Life world

From Geography

According to Anne Buttimer (1976), 'the culturally defined spatio-temporal setting or horizon of everyday life', life-world encompasses the totality of an individual person's direct involvement with the places and environments experienced in ordinary life.

The term originates in German phenomenology as Lebenswelt, which signifies a relationship of intentionality between a conscious and imaginative human subject and the external world as it is given unreflexively to individual human attention (Johnston, Gregory, Pratt & Watts, 2000, pp.449). Phenomenology calls for looking at the essence or logic of phenomenon, by studying the foundational structures of human action and thought which the natural sciences presuppose. Edmund Husserl studied the impact of individual experience, how this affected their phenomena and ultimately their life-world. Our life-world is a subjective view of the world gathered from reference groups with shared meanings and communal experience. According to Alfred Schütz, life-world is the accepted shared view of the world. This is a ever changing world due to the constant flow of action. Alfred Schütz example ‘The Homecomer’ shows how the life-world of the returning veteran has changed. He has missed communal experiences and has created a different life-world compared to his former social group. The everyday experience is then of paramount significance. Life-world in this context refers to that which is self-evident to humans within our natural attitude in the everyday.

In geography it refers to the 'taken-for-grantedness' in everyday life. For instance, in our consciousness of daily life we take for granted the existence and activities of other people as inhabitants of the same world (Cambell, 1981). In this sense "life-world" is not an isolated, individual concept, but an intersubjective reality that is shared universally. And agents are then rather pragmatic creatures whose 'natural' attitude is to take things for granted while setting about changing others in a desired manner(Campbell, 1981,pp.202). Life-world is seen as the universal basis for inter-subjectivity. It is almost a realm of reality in which one engages but also that which one can change while operating in it. Yet it can also limit an individual's free possibilities of action.

Thus, in its totality life-world is both the arena as well as that what sets the limits, of my and our reciprocal action. (Schütz & Luckmann, 1974, pp.3-6)

Geographical linkages

This concept of the life-world was much studied in humanistic geography in the 1970s and 1980s in its concern to understand places and environments without accepting the analytical separation of subject from object (Buttimer & Seamon, 1980).

Given that life-world is a person-centered perspective, place is more important than space, and geographical investigation is required to honour the experiences, imagination and attachments of intentional human subjects.

Within the social sciences, understanding life-world becomes important to understand how this commonnness is created, what are its structures and the significance of this on social action. But also, individually each one of us has to understand our own life-world to the extent of being able to act and operate upon it.

References

• Buttimer, A. (1976). Annals, Association of American Geographers 66: 277-92.
• Buttimer. A & Seamon, D. (1980). The HUman experience of space and place. London: Croom Helm.
• Campbell, Tom. (1981). Seven theories of human society (pp.197-215). Oxford University Press: Oxford
• Johnston, R.J., Gregory, Derek.,Pratt, Geraldine. & Watts, Michael. (2000). The Dictionary of Human Geography. Fourth edition. Blackwell. UK
• Schütz, Alfred & Luckmann, Thomas. (1974). The Structures of the Life-world". Translated by Zaner, Richard.M., Engelhardt, H.Tristram.Jr. Northwestern University Press. London.

Contributors

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