Alfred Schütz

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Alfred Schütz, [1]

The work of Alfred Schütz was involved with influences of different streamings like Symbolic interactionism and Ethnomethodology. His most famous work is Phenomenology of the Social world (Campbell, 1991).

Schütz tries to bring the social system in front of the concept of action. He sees it as a basic element. He tries to explain spatial action by using social systems. Husserl had a great influence on the methodology of Schütz. His method was examining of phenomena as they occure. This is called 'the stream of consciousness'.

Beside that Schütz is saying that meaning is produced by acting and knowing. He takes the subject as a basis of social reality. Social reality can be subscribed as intersubjectively created reality, everbody has his own reality, so the social reality is in between (Werlen, 2010). Example of this is a song that's played. For one person it can be expierenced as the most beautiful song in the world, for another person it can be the most worse noise ever. The shared intersubjective world in phenomenology is called Life world. According to Schütz there are different 'meaning-context's, namely because motives and in-order-to motives (Campbell, 1981, p.204). Because motives explain an action by reference to the past, instead of a reference to the future. In-order-to motives show the freedom of action of an actor. The actor experiences oneself as free and responsible.

Schütz is also talking about the shared stock of knowledge. The shared knowledge is existing of one shared body of perceptions or interpretations of a subject, altough every person has his/her own view about a subject. This common shared interests (the 'stock of knowledge') is what he calls social reality. This can also be translated in spatial context (Campbell, 1991).

Space is a construction of reality. Basic coordinates are experiences of the body and brain. There are many different concepts of space, because we are all making spaces ourselves. A good thing to know is that Schütz notes that there are no spaces existing in itself. We only see things as spatial, because our own body shares the space with other things (Werlen, 2010).

Human beings as social creatures

Alfred Schutz assumes human beings to be social creatures. He states that consciousness of daily life is a social consciousness in two different ways (Campbell, 1981, p. 205). Firstly, a conscious person automatically takes for granted the existence and the presence of other people as inhabitants of the same world as in which the individual lives. This becomes especially apparent in social action, which takes into account the reactions of others and their assumed knowledge of the situation as it is (Campbell, 1981, p. 206).

Another reason why Schutz states that human beings are social beings is the fact that an individual and his conciousness uses a typification that is communicated to him or her by groups of individuals in this shared world: a historically given world (Campbell, 1981, p. 206). For instance: a person who is born and raised in the Netherlands will speak Dutch and will use signs and symbols which are apparent for 'being Dutch'. These are the typfications that set forth the nature of the socio-cultural world itself. The individual takes over the typifications which are 'created' and 'maintained' by parents, friends, ancestors, etc. and therefore the human being is a social being. Schutz does not have anything approaching a complete theory of human nature, but he locates the essence of the human condition in the subjective experience of actiong in and adopting attitudes towards the everyday life-world (Campbell, 1981). Schutz's work is closely fixed by the work of Edmund Husserl, especially Schütz's theory of man.

Schutz's theory of society

In Schutz's vision a society is a linguistic community (Campbell, 1981). This means, it exist through mutual symbols. Every consciousness is therefore the social or socially derived consciousness of society (Cambell, 1981). Because of this, our individual subjectivity isn't that individual. Our individual life world is an inter subjective world with shared meanings. When there is a high number of shared meanings there can be arise a relationship with Schutz call a we relationschip. In a we relationship there is a sence of a shared world. To create common meanings a common stock of knowledge is importand. A common stock of knowledge contains socially approved recipies for dealing with recurrent problems (Campbell, 1981). These are typifications. But typologies do not give us real understanding of the individual people who are assumed to follow these typical patterns (Campbell, 1981). It can be a typology that everybody wears blue jeans to school, but an individual can always but a red jeans on.

Schütz also talks about 'they-relationship' (The Homecomer, Schütz, 1945). In this essay Schütz discussed the situation of a returning veteran who has sustained his desire for home through various memories of his previous way of life (aslike before he went on military duty). On his return he finds that his memories have been left behind by the ongoing interactions of those left at home so that they are no longer accessible to him and he is not immediately intelligible to them (Campbell, T. 'Seven Theories of Human Society' 1981 p. 208). We-relationships need ongoing updates via face-to-face interactions to keep them 'we'. If that doesn't happen, the we-relationship will turn into a they-relationship and according to Alfred Schütz it are these 'they-relationships' that make up the totality of society.

References

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

• Campbell, J. (1991). Alfred Schütz. New York: Penguin

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