Alfred Schutz and ethnomethodology: Origins and departures

2019 ◽  
Vol 32 (2) ◽  
pp. 59-75 ◽  
Author(s):  
Martyn Hammersley
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Social Science ◽  
Alfred Schutz ◽  
Theory Formation ◽  
Harold Garfinkel ◽  
Social Inquiry ◽  
The Social ◽  
Early Influence ◽  
Alfred Schütz ◽  
The Relationship

The work of Alfred Schutz was an important early influence on Harold Garfinkel and therefore on the development of ethnomethodology. In this article, I try to clarify what Garfinkel drew from Schutz, as well as what he did not take from him, specifically as regards the task of social inquiry. This is done by focusing in detail on one of Schutz’s key articles: ‘Concept and Theory Formation in the Social Sciences’. The aim is thereby to illuminate the relationship between Schutz’s views on the character of social science and Garfinkel’s radical proposal for a re-specified focus of investigation. This is further pursued by examining an important debate about the link between Schutz and ethnomethodology.

scholarly journals A Dialogue on Social Inquiry: Expanding Our Understanding of Sociological Thinking

2019 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-7
Author(s):  
Rebat Kumar Dhakal
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Social Science ◽  
Social Transformation ◽  
Social World ◽  
Sociological Perspective ◽  
Philosophy Of Social Science ◽  
Social Sciences And Humanities ◽  
The Core ◽  
Social Inquiry ◽  
The Social

Highlights Social inquiry is much more than the study of society. It further excavates historical facts, critically reflects on everyday happenings, and envisions the future we wish to create. The intent of initiating this dialogue on social inquiry is two-fold: a) to offer a sociological perspective (i.e. ‘thinking sociologically’), and b) to expand our understanding of sociological thinking. Sociological thinking can be developed by examining the periphery of the core. Context matters in understanding any phenomenon under the sociological microscope. Sociological thinking allows many different viewpoints to coexist within a larger structure and that it respects pluralism. Sociological thinking is about developing or providing a perspective to examine social nuances. Sociological thinking should act as a means for social transformation.  Social inquiry serves as a methodology for the social sciences and humanities. It deals with the philosophy of social science and the workings of the social world – giving a way for understanding both the biosphere and the sociosphere.

History and Social Science in the West

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kevin Passmore
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Social Science ◽  
External Force ◽  
Social Scientists ◽  
The West ◽  
Grand Theory ◽  
Academic History ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Relationship

This chapter analyzes the relationship between history and various disciplines within the social sciences. Historians and social scientists shared two related sets of assumptions. The first supposition was of a world-historical shift from a traditional, hierarchical, religious society to a modern egalitarian, rational one. Second, history and social science assumed that progress occurred within nations possessed of unique ‘characters’, and that patriotism provided the social cement without which society could not function. Nevertheless, academic history seemingly differed from social science in that it was untheoretical and predominantly political. Yet historians focused on the nation’s attainment of self-consciousness, homogeneity, and independence through struggle against internal and external enemies—a history in which great men were prominent. Historians and sociologists unwittingly shared versions of grand theory, in which change was an external ‘force’ driven by the functional needs of the system, and in which meaning derived from measurement against theory, rather than from protagonists’ actions and beliefs.

One More Phenomenology of the Social World?

2019 ◽  
Vol 11 ◽  
pp. 103-119
Author(s):  
Ingeborg K. Helling ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Social Science ◽  
Social Action ◽  
Social World ◽  
Alfred Schutz ◽  
Subjective Meaning ◽  
The Social ◽  
Alfred Schütz ◽  
Similarities And Differences

In his “Der sinnhafte Aufbau der sozialen Welt” (1932; engl. tr. 1967) Alfred Schutz refers frequently and mostly positively to the author Fritz Sander. In contrast to other members of the Viennese social science milieus in interwar Vienna, Sander has been neglected in the abundant literature on Schutz. Following Henrich’s (1991) Konstellationsforschung approach, Schutz and Sander are placed in the setting of interwar Viennese social science. Explicit references to Sander made by Schutz will be described, similarities and differences in their treatments of Max Weber’s concepts of social action and subjective meaning will be examined, and their respective views of a phenomenological grounding of social science will be discussed.

Logics of History as a Framework for an Integrated Social Science

2008 ◽  
Vol 32 (4) ◽  
pp. 535-553 ◽  
Author(s):  
George Steinmetz
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Social Science ◽  
Social Structure ◽  
Traumatic Event ◽  
Social Structures ◽  
Event History ◽  
Historical Event ◽  
The Social ◽  
Historical Social Science ◽  
The Relationship

This essay surveys the contributions of William H. Sewell Jr.'sLogics of History and concludes that the book sketches a compelling agenda for an integrated historical social science. The author first summarizes Sewell's ontological and epistemological claims concerning social structure and event, history and temporality, and sociohistorical causality. The author then discusses five main areas in which ambiguities in Sewell's approach might be clarified or his arguments pushed farther. These concern (1) the relationship between historical event and traumatic event; (2) the idea of the unprecedented event or “antistructure”; (3) the theory of semiosis underlying Sewell's notion of a multiplicity of structures; and (4) the compatibilities and differences between the concepts of structure and mechanism (here the author argues that social structures are the distinctive “mechanisms” of the human or social sciences). Finally, (5) Sewell's call for “a more robust sense of the social” in historical writing locates the “social” mainly at the level of the metafield of power, or what regulation theory calls the mode of regulation; the author suggests a possible integration of this society-level concept with Pierre Bourdieu's theory of semiautonomous fields.

The Problem of Adequacy Reflections on Alfred Schutz's Contribution to the Methodology of the Social Sciences

1972 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
pp. 176-190 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anton C. Zijderveld
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Social Theory ◽  
Social Scientist ◽  
Alfred Schutz ◽  
Phenomenological Philosophy ◽  
The Social ◽  
Social Theories ◽  
Alfred Schütz ◽  
The Many

The theories of the Austrian-American philosopher and social scientist Alfred Schutz have been summarized and introduced sufficiently by various of his students. The purpose of the present paper is not to provide the reader with yet another comprehensive summary of his phenomenology and social theories but will try to formulate what Schutz has contributed to one of the most crucial issues in the methodology of the social sciences, namely the problem of an adequate social theory. Without underestimating the many fruitful insights of his phenomenological philosophy and the contributions he made to social theory in general, it was in the field of methodology that, according to this author's opinion, Schutz contributed most to the social sciences.

scholarly journals Ricoeur et la mémoire des proches: “Moi, les collectifs, les proches”

2019 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 88-101
Author(s):  
Anaïd Mouratian
Keyword(s):  
Collective Memory ◽  
Social Bond ◽  
Alfred Schutz ◽  
Personal Memory ◽  
Phenomenological Sociology ◽  
The Social ◽  
Social Link ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Alfred Schütz ◽  
The Relationship

“Me, collectives, relatives”: Ricœur refers to the subject of attribution of memory to close the first part of Memory, History, Forgetting, published in 2000. Ricœur mentions in this chapter the work of Alfred Schütz and phenomenological sociology. The exploration of an intermediate plan of memory (between personal memory and collective memory) in the relationship with loved ones will be the occasion for a hermeneutical detour towards this social link of proximity. “On which path of attribution of the memory are the relatives?” Ricœur asks himself. Indeed, relatives are an opportunity to think about recognition by the path of remembrance. This exploration of the attribution of memories opens the connection of memory to recognition on a particular scale of the social bond, that of proximity.

Alfred schutz and the social sciences

Human Studies ◽  
1978 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 289-299 ◽  
Author(s):  
Fred Kersten
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Alfred Schutz ◽  
The Social ◽  
Alfred Schütz

Can Law Learn from Social Science?

2001 ◽  
Vol 35 (2-3) ◽  
pp. 205-224 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Nelken
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Social Science ◽  
Fundamental Problem ◽  
Social Scientists ◽  
Legal Rules ◽  
Political Critique ◽  
The Social ◽  
Social Scientific ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Styles Of Reasoning

In this paper I shall be discussing a fundamental problem in the relationship between law and the social sciences. Many social scientists have pointed out that the “pull of the policy audience” in legislative and administrative exercises and the confines of practical decision-making in legal settings can compromise the proper development of academic social science and blunt the edge of political critique. The danger is real enough. But they have given insufficient attention to the opposite concern which will be my topic in this article. Here the charge is that the introduction of social scientific styles of reasoning can have ill effects for legal practice by threatening the integrity of legal processes and the values they embody. How can social scientists be sure that they have properly understood the nature of law or the meaning and point of the legal rules, procedures, and institutions which they attempt to analyze and seek to improve? What warrant can they have that social scientific interpretation, at any level, does not end up creating law in its own image? If this is a genuine risk, what implications follow for the way law should learn from social science? I shall argue that there are no easy answers to these questions even, or especially, where law apparently welcomes contributions from social science.

Education as a Human Science

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Philip Higgs
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Social Science ◽  
Quantitative Research ◽  
Human Science ◽  
Theory And Practice ◽  
Cultural Considerations ◽  
The Social ◽  
Educational Relationships ◽  
And Control ◽  
The Relationship

The debate concerning the nature of education, and more particularly the debate as it is directed toward the discourse and logic of schooling, has customarily taken place within the social science tradition. As a result, educational research has been characterized by a modern positivist science which has tended to privilege knowledge relevant to a technocratic evaluation and control of educational relationships and achievements through a process of socialization. From the relationship between student and teacher to the relationship between school and society, the widespread acceptance of quantitative research findings and behavioristic theory reveals that the evaluation of educational issues has been tied to an understanding of reality as ideological as it is “scientific.” What should constitute a scientific inquiry that effectively counters positivist assumptions and what should characterize the inquirer’s relation to the real are still central questions within educational theory and practice in the philosophy of education. In responding to these questions, the positioning of education in the social science tradition has given rise to the politicization of education in an ideologically directed process of socialization which, in turn, has resulted in education, including schooling, being subjected to the idiosyncratic stranglehold and abuse of ideological and cultural considerations propagated in the name of a pseudo-scientific scientism. Furthermore, the problem concerning the nature of education is more authentically situated within the human science tradition than within the social sciences. This argument is grounded on a fundamental objection to positivism and the influence that this has had on the tradition of the social sciences.

The Phenomenology of Social Institutions in the Schutzian Tradition

2019 ◽  
Vol 11 ◽  
pp. 43-74
Author(s):  
Carlos Belvedere ◽  
Alexis Gros ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Social Institutions ◽  
Alfred Schutz ◽  
Phenomenological Tradition ◽  
Scientific Debate ◽  
Peter Berger ◽  
The Social ◽  
Alfred Schütz ◽  
Social Scientific ◽  
Broad Consensus

There is a broad consensus that the study of social institutions is one of the fundamental concerns of the social sciences. The idea that phenomenology has ignored this topic is also widely accepted. As against this view, the present paper aims at demonstrating that especially Schutzian phenomenology—that is, the social-phenomenological tradition started by Alfred Schutz and continued by Thomas Luckmann and Peter Berger, among others—provides rich insights on the nature and workings of social institutions that could contribute to enriching the current social-scientific debate on the issue. In order to show this, the authors attempt to unearth and systematically reconstruct Schutz’s and Berger and Luckmann’s insights on social institutions and to confront them with current approaches.

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