Typifications

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Revision as of 16:17, 9 October 2011

In his ‘theory of man’, Alfred Schütz talks about the way humans get by in everyday society. In this respect he says: “To get by, the individual must ‘define’ his situation, that is he must establish or decide in what sort of situation he finds himself, what his problems are, and how he can go about gaining his objectives.” (Campbell, 1981, p. 202) In order to do this, a human uses his ‘stock of knowledge’. This is knowlegde about the world which is build up through someone’s own experiences and which is past on to him by his or her social group (Campbell, 1981, p. 203). When someone experiences something in the present which is similar to what he has experienced in the past, the person knows because of those past experiences how to deal with the current situation. This means that someone’s definition of a situation is biographically determined, because it depends on that persons own experiences and history (Campbell, 1981, p. 202).

This ‘stock of knowledge’ presupposes that humans think of the world as made up of types of things (Campbell, 1981, p. 202). “The process of abstraction and formalization by means of which we classify things […] Schütz calls ‘typification’.” (Campbell, 1981, p. 203) When we connect different typifications, we can recognize situations as being of a certain kind and that way we know how to deal with them. So, through typifications we are able to see the world as meaningful and connected instead of disorganized and chaotic. McKinney describes it as follows: “Typification, perceiving the world and structuring it by means of types and typologies, is depicted as an essential and intrinsic aspect of the basic orientation of actors to their situations. It is important for structuring the ‘self’, conceptualizing ‘roles’, and as a necessary feature of institutionalization and the development of social structure.” (McKinney, 1969, abstract)

The concept of typification can also be found in both Max Weber and Edmund Husserl (Wilson, 2002). Husserl recognizes typification as a key process in our sense-making about the world. In Weber’s work, there is the concept of ‘ideal types’ (“These are simplified models of social activities which are used in interpreting human behaviour” (Campbell, 1981, p. 175)), which relates to the concept of typification.

References:

Campbell, T. (1981). Seven Theories of Human Society. Claredon Press: Oxford.

McKinney, J.C. (1969). Typifications, Typologies and Sociological Theory. Social Forces, Vol. 48, No. 1.

Wilson, T.D. (2002). Alfred Schutz, phenomenology and research methodology for information behaviour research. Geraadpleegd op 27 september 2010, op http://informationr.net/tdw/publ/papers/schutz02.html