natural scientists and take up the third-person perspective? This is the perspective that asserts that we must begin with what is true for everyone, i.e., with what is available (...) to both me and Others. Both perspectives are one sided in that each presupposes the other for its intelligibility. The third-person perspective is Cartesian and, as I show, privileges space, while the first-person perspective is social in Levinas’s sense and presupposes time. Our reality, I argue, embraces both perspectives and is, in fact, set by their intertwining. (shrink)

This paper sets out to demonstrate that a phenomenological reflection on language highlights the possibilities of authenticity in communication, and as such provides a very necessary complement to the dominant linguistic perspectives: the syntactic and grammatical perspective, Saussurean linguistics, and systemic functional linguistics. While the syntactic and grammatical perspective, which predominates in the educational context, presents language as an institutionalized, authoritarian and self-contained system, Saussurean linguistics provides a view of language as a complex, self-contained, technical system, as such reflecting the (...) nature of modern society. The third perspective, systemic functional linguistics, describes templates of specific genre, models which aid students to construct their own, while simultaneously discouraging individual selfexpression. In contrast, a reflective phenomenological perspective identifies and encourages authentic self-expression. The paper concludes by considering ways to reconcile the impetus in language teaching towards, on the one hand, the language of institutional authority, and, on the other, individual self-expression. Indo-Pacific Journal of Phenomenology , Volume 6, Edition 2 August 2006. (shrink)

This article is a comment on papers being published in this special issue concerned with interactional semantics. As these papers are concerned with abstractions, formulations, generalizations, and other uses of categorizations whereby participants’ everyday understandings and interpretations come to the foreground of analysis, I explore the wider issue with which the papers wrestle. That issue is whether problems of meaning—related to subjectivity, intersubjectivity, mutual comprehension, and the like—are pervasive in interaction, or are limited and situational. I examine problems of meaning (...) through the lenses of social theory and ethnomethodology, and take the position that analytic preoccupation with interpretation should be one that follows participants’ own orientations to problems of meaning. This is different from but related to what each author argues in his own paper. (shrink)

The pervasiveness of domestic employment in the South African context gives rise to the question as to why women not only enter into, but remain in, such an undervalued work situation, and whether they are ultimately able to exit this sector. Contextualising the sectoral engagement of domestic workers as a transitional work-life cycle characterised by impoverishment, limited alternatives, acceptance of the work context, and future directedness, with individual transition through these phases determined by a unique set of circumstances, female domestic (...) workers’ lived experience of their work-life cycle was explored within the framework of an interpretivist research design. Non-probability respondent-driven self-sampling was employed to select 20 participants, most of whom were representative of families with a long history of sectoral involvement, particularly along the female line. Dense, non-numerical data was generated through in-depth interviewing. Inductive data explication was conducted with the aid of MAXQDA. The findings confirmed the existence of an institutionalised culture of engagement within the sector perpetuated from one generation to the next. Hardship and an urgent need for survival leave many with little option but to enter and remain within the sector. Despite negative societal perceptions of the sector, those within it take pride in their work and view their engagement as an enabling tool to better their future prospects and those of their families. Attempts to exit the sector are unsuccessful due, in part, to a limited formal education and skills repertoire. Domestic workers are thus entrapped within a never-ending cycle of sectoral engagement, with the possibility of exiting the sector remaining merely a dream for many. (shrink)

In the late 1980s, I wrote up some notes on the play of pick-up basketball and sent them to Harold Garfinkel, who incorporated them into an un-published monograph in 1988. They were motivated by an interest in exhibiting the sense of "detail" for ethnomethodological studies. An edited version is presented below. They follow a front piece of recollection and discussion about Garfinkel's distinctive interests in matters of "detail," their tie to structure and structure's circumstantiality, and their place in EM studies.

The present study provides an ethnomethodologically informed respecification of intention in the context of architectural education. The analyses focus on the ways in which participants deal with the relation between formulations of intention and designed objects. Claimed mismatches between stated intention and design make relevant instructional sequences elaborating alternative ways of understanding the design and possible routes by which articulated intentions could have been realized. The practice of topicalizing intentions appears to be a technique by which aspects of architectural competence (...) are made visible and instructed. In particular, the practice makes otherwise unattended aspects of the design process accountably available for assessment and remark. Furthermore, the complexities of architectural consequence in relation to individual design decisions are addressed as an instructional matter. The study expands existing work on intention ascription and avowal by examining a setting where participants deal with the intentional status of designed objects. It is argued that the analyzed assessment sequences are shaped and organized with reference to the particularities of architectural knowledge as well as to the educational character of the activity. Their basic logic, however, is grounded in ordinary understandings of action and intentionality. (shrink)

Where is it written that only naming words, conceptual signs, language symbols can facilitate the sort of intersubjective communication about things which is necessary in human life? (Bühler, 1990: 120).

What phenomenological details can investigations by human scientists provide to classical phenomenological inquiries regarding sense-constitution, the reflexivity of mundane understanding, and the production of objective knowledge? Problems of constitutional phenomenology are summarized and specifications are provided regarding ways to study intersubjective events. After a review of some quandaries suggested by an examination of Husserl, Levinas, Merleau-Ponty, Schutz, Gurwitsch, Garfinkel, and Adorno, the author provides two demonstrations of social phenomenologically inspired human studies—the playing of games with rules and the objective determination (...) of flavors by coffee tasters—in order to identify and describe some of the local details of sense organization that the human sciences can provide to phenomenological researchers. (shrink)