Chapter 10 - The Untaken Road to Phenomenological Sociology

Summary

Phenomenology is a philosophical tradition that is well integrated into sociology. However, few social scientists have taken the direct route to the roots of phenomenology to either Husserl or Heidegger. They have instead been guided and accompanied by other researchers, whose works have functioned like bridges of knowledge. The work of this kind that has spawned the interest among social scientists in phenomenology is without any doubt Peter Berger and Thomas Luckmann’s famous book The Social Construction of Reality (Berger 1970:15; Berger and Luckmann 1991). It is through their works that social scientists have come to appreciate another Austrian social scientist, namely Alfred Schutz (1899–1959). And with the help of Schutz, some have traveled the road all the way back to the father of phenomenology, the German philosopher Edmund Husserl (1859–1938).

Though much knowledge has been generated by researchers that have taken the Berger and Luckmann–Schutz–Husserl road, it comes with some drawbacks, primarily an egological (atomistic) view on human beings. To rectify this problem, this chapter takes the reader on a tour along the second road to phenomenology, which leads us to the German philosopher, the phenomenologist Martin Heidegger (1889–1976). The point of bringing up Husserl and Heidegger is to show that their different versions of phenomenology today are relevant to sociology and other social sciences. The discussion of Heidegger will uncover paradigmatic assumptions (Kuhn 1962) of the social sciences that are taken for granted. It is shown that Heidegger’s ontological approach is a more radical sociological starting point than the Husserlian (Cartesian) egological that has come to dominate the social sciences. To show the concrete implication, this text explains how these two approaches give different accounts of what is one of the most central notions in the social sciences, institutions.

The First Road to Phenomenology: Egological Epistemology

The first road to phenomenology is well-known. When talking to people in the social sciences who have used phenomenology, their story is often identical. After having read Berger and Luckmann, they got interested in Schutz, and they may have studied the works of Husserl, or at least have had a look at it.