What Is Sociology
Journal for the Theory of Social Behaviour 41:3
0021-8308
The Meaning of Meaning in Sociology. The
Achievements and Shortcomings of Alfred
Schutz’s Phenomenological Sociology
RISTO HEISKALA
jtsb_461
231..246
INTRODUCTION
Theories of social action such as rational choice theories (Abell 2000; Coleman
1990; Elster 1989 and 2007), Weber (1922) and early Parsons (1937) usually build on a conception of an individual actor who is capable to order his or her goals in the order of preference and act accordingly. Moreover, the actor is usually interpreted as being transparent to him or herself in the sense that there are no rejected motives or unanalysed habits directing the actor’s behaviour. Such a point of departure has been called “cognitivist” (Bourdieu 1980). The cognitivist bias inherent in many action theoretical frames of reference has triggered the criticism that a more realistic frame would take culture or the social totality as its basic concept and analyse actors as something embedded in their cultural environment. (Functionalist variants of such criticism include Durkheim 1912 and late
Parsons from Parsons 1951 onwards; for structuralist variants see Lévi-Strauss
1958; Barthes 1964 and Greimas 1966). However, the drawback included in these alternative analytical frames is that the concept of action is replaced by the concept of structure, which covers up many socially relevant action-theoretical problems. With phenomenological sociology, however, we can eat the cake and also have it. This is so because phenomenological sociology has an individual mind as its point of departure, it deals with problems characteristic to action theory, it pays great deal of attention to those cultural maps and schemes which define the environment of action to the actor, and it does not understand culture as a uniform code subordinating the subjects but emphasises instead cultural variation between the actors. This paper discusses phenomenological sociology from such an angle. The basic question is: Is the attempt to integrate action theory and cultural analysis in phenomenological sociology successful? The answer given here is an affirmative one. A further question asks whether the phenomenological
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synthesis is able to relieve social theory of the cognitivist bias characteristic of action theory. It turns out that here the efforts of phenomenological sociologists have been less successful, even if some progress has been made. The remaining problems have to do with the basic concepts of the phenomenological approach and especially the phenomenological definition of meaning. It is recommended therefore, that the phenomenological frame should be supplemented with such alternative analytical frames as pragmatism, neostructuralism, approaches based on Bourdieu’s work or the recent current called the “practice turn” which can be interpreted as complementary to it.
The paper opens with two sections on Alfred Schutz, the founding father of phenomenological sociology. First of these deals with Schutz’s great invention,
i.e., the synthesis of phenomenological philosophy and Weber’s sociological action theory. After presenting the conceptual frame of phenomenological sociology the paper moves on to the second section on Schutz the topic of which is the dilemma of phenomenological analysis of meaning. This is followed by a section on Garfinkel’s ethnomethodology and social constructionism by Berger & Luckmann. In this section, it is shown that they too are captured in the trap of the phenomenological dilemma. The concluding section states why there is a reason to pay attention to such abstract issues and discusses the problems of Giddens’ structuration theory as an elaboration of those problems which emerge when due attention is not given to the attempt to solve the problem of cognitivist bias.
THE FOUNDATIONS OF PHENOMENOLOGICAL SOCIOLOGY:
SCHUTZ’S MUNDANE PHENOMENOLOGY
The founder of phenomenological philosophy, Edmund Husserl understood consciousness as a stream of intentional acts fixed to phenomena. The phenomena do not exist without the consciousness experiencing them and the consciousness cannot be without being consciousness of those phenomena to which it is fixed.
This can be compared to Immanuel Kant’s famous phrase “concepts without percepts are empty; percepts without concepts are blind” (Kant 1787, A51/B75).
Following his teacher, Franz Brentano, Husserl termed the intentional nature of consciousness this property of the consciousness that it cannot be without being consciousness of something. Intentionality in this phenomenological sense is distinct from the action-theoretical use of the term where it refers to the goal-oriented nature of action. These two different uses of the term intentionality, however, can be linked together—as we will shortly see.
Husserl was an epistemologist in the tradition of Descartes and Kant. His aim was to take the stream of intentional consciousness as his point of departure and justify philosophically in his transcendental phenomenology the inevitability of mathematical deductions and the foundations of modern natural sciences (Husserl
1900–21; 1913). Alfred Schutz, the founder of phenomenological sociology, took
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in his Der sinnhafte Aufbau der sozialen Welt (Schutz 1932)1 Husserl’s phenomenology as his point of departure. Differing from Descartes, Kant and Husserl, however,
Schutz did not try to find a solid foundation for the modern natural science and mathematics. Instead, he transformed Husserl’s transcendental phenomenology to mundane phenomenology. Schutz achieved this by directing his interest to that level of consciousness which Husserl had called the natural attitude and bracketed as the first thing in the succession of phenomenological reductions meant to lead the way toward the level of transcendental phenomenology. One expression of this transition from transcendental phenomenology to the phenomenology of everyday world is that, whereas Husserl had tried to justify the intersubjective validity of our knowledge in starting from the image which the conscious subject must have about another subject (Husserl 1931), Schutz set the problem of intersubjectivity as a problem of the reciprocity of the actual interaction situations of everyday life.
Schutz also revised the phenomenological approach in linking action theory to his conception. Here he proceeds by applying Husserl’s definition of meaning in a creative way. Husserl’s intentional consciousness is intentional in the sense that it cannot be without being consciousness of something. This something is called intentional object by Husserl. The consciousness, for Husserl, is a temporal series of intentional acts which constitute intentional objects. Meanings emerge from this stream as such particular intentional acts which have a preceding intentional act as their intentional object. An intentional act where the attention of the consciousness is fixed to the fact that some object or surface is red is not yet a meaning. This passive intentional act is not transformed to a meaning until an active or reflective intentional act directed to the passive act follows and directs attention to the fact that the attention of the consciousness is directed to the redness of the object or surface. Schutz originally adopted the idea of the mind as a temporal stream of consciousness from Henri Bergson. However, after reading Husserl he reformulated the Bergsonian idea by Husserl’s conception of the intentional nature of consciousness and the emergence of meaning. Schutz states:
“Meaning does not lie in the experience. Rather, those experiences are meaningful which are grasped reflectively. The meaning is the way in which the Ego regards its experience. The meaning lies in the attitude of the Ego toward that part of its stream of consciousness which has already flowed by, toward its ‘elapsed duration’ ” (Schutz 1932: 69–70; original emphasis).
Later on, he specified that meaning is “the result of an interpretation of a past experience looked at from the present Now with a reflective attitude” (Schutz
1945: 210).
In addition to defining meaning in a Husserlian way, Schutz wanted to enrich the phenomenological frame of reference in integrating the action theoretical definition of intentionality (i.e., intentionality as goal-oriented action) into the frame. He was able to do this by directing attention to a specific class of intentional
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acts which had not aroused Husserl’s interest, as he was oriented to the philosophy of science. Schutz termed this class projects. For Schutz, a project is an anticipated chain of actions which is in an intentional act of consciousness “thought in the future perfect tense (modo futuri exacti)” (Schutz 1932: 61). A project is, then, an intentional act directed to the future as an anticipated action. In Figure 1, I have given graphical representations for the definitions of meaning and project (as a specific type of meaning) by Schutz.
The concept of project makes it possible to integrate the action theoretical approach to the phenomenological frame of reference and thus opens the path to the construction of phenomenological sociology. In his Der sinnhafte Aufbau der sozialen Welt (Schutz 1932) Schutz tried to do this in integrating Max Weber’s
(1922) social theory into the phenomenological frame. His guiding idea was that phenomenology was able to provide the Weberian social theory with a solid grounding in cultural theory. The Weberian approach needed this because the phenomenological analysis of cultural typification in everyday life had a much more advanced interpretation of meaning than the Weberian ideal-type method.
Weber’s work in social theory again would provide an advanced conception for the analysis of society for the phenomenologist. Later on, Schutz had a similar idea of reciprocal completion in relation to Talcott Parsons’ The Structure of Social
Action (Parsons 1937). He even wrote to Parsons: “I realized immediately the importance and the value of your system and also the fact that it starts exactly where my own book ends” (Schutz in Grathoff 1978, 97).
Schutz’s attempt to co-operate with Parsons was not blessed with much success. He actually lectured in Parsons’ seminar at Harvard once and there was
(a) Interpretation of meaning as a reflective intentional act (directed in point t2 to the Ego’s intentional act in point t1)
X
X
X
X
t0
t1
t2
t3
(b) Project as a reflective intentional act (directed in point t1 to the Ego’s intentional act in point t2)
X
X
X
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t0
t1
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t3
Figure 1. Meaning and project in Schutz’s Phenomenology.
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some exchange of letters but the correspondence clearly shows that neither of the gentlemen understood the other all that well in the end (Grathoff 1978;
Wagner 1983). As his seminal work Der sinnhafte Aufbau der sozialen Welt (Schutz
1932) was not translated in English until the 1970s it was Schutz’s fate to remain unknown outside a small circle of enthusiastic followers and achieve fame but only through his students. In this respect, two books published in the US in the latter half of the 1960s were especially important. Harold Garfinkel’s Studies in
Ethnomethodology (Garfinkel 1967) followed the Husserlian rather than the Weberian root of phenomenological sociology. However, it also tried to transform the phenomenology of everyday life into an empirical study, the most vital tradition of which conversation analysis is today (Heritage 1984). Peter L. Berger and
Thomas Luckmann’s The Social Construction of Reality (Berger & Luckmann 1966), in its turn, followed the Weberian root which it complemented with G. H.
Mead’s (1934) socialisation theory. This is how it created a phenomenologically based social theory. It is through these two schools that the phenomenological approach found its way to sociological publicity. They will be discussed in a section of their own. Before that, however, it is appropriate to sum up the achievements of the founding father and draw attention to a crucial problem characteristic to phenomenological sociology.
Schutz founded phenomenological sociology by reformulating Husserl’s theory in two ways. The first move was the transition from the monological consciousness, concentrated in the analysis of the constitutive conditions of the universal validity of mathematics and theoretical natural science (transcendental phenomenology), to the dialogical consciousness and the intersubjective foundation of the everyday world (mundane phenomenology). The second crucial move was the invention of the concept of project. This made possible the transition from the theory a monadic conscious subject to a subject acting in society.
Taken together these two transitions made phenomenological sociology possible.
Its concept of actor is much more extensive than that of the action theories such as rational choice theory (Abell 2000; Coleman 1990; Elster 1989 and 2007),
Weber (1922) and early Parsons (1937) because the phenomenological frame assumes that in addition to goals and motives the actor is determined by cognitive maps and action schemes which are part of the actor’s everyday knowledge. This is how phenomenological sociology understands action as something embedded in its cultural environment. Differing from the structural functionalism of late Parsons (1951) and structuralist code theory (Lévi-Strauss 1958;
Barthes 1964; Greimas 1966), however, it does not interpret the cultural environment of action as a code subordinating all actors but as something which includes variation and is slightly different in the case of each actor. Phenomenological sociology then, operates with a culturally sensitive concept of society which is much more extensive than the action theoretical conception. However, because of the concept of project it does not lose its link to the problems characteristic of action theory.
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THE DILEMMA OF PHENOMENOLOGICAL SOCIOLOGY: IS MEANING
ALWAYS “KNOWLEDGE”?
The above conclusion sounds almost too good to be true—and indeed, there is a problem involved. Providing that phenomenological sociology is meant to be a comprehensive social and cultural theory it seems that it is capable of taking considerable steps towards this direction but not to redeem its promise completely. This is something that becomes evident if we take a closer look at the phenomenological critique of action theory.
In his criticism of action theory Schutz started from the assumption that
Weber’s approach to the phenomenon of meaning was sensible but narrow.
Weber’s approach outlined a frame of reference where the paradigmatic case was a project. Schutz aimed at developing an approach that would be more comprehensive than Weber’s. In this attempt he committed himself to Husserl’s theory of intentional acts, where perception takes place in the form of intentional acts called
“pre-predicative judgements”. These are passive acts which fix the Ego’s attention to some object and its qualities, such as redness. However, because of their passive nature, they are not determined by a voluntary act of the Ego. These vague and passive intentional acts form the basis of active intentional acts, which Husserl called “predicative judgements” because they are capable of predicating attributes, such as “being red”, to an object and are in this sense reflective.
Husserl’s phenomenological programme of the analysis of meaning studied these reflective intentional acts and their relationship with passive intentional acts. It arrived at a scheme, which can be reconstructed as the following four-step scale:
I
II
III
IV
being passive intentional acts related to being active intentional acts reflecting the passive intentional acts reflection of the active intentional acts (and of the relationship between them and passive intentional acts)
On this scale the domain of meaning lay at level III and the domain of the philosophical analysis of meaning at level IV.
In Schutz’s conception, the pre-predicative intentional acts (level II above) correspond, mutatis mutandis, according to his changing wording, either to behaviour (Schutz 1932) or to conduct (Schutz 1945). When taking place, these acts are, according to him, without meaning:
“Meaning . . . is not a quality inherent in certain experiences emerging within our stream of consciousness but the result of an interpretation of a past experience looked at from the present
Now with a reflective attitude. As long as I live in my acts, directed toward the objects of these acts, the acts do not have any meaning. They become meaningful if I grasp them as wellcircumscribed experiences of the past and, therefore, in retrospection. Only experiences which can be recollected beyond their actuality and which can be questioned about their constitution are, therefore, subjectively meaningful.” (Schutz 1945: 210)
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For Schutz “all kinds of so-called automatic activities of inner and outer life— habitual, traditional, affectual ones—fall under this class” (Schutz 1945: 211). The activities in the class may, however, receive meaningful interpretation via a reflective act which takes place afterwards, during which a motive is attached to them. In this sense they may be considered subjectively meaningful (“Subjectively meaningful experiences emanating from our spontaneous life shall be called conduct”—Schutz 1945, 211.) In all this Schutz followed Husserl. Unlike the epistemologically oriented Husserl, however, Schutz was oriented to social theory and considered an action theoretical approach to society important. Therefore, for the purposes of his phenomenological sociology, he transformed Husserl’s thinking so that instead of a four-step scale it must be reconstructed as a five-step scale where the level of “projects” (level 4) has been introduced between Husserl’s formerly stated levels III and IV:
(1) “involuntary spontaneity”: “mere physiological reflexes, such as the knee jerk, . . . blushing”, “my gate, my facial expression, my mood”. “They belong to the category of essentially actual experiences, that is, they exist merely in the actuality of being experienced and cannot be grasped by reflective attitude.” (Schutz 1945: 210–211; emphasis deleted)
(2) behaviour/conduct: passive intentional acts
(3) subjective meaning: active intentional acts reflecting the passive intentional acts in everyday contexts
(4) subjective meaning as projected meaning: motives of action and projects on the one hand and their reflective recognition in everyday contexts on the other (5) theoretical analysis of meaning: action theory, phenomenological sociology, transcendental phenomenology, etc., in the context of the scientific province of meaning (Schutz 1945: 210–212 and passim.)
The five-step scheme offered Schutz the opportunity to criticise such theories of action as Weber’s and Parsons’. The problem in these theories was their cognitivist bias which led them to equate the domain of meaning with level 4, i.e., projects. Furthermore, by understanding “meaning” narrowly according to the model of a motivated project, they left a major part of the phenomenon of
“meaning” entirely unanalysed or brought an action-theoretical standard of interpretation to its analysis. This standard was, of course, an action project that was made intelligible according to the model of scientific rationality.2 Its use as such a standard meant that the analysis of level 4 was applied to concepts derived from level 5. Consequently, besides being cognitivistly biased, their theories of the interpretation of meaning were also rationalistic. Under these circumstances, phenomenological sociology offered a far more extensive programme for the interpretation of meaning. It took level 3 as its starting point, which gave it a more extensive area of competence as a theory, because it included all the action© 2011 Blackwell Publishing Ltd.
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theoretical considerations at level 4, but was at the same time able to point them out as only the top of the iceberg as far as the phenomenon of meaning was concerned. Moreover, it was able to present an analysis of level 2, which Parsons had not analysed at all in his “unit act” and which Weber had been forced to approach with such residual categories as traditionally and affectually oriented action. In both these senses, Schutz’s phenomenological sociology incontestably offered a more comprehensive programme for the interpretation of meaning than the theory of action. Yet we may claim that it still restricts the horizon of study in a way which may again be surpassed. The restricted nature of Schutz’s theory becomes apparent if we reorganise the five step scale once again, this time from a starting point which is not tied to the Ego’s reflective interpretation of meaning: (1)
(2)
(3)
(4)
(5)
being meaningful being reflection of meaningful being reflection of meaningful being in project form theoretical reflection of meaningful being
The scale shows that phenomenological sociology, which defines meaning as a reflective intentional act stands on its own ground when at levels 3–5. Yet, it would not be correct to say that Schutz does not analyse level 2 of unreflective intentional acts at all. The problem is, however, that in the phenomenological approach, the analysis of unreflective intentional acts must always go through level 3, which ties the subjects’ meaningful experiences
(level 2) to their own reflective interpretation of their passive intentional acts
(level 3). Therefore, phenomenological sociology which criticises the use of scientific rationality as a yardstick in the theory of action turns out to be (be it differently from the way the theory of action had) a representative of a cognitivistly biased and rationalistic model of interpreting meaning. In the case of action theory the problems arise from subordinating the whole of the interpretation of meaning to an interpretation which uses as its yardstick the scientifically reflecting reason and its internally rational project descriptions. In the case of phenomenological sociology again, we are dealing with a scheme subordinating the whole of the interpretation of meaning to an interpretation which uses as its yardstick the reason reflecting in everyday contexts and interpretations that are rationalised3 in terms of its horizons of relevance. That is, even phenomenological sociology (even if it is a much more comprehensive approach than action theory in defining the area of the interpretation of meaning) restricts the domain of analysis in a way related to its understanding of meaning as a reflective intentional act. To a phenomenologist, meaning is always knowledge.
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THE SUCCESSORS: GARFINKEL’S ETHNOMETHODOLOGY AND SOCIAL
CONSTRUCTIONISM BY BERGER AND LUCKMANN
There is no way out from the above dilemma as long as we stay within the domain of phenomenological sociology because the problem is inherent in the phenomenological definition of meaning. Therefore, we also meet it in a somewhat transformed form in the successors of Schutz.
In his Studies in Ethnomethodology Garfinkel (1967) tried to integrate Parsons’ problem of normative order in a phenomenologically oriented framework that did not consider actors as “judgemental dopes” but reflexive beings capable of indexical interpretation of everyday meanings. This is how he outlined the ethnomethodological programme of a detailed empirical study of the natural attitude in micro contexts. This approach solved some problems left open by Schutz
(Heritage 1984: 72–76). However, what interests us in this context is Garfinkel’s definition of meaning or “accounting”.
Instead of considering actors as Parsonian “judgemental dopes” ethnomethodology is interested in the way people maintain social order by making what
Garfinkel calls “accountings” in interactive situations. Two quotations from
Studies in Ethnomethodology help to understand what Garfinkel means by the term
(and give the reader the taste of Garfinkel’s distinctive style of difficult writing):
“. . . the activities whereby members produce and manage settings of organized everyday affairs are identical with members’ procedures for making those settings ‘accountable.’ . . . When I speak of accountable . . . I mean observable-and-reportable, i.e., available to members as situated practices of looking-and-telling.” (Garfinkel 1967: 1)
“In exactly the ways a setting is organized, it consists of members’ methods for making evident the setting’s ways as clear, coherent, planful, consistent, chosen, knowable, uniform, reproducible connections—i.e. rational connections. In exactly the way that persons are members to organized affairs, they are engaged in serious and practical work of detecting, demonstrating, persuading through displays in the ordinary occasions of their interactions the appearances of consistent, coherent, clear chosen, planful arrangements. In exactly the ways in which setting is organized, it consists of methods whereby its members are provided with accounts of the setting as countable, storyable, proverbial, comparable, picturable, representable—i.e. accountable events.” (Garfinkel 1967: 34; original emphasis)
Whatever merits Garfinkel’s approach has—and there are several (Heritage 1984;
Hilbert 1992)—it does not break loose from the dilemma of phenomenological sociology. “Accounting” as defined by Garfinkel clearly operates at level 3 of the above scheme and is one more representative of what Husserl and Schutz called
“reflective intentional act”.
This cognitivist bias is also present in the way in which Peter L. Berger and
Thomas Luckmann develop social theory in reading Weber and Mead through the phenomenological eye-glasses of Schutz in The Social Construction of Reality. The purpose of their study is to present a comprehensive description of the structure of
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society starting from the individual’s subjective interpretation of meaning.
Because of the influence of Schutz, but without considering the theoretical background of their solution more closely, Berger and Luckmann define the meanings in everyday life as knowledge in their maximally broad definition of the sociology of knowledge:
“. . . the sociology of knowledge must concern itself with whatever passes for ‘knowledge’ in a society, regardless of the ultimate validity or invalidity (by whatever criteria) of such
‘knowledge’ ” (Berger & Luckmann 1966: 3).
Accordingly, the subtitle of the book is A Treatise in the Sociology of Knowledge. One naturally wonders why a social theoretical book should be “a treatise in the sociology of knowledge”? The approach becomes understandable when we realise that there is a Schutzian conception of meaning as a reflective intentional act lying in the background of their approach. That is why Berger and Luckmann, who take the phenomena of meaning as their starting point in their analysis of society, have no other choice but to adopt a broad definition of knowledge and the sociology of knowledge: to a phenomenologist, meaning is always knowledge. In the case of phenomenological sociology it is everyday knowledge.
In some part of their work, all phenomenological sociologists make heroic attempts to escape the limitations of the phenomenological conception by dealing with such intentional acts, which are not reflective and habits, which do not have interpretation. Schutz states that the reflective interpretation of meaning is but “a point of departure”, which should not mask the fact that not all interpretation of meaning is conscious. Ethnomethodologists every now and then speak about accountings which are not explicit but can be concluded in analysing the course of a conversation (the so-called conversational implicatures). Berger and Luckmann note that it is also important to study such habits, which the actor has not been able or interested in formulating to explicit everyday knowledge. Finally,
Michael Polanyi (1966; Polanyi & Prosch 1975) stretches the concept of knowledge to its extreme and speaks about “tacit knowledge” when referring to meanings for which the actors are incapable of giving a verbal explication.
In cases such as these Talcott Parsons spoke about the use of “residual categories”. Residual categories are something that always take place when a theoretician identifies such a social phenomenon, which is too important to be omitted, but which cannot be analysed within his or her theoretical frame. The use of residual categories always points to an anomaly and paves the road to the introduction of alternative conceptual frames, which can either supplement or replace the original frame of reference.4 In the case of phenomenological sociology the most promising alternative frames are provided by pragmatism (Joas 1985; 1996;
2000; Kilpinen 1999; 2000; 2002; 2004; Gronow 2008), neostructuralism (Frank
1984; Heiskala 1999; 2001; 2003; 2007), Pierre Bourdieu’s theorizing on habitus
(Bourdieu 1977, 1990 and 2000) and recent theorizing on the so-called “practice
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turn” (Pleasants 1996; Preda 2000 and Schatzki, Knorr Cetina & Savigny 2001).
All these approaches are capable of analysing meanings not explicated and none of them attempts simply to replace phenomenological sociology. Instead, they all try to provide a more extensive conceptual framework within which phenomenological sociology finds its area of application without a need to use residual categories in those cases where its analytical power dries up.
CONCLUSION OR WHY DOES IT MATTER?
Is there actually a need to supplement phenomenological sociology with other approaches? What does it matter if meanings are equated to reflective intentional acts and everyday knowledge? In some cases it doesn’t. Business consultants, for example, have found the concept of “tacit knowledge” very useful in attempts to educate corporate managers to pay attention to such features of their organisations that cannot be studied by reading their organisation charts (Nonaka &
Takeuchi 1995). This is so because the whole idea of such consultation is to make known, explicit and profitable such cultural patterns that were unknown before the consultant entered the respective corporation’s premises. Therefore, in an ideal case part of tacit knowledge is soon transformed to genuine knowledge, i.e., explicit and justified true belief (Niiniluoto 1999). Moreover, in the process the managers have also adopted an inclination to do so in the future whenever they run into problems or try to avoid running into problems with their staff and customers. “Tacit knowledge”, then, may sound a somewhat self-contradictory expression but besides that there is nothing wrong in this way of trying to acquire strategic knowledge and make corporations and other organizations more efficient. In other cases, however, more serious problems emerge. If our conceptual framework is based on the idea that all meanings are reflective intentional acts it equips us with too optimistic a picture of the possibility to steer the societal process. This is so because all habitualised behaviour looks like something which is in the reach of everyday knowledge. This again represents our opportunities to analyse and transform the social reality more extensive than they are.
An example is provided by Giddens’ structuration theory.5 Giddens, of course, is anything but a genuine phenomenologist. However, there is a phenomenological point of departure present in his New Rules of Sociological Method (Giddens 1976) in which he outlined the task of developing structuration theory culminating in the publication of The Constitution of Society (Giddens 1984) eight years later. In the New
Rules Giddens actually reads Schutz and Garfinkel (even if he later, in The Constitution, had somehow forgot all those parts of what he had read which would have made his synthetic attempt more difficult to pull together) but this is not the only reason to discuss his work here. Another is that the problems of structuration theory vividly illustrate how cognitivistly biased frames of meaning analysis, be
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they phenomenological or not, run into problems and how this happens even in cases where their authors explicitly aim to include routines and habits in their analytical scheme and even give them a central position in the reproduction of social order.
According to structuration theory, structures are memory traces that give people schemes to act. Structures are produced and reproduced by agency which is routine behaviour as a major part and conscious action for a minor part. People, however, are knowledgeable and therefore they are able to reflect their social being and change structures. In other words, people have power or “transformative capacity”. People have power as transformative capacity regardless of whether they are in the state of action or agency. The only difference is that when people act, they know that they have power and they work to achieve some explicitly set goals, i.e., they use power. People as agents equally have power but they do not know it and, therefore, they do not use power but behave in a routine or habitual way. Structures are thus largely reproduced without them being conscious of it even if it happens through the agency of the very same people.
This sounds very Foucauldian and Giddens has indeed been accused of a deterministic conception which does not leave much room for human choice
(Baert 1998: 110). Giddens himself, however, moves in the opposite direction. His more recent writings about reflexive “post-traditional” societies and “life-political negotiation” paint us a world where everything is plastic and easily changed and people are very skilful in coping with related risks and uncertainties (Giddens
1994a; 1994b). This may be seen as a break in the authors orientation but actually it is not. Structuration theory already defines the concepts of agent and actor in an ambivalent manner (Giddens 1976: 75) and then uses this ambivalence to introduce action-theoretical conception at the level of agency. Agency, behaviour and habits without reflective interpretation therefore vanishes into the background every time Giddens discusses change in his structuration theory. This is also evident in his use of the concept of “rule” which is so extensive that it covers every kind of meaningful pattern there is in the human life. All this is irrespective of whether those whose “rules” they are claimed to be are aware of the existence of the rules or not. Structuration theory then, gives routines and habits a central position in the reproduction of social structures only to take it away in a simple two-step move. First, acknowledge that routines, habits and behaviour are central to the reproduction of society but, at the same time, remind the reader that in addition people are knowledgeable, acting and creative beings. Second, use in your analysis only those concepts that fit well into the analysis of people as knowledgeable, acting and creative beings. Whenever problems arise, tell the reader that the concepts of rule, knowledge, creativity and action are used with all precaution taken in order not to forget that there is a more routinised element involved in human agency.
What you get when acting according to the above recipe is most probably a theory which easily fools some of its supporters to speak about society as if
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everything in it is easily changed by conscious action. Its most advanced successors, however, always remember to point to the fact that agency is not similar to action but is just analysed as if it were action. Less advanced successors, however, tend to forget this distinction every now and then. It seems that what happened to
Giddens at the beginnings of the 1990s was that he turned to one of the less advanced successors of his own theory.
In Giddens’ case the turn from the analysis of society to prescriptive use of language was understandable because it seems to have been part of the process in which he left the scientific province of meaning and turned to a politician.
However, those of us who do not plan to do likewise do well if they remember
Weber’s warnings according to which even if all the cultural sciences produce knowledge which is value-relevant it is forbidden for the cultural scientist to turn his or her lecture into a sermon (Kässler 1979: 192–196). To avoid doing so may be easier if we recall one of the many distinctions made by the great pragmatist philosopher and semiotic Charles Peirce who made a fourfold distinction between different forms of habits: habit—habit of interpretation—belief (i.e., everyday knowledge in the sense of Berger & Luckmann)—veritable belief (i.e., knowledge)
(Peirce CP 5.480). The message of this paper has been that Schutz and other phenomenological sociologists come to significant results in showing how action is thoroughly embedded in cultural schemes and directed by the very schemes. Yet their analysis of the embedded nature of action remained half unfinished because they could not keep up the distinction between what Peirce calls habits of interpretation and beliefs.
Risto Heiskala
Institute for Advanced Social Research
University of Tampere
Kanslerinrinne 1, 33014
Finland
risto.heiskala@uta.fi
NOTES
1
Translated in English by the title Phenomenology of the Social World not until in the 1970s and more accurately in the 1980s.
2
In Economy and Society Weber wrote: “In the great majority of cases actual action goes on in a state of inarticulate half-consciousness of its subjective meaning. . . . The ideal type of meaningful action where the meaning is fully conscious and explicit is a marginal case. . . . But the difficulty need not prevent the sociologist from systematizing his concepts by classification of possible types of subjective meaning. That is he may reason as if action actually proceeded on the basis of clearly self-conscious meaning. The resulting deviation from the concrete facts must continually be kept in mind whenever it is a question of this level of concreteness, and must be carefully studied with reference both to degree and kind.” (Weber 1922, 21–22) Yet Weber never explained how the study of deviation should
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be done. Parsons is here essentially on the same line: “Action is rational in so far as it pursues ends possible within the conditions of the situation, and by the means which, among those available to the actor, are intrinsically best adapted to the end for reasons understandable and verifiable by positive empirical science” (Parsons 1937, 58) . . . “I now come to the important question of the applicability of my standards of rationality to what we may call common-sense action . . . My insistence on the continuity of the basic categories of logic and observation on the one hand in the most sophisticated science, on the other hand in the most simple common-sense action, is fundamental to my whole position.”
(Parsons in Garthoff 1978, 75 and 76) For phenomenological responses to this kind of argumentation see Schutz (1932) on everyday typification and Schutz (1943) and Garfinkel
(1967, Ch. 8) on the differences between scientific and everyday rationalities.
3
The term “rationalisation” must be taken in the broad sense here which includes, among other things, its meaning in psychoanalytical theory.
4
This is not to say that Garfinkel and others would not have recognized and in their empirical work addressed phenomena in which people interpret meaning unwittingly. The point here, however, is that their conceptual frame was such that they did that not because of but in spite of their theoretical engagements. This is also largely what happened in
Schutz’s attempts to integrate elements from G.H. Mead’s pragmatist theorizing into his phenomenological corpus from early 1940’s onwards.
5
The choice of Giddens for the object of elaboration is based, as alredy stated in the text, on the fact that his attempts to build “structuration theory” start with an explicit discussion on Schutz without surpassing the inherent problems of Schutz’s approach and it can be shown that Giddens’ diagnosis of the era therefore runs into serious problems.
Alternative objects would have been etnomethodologically tuned variants of the “practice turn” but, firstly, they have already been dealt with by Preda (2000) and, secondly, would have required a somewhat different focus than is characteristic to and much more space than is available for the current paper.
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References: Abell, P. 2000. Sociological Theory and Rational Choice Theory. In B.S Turner (ed) The Blackwell Companion to Social Theory Baert, P. 1998. Social Theory in the Twentieth Century. Cambridge: Polity Press. Barthes, R. 1964. Elements of Semiology. New York: Hill and Wang, 1994. Berger, P. & Luckmann, T. 1966. The Social Construction of Reality: A Treatise in the Sociology of Knowledge Bourdieu, P. 1977. Outline of the Theory of Practice, trans. Richard Niece. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Bourdieu, P. 1980. The Logic of Practice, trans. Richard Nice. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1990. Bourdieu, P. 2000. Pascalian Meditations, trans. Richard Niece. Cambridge: Polity. Coleman, J. 1990. Foundations of Social Theory. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University. Durkheim, É. 1912. The Elementary Forms of Religious Life, transl. Joseph Ward Swain. New York: Collier Books, 1961. Elster, J. 1989. Nuts and Bolts for the Social Sciences. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Elster, J. 2007. Explaining Social Behavior. More Nuts and Bolts for the Social Sciences. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Frank, M. 1984. What is Neostructuralism? trans. Sabine Wilke Gray, foreword by Martin Swab Garfinkel, H. 1967. Studies in Ethnomethodology. Cambridge: Polity Press, 1984. Giddens, A. 1976. New Rules of Sociological Method. A Positive Critique of Interpretative Sociologies. Giddens, A. 1984. The Constitution of Society. Outline of the Theory of Structuration. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press. Giddens, A. 1994a. Beyond Left and Right: The Future of Radical Politics. Cambridge: Polity Press. Giddens, A. 1994b. Living in a Post-Traditional Society. In U. Beck, A. Giddens and S Greimas, A. J. 1966. Structural Semantics: An Attempt at a Method, transl. Daniele McDowell, Ronald Schleifer, and Alan Velie; introd Nebraska Press, 1983. Gronow, A. 2008. Not by Rules or Choice Alone: A Pragmatist Critique of Institution Theories in Economics and Sociology. Journal of Institutional Economics 4(4), 351– 373. Heiskala, R. 1999. From Goffman to Semiotic Sociology. Semiotica 123(3/4), 211–234. Heiskala, R. 2001. Theorizing power: Weber, Parsons, Foucault and neostructuralism. Heiskala, R. 2003. Society as Semiosis. Neostructuralist Theory of Culture and Society. Frankfurt am Main and New York: Peter Lang. Heiskala, R. 2007. Economy and Society. From Parsons through Habermas to Semiotic Institutionalism Heritage, J. 1984. Garfinkel and Ethnomethodology. Cambridge: Polity Press. Hilbert, R. A. 1992. The Classical Roots of Ethnomethodolgy: Durkheim, Weber, and Garfinkel. Husserl, E. 1913. Ideen zu einer reinen Phänomenologie und phänomenologischen Philosophie. Halle a.d.s.: Niemeyer. Husserl, E. 1900–21. Logical Investigations. Vol. 1 and 2. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1970. Husserl, E. 1931. Cartesian Meditations. An Introduction to Phenomenology. The Hague, Boston, London: Martinus Nijhoff Publishers, 1982. Joas, H. 1985. G.H. Mead. A Contemporary Re-examination of his Thought. Cambridge: Polity Press. Joas, H. 1996. The Creativity of Action. Cambridge: Polity Press. Joas, H. 2000. The Genesis of Values. Cambridge: Polity Press. Kant, I. 1787. Critique of Pure Reason, ed. and trans. By Paul Guyer and Allen W. Wood. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998. Kassler, D. 1979. Max Weber. An Introduction to His Life and Work. Cambridge: Polity Press, ¨ Kilpinen, E. 1999. What is Rationality? A New Reading of Veblen’s Critique of Utilitarian Hedonism Kilpinen, E. 2000. The Enormous Fly-Wheel of Society. Pragmatism’s Habitual Conception of Action and Social Theory Kilpinen, E. 2002. A Neglected Classic Vindicated: The place of George Herbert Mead in the general tradition of semiotics Kilpinen, E. 2004. How to Fight the “ Methodenstreit”? Veblen and Weber on Economics, Psychology and Action. International Review of Sociology 14(3), 413–432. Levi-Strauss, C. 1958. Structural Anthropology, transl. Claire Jacobson and Brooke Grundfest ´ Schoepf. New York: Basic Books, 1963. Mead, G. H. 1934. Mind, Self, and Society. From the Standpoint of Social Behaviorist. Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press. Niiniluoto, I. 1999. Critical Scientific Realism. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Nonaka, I. & Takeuchi, H. 1995 The Knowledge Creating Company. New York, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Parsons, T. 1937. The Structure of Social Action. A Study in Social Theory with Special Reference to a Group of Recent European Writers & Collier Macmillan Publishers, 1968. Parsons, T. 1951. The Social System. New York: The Free Press. Peirce, C. S. 1931–58. Collected Papers of Charles Sanders Peirce. 8 volumes, (eds) Charles Hartshorne, Paul Weiss, and A.W Pleasants, N. 1996. Nothing is Concealed: De-centring Tacit Knowledge and Rules from
0021-8308
The Meaning of Meaning in Sociology. The
Achievements and Shortcomings of Alfred
Schutz’s Phenomenological Sociology
RISTO HEISKALA
jtsb_461
231..246
INTRODUCTION
Theories of social action such as rational choice theories (Abell 2000; Coleman
1990; Elster 1989 and 2007), Weber (1922) and early Parsons (1937) usually build on a conception of an individual actor who is capable to order his or her goals in the order of preference and act accordingly. Moreover, the actor is usually interpreted as being transparent to him or herself in the sense that there are no rejected motives or unanalysed habits directing the actor’s behaviour. Such a point of departure has been called “cognitivist” (Bourdieu 1980). The cognitivist bias inherent in many action theoretical frames of reference has triggered the criticism that a more realistic frame would take culture or the social totality as its basic concept and analyse actors as something embedded in their cultural environment. (Functionalist variants of such criticism include Durkheim 1912 and late
Parsons from Parsons 1951 onwards; for structuralist variants see Lévi-Strauss
1958; Barthes 1964 and Greimas 1966). However, the drawback included in these alternative analytical frames is that the concept of action is replaced by the concept of structure, which covers up many socially relevant action-theoretical problems. With phenomenological sociology, however, we can eat the cake and also have it. This is so because phenomenological sociology has an individual mind as its point of departure, it deals with problems characteristic to action theory, it pays great deal of attention to those cultural maps and schemes which define the environment of action to the actor, and it does not understand culture as a uniform code subordinating the subjects but emphasises instead cultural variation between the actors. This paper discusses phenomenological sociology from such an angle. The basic question is: Is the attempt to integrate action theory and cultural analysis in phenomenological sociology successful? The answer given here is an affirmative one. A further question asks whether the phenomenological
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synthesis is able to relieve social theory of the cognitivist bias characteristic of action theory. It turns out that here the efforts of phenomenological sociologists have been less successful, even if some progress has been made. The remaining problems have to do with the basic concepts of the phenomenological approach and especially the phenomenological definition of meaning. It is recommended therefore, that the phenomenological frame should be supplemented with such alternative analytical frames as pragmatism, neostructuralism, approaches based on Bourdieu’s work or the recent current called the “practice turn” which can be interpreted as complementary to it.
The paper opens with two sections on Alfred Schutz, the founding father of phenomenological sociology. First of these deals with Schutz’s great invention,
i.e., the synthesis of phenomenological philosophy and Weber’s sociological action theory. After presenting the conceptual frame of phenomenological sociology the paper moves on to the second section on Schutz the topic of which is the dilemma of phenomenological analysis of meaning. This is followed by a section on Garfinkel’s ethnomethodology and social constructionism by Berger & Luckmann. In this section, it is shown that they too are captured in the trap of the phenomenological dilemma. The concluding section states why there is a reason to pay attention to such abstract issues and discusses the problems of Giddens’ structuration theory as an elaboration of those problems which emerge when due attention is not given to the attempt to solve the problem of cognitivist bias.
THE FOUNDATIONS OF PHENOMENOLOGICAL SOCIOLOGY:
SCHUTZ’S MUNDANE PHENOMENOLOGY
The founder of phenomenological philosophy, Edmund Husserl understood consciousness as a stream of intentional acts fixed to phenomena. The phenomena do not exist without the consciousness experiencing them and the consciousness cannot be without being consciousness of those phenomena to which it is fixed.
This can be compared to Immanuel Kant’s famous phrase “concepts without percepts are empty; percepts without concepts are blind” (Kant 1787, A51/B75).
Following his teacher, Franz Brentano, Husserl termed the intentional nature of consciousness this property of the consciousness that it cannot be without being consciousness of something. Intentionality in this phenomenological sense is distinct from the action-theoretical use of the term where it refers to the goal-oriented nature of action. These two different uses of the term intentionality, however, can be linked together—as we will shortly see.
Husserl was an epistemologist in the tradition of Descartes and Kant. His aim was to take the stream of intentional consciousness as his point of departure and justify philosophically in his transcendental phenomenology the inevitability of mathematical deductions and the foundations of modern natural sciences (Husserl
1900–21; 1913). Alfred Schutz, the founder of phenomenological sociology, took
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in his Der sinnhafte Aufbau der sozialen Welt (Schutz 1932)1 Husserl’s phenomenology as his point of departure. Differing from Descartes, Kant and Husserl, however,
Schutz did not try to find a solid foundation for the modern natural science and mathematics. Instead, he transformed Husserl’s transcendental phenomenology to mundane phenomenology. Schutz achieved this by directing his interest to that level of consciousness which Husserl had called the natural attitude and bracketed as the first thing in the succession of phenomenological reductions meant to lead the way toward the level of transcendental phenomenology. One expression of this transition from transcendental phenomenology to the phenomenology of everyday world is that, whereas Husserl had tried to justify the intersubjective validity of our knowledge in starting from the image which the conscious subject must have about another subject (Husserl 1931), Schutz set the problem of intersubjectivity as a problem of the reciprocity of the actual interaction situations of everyday life.
Schutz also revised the phenomenological approach in linking action theory to his conception. Here he proceeds by applying Husserl’s definition of meaning in a creative way. Husserl’s intentional consciousness is intentional in the sense that it cannot be without being consciousness of something. This something is called intentional object by Husserl. The consciousness, for Husserl, is a temporal series of intentional acts which constitute intentional objects. Meanings emerge from this stream as such particular intentional acts which have a preceding intentional act as their intentional object. An intentional act where the attention of the consciousness is fixed to the fact that some object or surface is red is not yet a meaning. This passive intentional act is not transformed to a meaning until an active or reflective intentional act directed to the passive act follows and directs attention to the fact that the attention of the consciousness is directed to the redness of the object or surface. Schutz originally adopted the idea of the mind as a temporal stream of consciousness from Henri Bergson. However, after reading Husserl he reformulated the Bergsonian idea by Husserl’s conception of the intentional nature of consciousness and the emergence of meaning. Schutz states:
“Meaning does not lie in the experience. Rather, those experiences are meaningful which are grasped reflectively. The meaning is the way in which the Ego regards its experience. The meaning lies in the attitude of the Ego toward that part of its stream of consciousness which has already flowed by, toward its ‘elapsed duration’ ” (Schutz 1932: 69–70; original emphasis).
Later on, he specified that meaning is “the result of an interpretation of a past experience looked at from the present Now with a reflective attitude” (Schutz
1945: 210).
In addition to defining meaning in a Husserlian way, Schutz wanted to enrich the phenomenological frame of reference in integrating the action theoretical definition of intentionality (i.e., intentionality as goal-oriented action) into the frame. He was able to do this by directing attention to a specific class of intentional
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acts which had not aroused Husserl’s interest, as he was oriented to the philosophy of science. Schutz termed this class projects. For Schutz, a project is an anticipated chain of actions which is in an intentional act of consciousness “thought in the future perfect tense (modo futuri exacti)” (Schutz 1932: 61). A project is, then, an intentional act directed to the future as an anticipated action. In Figure 1, I have given graphical representations for the definitions of meaning and project (as a specific type of meaning) by Schutz.
The concept of project makes it possible to integrate the action theoretical approach to the phenomenological frame of reference and thus opens the path to the construction of phenomenological sociology. In his Der sinnhafte Aufbau der sozialen Welt (Schutz 1932) Schutz tried to do this in integrating Max Weber’s
(1922) social theory into the phenomenological frame. His guiding idea was that phenomenology was able to provide the Weberian social theory with a solid grounding in cultural theory. The Weberian approach needed this because the phenomenological analysis of cultural typification in everyday life had a much more advanced interpretation of meaning than the Weberian ideal-type method.
Weber’s work in social theory again would provide an advanced conception for the analysis of society for the phenomenologist. Later on, Schutz had a similar idea of reciprocal completion in relation to Talcott Parsons’ The Structure of Social
Action (Parsons 1937). He even wrote to Parsons: “I realized immediately the importance and the value of your system and also the fact that it starts exactly where my own book ends” (Schutz in Grathoff 1978, 97).
Schutz’s attempt to co-operate with Parsons was not blessed with much success. He actually lectured in Parsons’ seminar at Harvard once and there was
(a) Interpretation of meaning as a reflective intentional act (directed in point t2 to the Ego’s intentional act in point t1)
X
X
X
X
t0
t1
t2
t3
(b) Project as a reflective intentional act (directed in point t1 to the Ego’s intentional act in point t2)
X
X
X
X
t0
t1
t2
t3
Figure 1. Meaning and project in Schutz’s Phenomenology.
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some exchange of letters but the correspondence clearly shows that neither of the gentlemen understood the other all that well in the end (Grathoff 1978;
Wagner 1983). As his seminal work Der sinnhafte Aufbau der sozialen Welt (Schutz
1932) was not translated in English until the 1970s it was Schutz’s fate to remain unknown outside a small circle of enthusiastic followers and achieve fame but only through his students. In this respect, two books published in the US in the latter half of the 1960s were especially important. Harold Garfinkel’s Studies in
Ethnomethodology (Garfinkel 1967) followed the Husserlian rather than the Weberian root of phenomenological sociology. However, it also tried to transform the phenomenology of everyday life into an empirical study, the most vital tradition of which conversation analysis is today (Heritage 1984). Peter L. Berger and
Thomas Luckmann’s The Social Construction of Reality (Berger & Luckmann 1966), in its turn, followed the Weberian root which it complemented with G. H.
Mead’s (1934) socialisation theory. This is how it created a phenomenologically based social theory. It is through these two schools that the phenomenological approach found its way to sociological publicity. They will be discussed in a section of their own. Before that, however, it is appropriate to sum up the achievements of the founding father and draw attention to a crucial problem characteristic to phenomenological sociology.
Schutz founded phenomenological sociology by reformulating Husserl’s theory in two ways. The first move was the transition from the monological consciousness, concentrated in the analysis of the constitutive conditions of the universal validity of mathematics and theoretical natural science (transcendental phenomenology), to the dialogical consciousness and the intersubjective foundation of the everyday world (mundane phenomenology). The second crucial move was the invention of the concept of project. This made possible the transition from the theory a monadic conscious subject to a subject acting in society.
Taken together these two transitions made phenomenological sociology possible.
Its concept of actor is much more extensive than that of the action theories such as rational choice theory (Abell 2000; Coleman 1990; Elster 1989 and 2007),
Weber (1922) and early Parsons (1937) because the phenomenological frame assumes that in addition to goals and motives the actor is determined by cognitive maps and action schemes which are part of the actor’s everyday knowledge. This is how phenomenological sociology understands action as something embedded in its cultural environment. Differing from the structural functionalism of late Parsons (1951) and structuralist code theory (Lévi-Strauss 1958;
Barthes 1964; Greimas 1966), however, it does not interpret the cultural environment of action as a code subordinating all actors but as something which includes variation and is slightly different in the case of each actor. Phenomenological sociology then, operates with a culturally sensitive concept of society which is much more extensive than the action theoretical conception. However, because of the concept of project it does not lose its link to the problems characteristic of action theory.
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THE DILEMMA OF PHENOMENOLOGICAL SOCIOLOGY: IS MEANING
ALWAYS “KNOWLEDGE”?
The above conclusion sounds almost too good to be true—and indeed, there is a problem involved. Providing that phenomenological sociology is meant to be a comprehensive social and cultural theory it seems that it is capable of taking considerable steps towards this direction but not to redeem its promise completely. This is something that becomes evident if we take a closer look at the phenomenological critique of action theory.
In his criticism of action theory Schutz started from the assumption that
Weber’s approach to the phenomenon of meaning was sensible but narrow.
Weber’s approach outlined a frame of reference where the paradigmatic case was a project. Schutz aimed at developing an approach that would be more comprehensive than Weber’s. In this attempt he committed himself to Husserl’s theory of intentional acts, where perception takes place in the form of intentional acts called
“pre-predicative judgements”. These are passive acts which fix the Ego’s attention to some object and its qualities, such as redness. However, because of their passive nature, they are not determined by a voluntary act of the Ego. These vague and passive intentional acts form the basis of active intentional acts, which Husserl called “predicative judgements” because they are capable of predicating attributes, such as “being red”, to an object and are in this sense reflective.
Husserl’s phenomenological programme of the analysis of meaning studied these reflective intentional acts and their relationship with passive intentional acts. It arrived at a scheme, which can be reconstructed as the following four-step scale:
I
II
III
IV
being passive intentional acts related to being active intentional acts reflecting the passive intentional acts reflection of the active intentional acts (and of the relationship between them and passive intentional acts)
On this scale the domain of meaning lay at level III and the domain of the philosophical analysis of meaning at level IV.
In Schutz’s conception, the pre-predicative intentional acts (level II above) correspond, mutatis mutandis, according to his changing wording, either to behaviour (Schutz 1932) or to conduct (Schutz 1945). When taking place, these acts are, according to him, without meaning:
“Meaning . . . is not a quality inherent in certain experiences emerging within our stream of consciousness but the result of an interpretation of a past experience looked at from the present
Now with a reflective attitude. As long as I live in my acts, directed toward the objects of these acts, the acts do not have any meaning. They become meaningful if I grasp them as wellcircumscribed experiences of the past and, therefore, in retrospection. Only experiences which can be recollected beyond their actuality and which can be questioned about their constitution are, therefore, subjectively meaningful.” (Schutz 1945: 210)
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For Schutz “all kinds of so-called automatic activities of inner and outer life— habitual, traditional, affectual ones—fall under this class” (Schutz 1945: 211). The activities in the class may, however, receive meaningful interpretation via a reflective act which takes place afterwards, during which a motive is attached to them. In this sense they may be considered subjectively meaningful (“Subjectively meaningful experiences emanating from our spontaneous life shall be called conduct”—Schutz 1945, 211.) In all this Schutz followed Husserl. Unlike the epistemologically oriented Husserl, however, Schutz was oriented to social theory and considered an action theoretical approach to society important. Therefore, for the purposes of his phenomenological sociology, he transformed Husserl’s thinking so that instead of a four-step scale it must be reconstructed as a five-step scale where the level of “projects” (level 4) has been introduced between Husserl’s formerly stated levels III and IV:
(1) “involuntary spontaneity”: “mere physiological reflexes, such as the knee jerk, . . . blushing”, “my gate, my facial expression, my mood”. “They belong to the category of essentially actual experiences, that is, they exist merely in the actuality of being experienced and cannot be grasped by reflective attitude.” (Schutz 1945: 210–211; emphasis deleted)
(2) behaviour/conduct: passive intentional acts
(3) subjective meaning: active intentional acts reflecting the passive intentional acts in everyday contexts
(4) subjective meaning as projected meaning: motives of action and projects on the one hand and their reflective recognition in everyday contexts on the other (5) theoretical analysis of meaning: action theory, phenomenological sociology, transcendental phenomenology, etc., in the context of the scientific province of meaning (Schutz 1945: 210–212 and passim.)
The five-step scheme offered Schutz the opportunity to criticise such theories of action as Weber’s and Parsons’. The problem in these theories was their cognitivist bias which led them to equate the domain of meaning with level 4, i.e., projects. Furthermore, by understanding “meaning” narrowly according to the model of a motivated project, they left a major part of the phenomenon of
“meaning” entirely unanalysed or brought an action-theoretical standard of interpretation to its analysis. This standard was, of course, an action project that was made intelligible according to the model of scientific rationality.2 Its use as such a standard meant that the analysis of level 4 was applied to concepts derived from level 5. Consequently, besides being cognitivistly biased, their theories of the interpretation of meaning were also rationalistic. Under these circumstances, phenomenological sociology offered a far more extensive programme for the interpretation of meaning. It took level 3 as its starting point, which gave it a more extensive area of competence as a theory, because it included all the action© 2011 Blackwell Publishing Ltd.
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theoretical considerations at level 4, but was at the same time able to point them out as only the top of the iceberg as far as the phenomenon of meaning was concerned. Moreover, it was able to present an analysis of level 2, which Parsons had not analysed at all in his “unit act” and which Weber had been forced to approach with such residual categories as traditionally and affectually oriented action. In both these senses, Schutz’s phenomenological sociology incontestably offered a more comprehensive programme for the interpretation of meaning than the theory of action. Yet we may claim that it still restricts the horizon of study in a way which may again be surpassed. The restricted nature of Schutz’s theory becomes apparent if we reorganise the five step scale once again, this time from a starting point which is not tied to the Ego’s reflective interpretation of meaning: (1)
(2)
(3)
(4)
(5)
being meaningful being reflection of meaningful being reflection of meaningful being in project form theoretical reflection of meaningful being
The scale shows that phenomenological sociology, which defines meaning as a reflective intentional act stands on its own ground when at levels 3–5. Yet, it would not be correct to say that Schutz does not analyse level 2 of unreflective intentional acts at all. The problem is, however, that in the phenomenological approach, the analysis of unreflective intentional acts must always go through level 3, which ties the subjects’ meaningful experiences
(level 2) to their own reflective interpretation of their passive intentional acts
(level 3). Therefore, phenomenological sociology which criticises the use of scientific rationality as a yardstick in the theory of action turns out to be (be it differently from the way the theory of action had) a representative of a cognitivistly biased and rationalistic model of interpreting meaning. In the case of action theory the problems arise from subordinating the whole of the interpretation of meaning to an interpretation which uses as its yardstick the scientifically reflecting reason and its internally rational project descriptions. In the case of phenomenological sociology again, we are dealing with a scheme subordinating the whole of the interpretation of meaning to an interpretation which uses as its yardstick the reason reflecting in everyday contexts and interpretations that are rationalised3 in terms of its horizons of relevance. That is, even phenomenological sociology (even if it is a much more comprehensive approach than action theory in defining the area of the interpretation of meaning) restricts the domain of analysis in a way related to its understanding of meaning as a reflective intentional act. To a phenomenologist, meaning is always knowledge.
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THE SUCCESSORS: GARFINKEL’S ETHNOMETHODOLOGY AND SOCIAL
CONSTRUCTIONISM BY BERGER AND LUCKMANN
There is no way out from the above dilemma as long as we stay within the domain of phenomenological sociology because the problem is inherent in the phenomenological definition of meaning. Therefore, we also meet it in a somewhat transformed form in the successors of Schutz.
In his Studies in Ethnomethodology Garfinkel (1967) tried to integrate Parsons’ problem of normative order in a phenomenologically oriented framework that did not consider actors as “judgemental dopes” but reflexive beings capable of indexical interpretation of everyday meanings. This is how he outlined the ethnomethodological programme of a detailed empirical study of the natural attitude in micro contexts. This approach solved some problems left open by Schutz
(Heritage 1984: 72–76). However, what interests us in this context is Garfinkel’s definition of meaning or “accounting”.
Instead of considering actors as Parsonian “judgemental dopes” ethnomethodology is interested in the way people maintain social order by making what
Garfinkel calls “accountings” in interactive situations. Two quotations from
Studies in Ethnomethodology help to understand what Garfinkel means by the term
(and give the reader the taste of Garfinkel’s distinctive style of difficult writing):
“. . . the activities whereby members produce and manage settings of organized everyday affairs are identical with members’ procedures for making those settings ‘accountable.’ . . . When I speak of accountable . . . I mean observable-and-reportable, i.e., available to members as situated practices of looking-and-telling.” (Garfinkel 1967: 1)
“In exactly the ways a setting is organized, it consists of members’ methods for making evident the setting’s ways as clear, coherent, planful, consistent, chosen, knowable, uniform, reproducible connections—i.e. rational connections. In exactly the way that persons are members to organized affairs, they are engaged in serious and practical work of detecting, demonstrating, persuading through displays in the ordinary occasions of their interactions the appearances of consistent, coherent, clear chosen, planful arrangements. In exactly the ways in which setting is organized, it consists of methods whereby its members are provided with accounts of the setting as countable, storyable, proverbial, comparable, picturable, representable—i.e. accountable events.” (Garfinkel 1967: 34; original emphasis)
Whatever merits Garfinkel’s approach has—and there are several (Heritage 1984;
Hilbert 1992)—it does not break loose from the dilemma of phenomenological sociology. “Accounting” as defined by Garfinkel clearly operates at level 3 of the above scheme and is one more representative of what Husserl and Schutz called
“reflective intentional act”.
This cognitivist bias is also present in the way in which Peter L. Berger and
Thomas Luckmann develop social theory in reading Weber and Mead through the phenomenological eye-glasses of Schutz in The Social Construction of Reality. The purpose of their study is to present a comprehensive description of the structure of
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society starting from the individual’s subjective interpretation of meaning.
Because of the influence of Schutz, but without considering the theoretical background of their solution more closely, Berger and Luckmann define the meanings in everyday life as knowledge in their maximally broad definition of the sociology of knowledge:
“. . . the sociology of knowledge must concern itself with whatever passes for ‘knowledge’ in a society, regardless of the ultimate validity or invalidity (by whatever criteria) of such
‘knowledge’ ” (Berger & Luckmann 1966: 3).
Accordingly, the subtitle of the book is A Treatise in the Sociology of Knowledge. One naturally wonders why a social theoretical book should be “a treatise in the sociology of knowledge”? The approach becomes understandable when we realise that there is a Schutzian conception of meaning as a reflective intentional act lying in the background of their approach. That is why Berger and Luckmann, who take the phenomena of meaning as their starting point in their analysis of society, have no other choice but to adopt a broad definition of knowledge and the sociology of knowledge: to a phenomenologist, meaning is always knowledge. In the case of phenomenological sociology it is everyday knowledge.
In some part of their work, all phenomenological sociologists make heroic attempts to escape the limitations of the phenomenological conception by dealing with such intentional acts, which are not reflective and habits, which do not have interpretation. Schutz states that the reflective interpretation of meaning is but “a point of departure”, which should not mask the fact that not all interpretation of meaning is conscious. Ethnomethodologists every now and then speak about accountings which are not explicit but can be concluded in analysing the course of a conversation (the so-called conversational implicatures). Berger and Luckmann note that it is also important to study such habits, which the actor has not been able or interested in formulating to explicit everyday knowledge. Finally,
Michael Polanyi (1966; Polanyi & Prosch 1975) stretches the concept of knowledge to its extreme and speaks about “tacit knowledge” when referring to meanings for which the actors are incapable of giving a verbal explication.
In cases such as these Talcott Parsons spoke about the use of “residual categories”. Residual categories are something that always take place when a theoretician identifies such a social phenomenon, which is too important to be omitted, but which cannot be analysed within his or her theoretical frame. The use of residual categories always points to an anomaly and paves the road to the introduction of alternative conceptual frames, which can either supplement or replace the original frame of reference.4 In the case of phenomenological sociology the most promising alternative frames are provided by pragmatism (Joas 1985; 1996;
2000; Kilpinen 1999; 2000; 2002; 2004; Gronow 2008), neostructuralism (Frank
1984; Heiskala 1999; 2001; 2003; 2007), Pierre Bourdieu’s theorizing on habitus
(Bourdieu 1977, 1990 and 2000) and recent theorizing on the so-called “practice
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turn” (Pleasants 1996; Preda 2000 and Schatzki, Knorr Cetina & Savigny 2001).
All these approaches are capable of analysing meanings not explicated and none of them attempts simply to replace phenomenological sociology. Instead, they all try to provide a more extensive conceptual framework within which phenomenological sociology finds its area of application without a need to use residual categories in those cases where its analytical power dries up.
CONCLUSION OR WHY DOES IT MATTER?
Is there actually a need to supplement phenomenological sociology with other approaches? What does it matter if meanings are equated to reflective intentional acts and everyday knowledge? In some cases it doesn’t. Business consultants, for example, have found the concept of “tacit knowledge” very useful in attempts to educate corporate managers to pay attention to such features of their organisations that cannot be studied by reading their organisation charts (Nonaka &
Takeuchi 1995). This is so because the whole idea of such consultation is to make known, explicit and profitable such cultural patterns that were unknown before the consultant entered the respective corporation’s premises. Therefore, in an ideal case part of tacit knowledge is soon transformed to genuine knowledge, i.e., explicit and justified true belief (Niiniluoto 1999). Moreover, in the process the managers have also adopted an inclination to do so in the future whenever they run into problems or try to avoid running into problems with their staff and customers. “Tacit knowledge”, then, may sound a somewhat self-contradictory expression but besides that there is nothing wrong in this way of trying to acquire strategic knowledge and make corporations and other organizations more efficient. In other cases, however, more serious problems emerge. If our conceptual framework is based on the idea that all meanings are reflective intentional acts it equips us with too optimistic a picture of the possibility to steer the societal process. This is so because all habitualised behaviour looks like something which is in the reach of everyday knowledge. This again represents our opportunities to analyse and transform the social reality more extensive than they are.
An example is provided by Giddens’ structuration theory.5 Giddens, of course, is anything but a genuine phenomenologist. However, there is a phenomenological point of departure present in his New Rules of Sociological Method (Giddens 1976) in which he outlined the task of developing structuration theory culminating in the publication of The Constitution of Society (Giddens 1984) eight years later. In the New
Rules Giddens actually reads Schutz and Garfinkel (even if he later, in The Constitution, had somehow forgot all those parts of what he had read which would have made his synthetic attempt more difficult to pull together) but this is not the only reason to discuss his work here. Another is that the problems of structuration theory vividly illustrate how cognitivistly biased frames of meaning analysis, be
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they phenomenological or not, run into problems and how this happens even in cases where their authors explicitly aim to include routines and habits in their analytical scheme and even give them a central position in the reproduction of social order.
According to structuration theory, structures are memory traces that give people schemes to act. Structures are produced and reproduced by agency which is routine behaviour as a major part and conscious action for a minor part. People, however, are knowledgeable and therefore they are able to reflect their social being and change structures. In other words, people have power or “transformative capacity”. People have power as transformative capacity regardless of whether they are in the state of action or agency. The only difference is that when people act, they know that they have power and they work to achieve some explicitly set goals, i.e., they use power. People as agents equally have power but they do not know it and, therefore, they do not use power but behave in a routine or habitual way. Structures are thus largely reproduced without them being conscious of it even if it happens through the agency of the very same people.
This sounds very Foucauldian and Giddens has indeed been accused of a deterministic conception which does not leave much room for human choice
(Baert 1998: 110). Giddens himself, however, moves in the opposite direction. His more recent writings about reflexive “post-traditional” societies and “life-political negotiation” paint us a world where everything is plastic and easily changed and people are very skilful in coping with related risks and uncertainties (Giddens
1994a; 1994b). This may be seen as a break in the authors orientation but actually it is not. Structuration theory already defines the concepts of agent and actor in an ambivalent manner (Giddens 1976: 75) and then uses this ambivalence to introduce action-theoretical conception at the level of agency. Agency, behaviour and habits without reflective interpretation therefore vanishes into the background every time Giddens discusses change in his structuration theory. This is also evident in his use of the concept of “rule” which is so extensive that it covers every kind of meaningful pattern there is in the human life. All this is irrespective of whether those whose “rules” they are claimed to be are aware of the existence of the rules or not. Structuration theory then, gives routines and habits a central position in the reproduction of social structures only to take it away in a simple two-step move. First, acknowledge that routines, habits and behaviour are central to the reproduction of society but, at the same time, remind the reader that in addition people are knowledgeable, acting and creative beings. Second, use in your analysis only those concepts that fit well into the analysis of people as knowledgeable, acting and creative beings. Whenever problems arise, tell the reader that the concepts of rule, knowledge, creativity and action are used with all precaution taken in order not to forget that there is a more routinised element involved in human agency.
What you get when acting according to the above recipe is most probably a theory which easily fools some of its supporters to speak about society as if
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everything in it is easily changed by conscious action. Its most advanced successors, however, always remember to point to the fact that agency is not similar to action but is just analysed as if it were action. Less advanced successors, however, tend to forget this distinction every now and then. It seems that what happened to
Giddens at the beginnings of the 1990s was that he turned to one of the less advanced successors of his own theory.
In Giddens’ case the turn from the analysis of society to prescriptive use of language was understandable because it seems to have been part of the process in which he left the scientific province of meaning and turned to a politician.
However, those of us who do not plan to do likewise do well if they remember
Weber’s warnings according to which even if all the cultural sciences produce knowledge which is value-relevant it is forbidden for the cultural scientist to turn his or her lecture into a sermon (Kässler 1979: 192–196). To avoid doing so may be easier if we recall one of the many distinctions made by the great pragmatist philosopher and semiotic Charles Peirce who made a fourfold distinction between different forms of habits: habit—habit of interpretation—belief (i.e., everyday knowledge in the sense of Berger & Luckmann)—veritable belief (i.e., knowledge)
(Peirce CP 5.480). The message of this paper has been that Schutz and other phenomenological sociologists come to significant results in showing how action is thoroughly embedded in cultural schemes and directed by the very schemes. Yet their analysis of the embedded nature of action remained half unfinished because they could not keep up the distinction between what Peirce calls habits of interpretation and beliefs.
Risto Heiskala
Institute for Advanced Social Research
University of Tampere
Kanslerinrinne 1, 33014
Finland
risto.heiskala@uta.fi
NOTES
1
Translated in English by the title Phenomenology of the Social World not until in the 1970s and more accurately in the 1980s.
2
In Economy and Society Weber wrote: “In the great majority of cases actual action goes on in a state of inarticulate half-consciousness of its subjective meaning. . . . The ideal type of meaningful action where the meaning is fully conscious and explicit is a marginal case. . . . But the difficulty need not prevent the sociologist from systematizing his concepts by classification of possible types of subjective meaning. That is he may reason as if action actually proceeded on the basis of clearly self-conscious meaning. The resulting deviation from the concrete facts must continually be kept in mind whenever it is a question of this level of concreteness, and must be carefully studied with reference both to degree and kind.” (Weber 1922, 21–22) Yet Weber never explained how the study of deviation should
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be done. Parsons is here essentially on the same line: “Action is rational in so far as it pursues ends possible within the conditions of the situation, and by the means which, among those available to the actor, are intrinsically best adapted to the end for reasons understandable and verifiable by positive empirical science” (Parsons 1937, 58) . . . “I now come to the important question of the applicability of my standards of rationality to what we may call common-sense action . . . My insistence on the continuity of the basic categories of logic and observation on the one hand in the most sophisticated science, on the other hand in the most simple common-sense action, is fundamental to my whole position.”
(Parsons in Garthoff 1978, 75 and 76) For phenomenological responses to this kind of argumentation see Schutz (1932) on everyday typification and Schutz (1943) and Garfinkel
(1967, Ch. 8) on the differences between scientific and everyday rationalities.
3
The term “rationalisation” must be taken in the broad sense here which includes, among other things, its meaning in psychoanalytical theory.
4
This is not to say that Garfinkel and others would not have recognized and in their empirical work addressed phenomena in which people interpret meaning unwittingly. The point here, however, is that their conceptual frame was such that they did that not because of but in spite of their theoretical engagements. This is also largely what happened in
Schutz’s attempts to integrate elements from G.H. Mead’s pragmatist theorizing into his phenomenological corpus from early 1940’s onwards.
5
The choice of Giddens for the object of elaboration is based, as alredy stated in the text, on the fact that his attempts to build “structuration theory” start with an explicit discussion on Schutz without surpassing the inherent problems of Schutz’s approach and it can be shown that Giddens’ diagnosis of the era therefore runs into serious problems.
Alternative objects would have been etnomethodologically tuned variants of the “practice turn” but, firstly, they have already been dealt with by Preda (2000) and, secondly, would have required a somewhat different focus than is characteristic to and much more space than is available for the current paper.
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