Chapter 3 Phenomenological Sociology - The Subjectivity of Everyday Life

Introduction Does phenomenology have any insights or theoretical resources to offer the sociology of everyday life? In the present chapter, we will suggest an affirmative reply to this question. Not only because sociality is a central theme in phenomenology, but also because phenomenologists consistently emphasize the importance of examining the world, including social reality, just as we experience it in everyday life. Or, as many phenomenologists prefer to put it, phenomenology must examine the ‘life-world’. Phenomenologists generally stress that social reality should not be conceived as a fixed and objective external reality. Rather, social reality is essentially a product of human activity. Inter alia through processes of ‘typification’, we ‘constitute’ a meaningful social world around us. This is obviously not the achievement of isolated individuals acting alone; most of our typical assumptions, expectations and prescriptions, indeed, are socially derived. However, phenomenological sociologists insist that we must not downplay the role of individual subjectivities. Social reality cannot be reduced to relations between individual subjects; yet without the latter – that is, without intersubjectivity – there is ultimately no social reality. As we shall see in the present chapter, phenomenology continues to be of relevance to the sociology of everyday life and has the resources to respond to the criticisms typically directed against it.